Posted on 11/06/2005 2:55:00 AM PST by Clive
November 6, 2005
The big lie about euthanasia
Legalizing the right to kill in the name of mercy threatens our children's lives
By Licia Corbella
Many of those in favour of legalized killing -- euphemistically called euthanasia or mercy killing -- say it is wrong for some people to dictate to others how they live or end their lives.
I frankly don't know what planet these people are living on, but everywhere I turn, I'm being dictated to by laws and regulations on how to live my life.
I must drive the speed limit, or face receiving a ticket.
I must cut my lawn and keep it free of weeds or face a fine.
I cannot play my music too loudly, I must send my children to school, I must wear clothes while out in public and I can't punch people with ignorant opinions in the nose.
These dictates on how I live are there to both protect me, my neighbours and others.
Ah ha! proponents of euthanasia will cry.
Their whole point is that if euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide is legalized then no harm will be done to anyone else.
Euthanasia, by its very definition, they claim, can only be performed on those who request it.
That, however, is not true.
That is a big lie.
In jurisdictions where euthanasia is legal, many people are killed without their consent, even though they are fully competent and have never requested to be actively killed by another person.
Indeed, the facts from Holland and Belgium state that fully 0.8% of all deaths in countries where euthanasia is legal are killed without their consent.
Don't take it from me. In Holland, where euthanasia has been practised openly since the early 1980s and was legalized in 2002, two comprehensive studies have been conducted into how euthanasia is practised.
The findings are beyond alarming. They are disgusting and should stop all discussion of euthanasia from going forward in Canada.
Canada's Justice Minister Irwin Cotler mused last week that he won't support Bill C-407, the private member's bill of Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde, because it is too broad and didn't have enough controls.
Unfortunately however, he still believes Canada should look at legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide.
But the reports out of Holland prove that despite strict controls, many innocent people are killed against their will at the whim of their doctor.
The first of these reports that prove this was called "Medical Decisions About the End of Life," also known as The Remmelink Report -- named after Prof. Jan Remmelink, attorney general of the High Council of the Netherlands, who led the study committee.
The Remmelink Report was released in September 1991.
It made shocking revelations. It found that in 1990 alone:
n 1,031 people were killed "without the patient's request."
In other words, an average of three people a day were actively killed by their doctors without the patient's consent or knowledge.
Of those 1,031 people:
- 14% were found to be fully competent;
- 72% had never expressed that they would want their lives ended;
- and in 8% of the cases, doctors performed "involuntary euthanasia," even though they believed other options were still possible.
In 1990, there were 128,824 deaths in Holland. According to the Remmelink Report, 2.9% of those deaths were caused intentionally by doctors and fully 0.8% of people who died were killed without the patient's request.
This was all done prior to euthanasia being legal in Holland and not one doctor was sent to jail for killing their patients without their consent.
So-called right-to-die advocates often claim euthanasia is an issue of "choice."
But the experience in the Netherlands shows that when voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide are accepted practice, an alarming number of people end up having no choice at all -- ever again.
Just in case you're thinking 1990 was an anomaly, another extensive and similar report was conducted in Holland in 1995. Of the 135,676 people who died in Holland that year, 0.7%, or 950 people, were killed without the patient's request.
A slight improvement by one-tenth of a percent, but still totally and utterly unacceptable.
Dr. Margaret Somerville, founding director of McGill University's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, who is both a professor of law and a professor in the faculty of medicine, points out that at first euthanasia in Holland was restricted to people in terrible pain. No more.
"In the Netherlands, euthanasia was initially allowed to be performed on only those suffering from unbearable, intractable pain and the terminally ill. The patient had to be adult and competent at the time of euthanasia. Now none of those conditions any longer apply," said Somerville, from her office in Montreal.
Just this past Sept. 29, the Dutch government announced it would establish guidelines for when it is acceptable to kill infants who are born less than perfect -- including babies born with spina bifida, cerebral palsy and Down's Syndrome.
This is not a slippery slope, it's Niagara Falls. It is a cliff.
"People tend to think, 'well, I'm going to die in the next few years, maybe I'd like to have the option of euthanasia,'" said Somerville.
"But that's a very short-sighted view. Even if I agreed with euthanasia, I don't think the danger is so much in the next 12 months to five years. What you have to ask yourself is if we say this is an acceptable value now and if we implement that through law, how are our great, great, great grandchildren going to die?"
People who want to kill themselves have that option now.
If they insist that the state legalize others to do it for them, they threaten my life and my children's lives.
Euthanasia must be killed.
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Dirty little "secret": I suspect this practice has obtained pretty much everywhere. Back in the late 60's/early 70's at McGill where I spent a lot of time with nurses ("Argh isn't dating a girl, he's dating a nurse"), I heard lots of horror stories from nurses (light bulbs and Coke bottles inserted where they don't belong, what can happen if a woman has an epileptic fit at a certain "inconvenient" moment during sex, etc.). Euthanasia for the apparently hopeless and in pain was quietly performed regularly. A number of doctors wouldn't do it themselves, but would order the nurses to do it. Some nurses would tell them to go soak their heads, so a few doctors took to ordering poor young students nurses to pull the plug. Some of these student nurses would feel intimidated into obeying, then have to live with the guilt...
How many people are killed by doctors in countries where euthanasia is illegal?
Liberals want badly to destroy God because it makes it easier for them to then play God.
-and I can't punch people with ignorant opinions in the nose.-
It IS a shame.
"Just this past Sept. 29, the Dutch government announced it would establish guidelines for when it is acceptable to kill infants who are born less than perfect -- including babies born with spina bifida, cerebral palsy and Down's Syndrome."
Lord, have mercy on us all.
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