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Email: "SENATOR SELECTIVELY QUOTES CATECHISM TO DEFEND EUTHANASIA BILL"

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BY LifeSiteNews.com OTTAWA, Nov 3 (LSN.ca) - As LifeSite reported on October 20, a Senate bill promoting euthanasia received second reading in the Senate yesterday. Liberal Senator Sharon Carstairs,  a pro-euthanasia activist, defended her bill S-2, the “Medical Decisions Facilitation Act”,  quoting selectively from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The legislation defines in law that physicians can withhold life-sustaining “treatment” without penalty and that “treatment” includes “nutrition and hydration.”  Senator Carstairs quotes the Catechism at paragraph 2279 saying, “Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either   an end or a means… ” She implies falsely that the Catholic Church would consider nutrition and hydration, not as ordinary care but as “treatment” as she has defined it in her bill.  In this action the Senator is either remiss or deliberately misleading since in 1994 the Canadian bishop presiding over such issues clarified the Church’s position with regard to nutrition and hydration before the Senate Special Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, a committee in which Carstairs participated. Archbishop Adam Exner, the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF), in a 1994 brief to the committee said that “medically assisted nutrition and hydration” should “for legal purposes be viewed as a form of care” rather than treatment.  Alex Schadenberg, the President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario has forwarded to LifeSite a critical analysis of bill S-2 and it is reproduced in today’s Special Report.  For today’s Special Report on bill S-2 see:  http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/sept/991103a.html   See the bill at:  http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/2/parlbus/chambus/senate/bills/bills-e.htm#S-2   For Carstairs’ Senate remarks on the bill yesterday see:  http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/2/parlbus/chambus/senate/deb-e/04db_1999-11-02-e.htm#0.2.X57BJ2.ZPQ3TB.HJDMKF.A8 http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/senator-selectively-quotes-catechism-to-defend-euthanasia-bill/

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