By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
VANCOUVER, November 6, 2008 (LifeSIteNews.com) – In the aftermath of the passing of Washington State’s assisted-suicide initiative in Tuesday’s election, a B.C. group is calling for similar legislation in Canada.
The Washington “Death with Dignity Act,” which allows physicians to prescribe a fatal dose of medication to patients whom a doctor feels is likely to die within six months, is modeled on Oregon’s assisted suicide law.
Dr. Brian Finnemore, of the Right to Die Society of Canada, said he would support a similar bill in Canada and hoped to see debate on the issue resume on this side of the border.
“The polls show the majority of citizens want to have a choice about how they die,” he said in a Vancouver Province report.
Palliative care physician and UBC instructor Dr. Margaret Cottle, of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada, told the CBC, “The debate here never really goes away.” She added, “There is not a shred of [scientific] evidence that anybody is better off dead. Palliative care does bring relief to the vast majority of people.”
Dr. Robert C. Pankratz of Canadian Physicians for Life said in a statement on the need to improve end-of-life care in Canada that the “answer to the current push for death on demand is the hospice movement and the understanding and availability of excellent palliative care.”
He emphasized that “the general population seems woefully under-informed about the ability of modern medicine to alleviate symptoms in the last days of life.”
Though the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against assisted suicide in the 1994 case of Sue Rodriguez of Victoria, several attempts have been made in recent years to reintroduce legislation to legalize assisted suicide.
In 2005 Bloc Québécois MP Francine Lalonde introduced a private members bill (C-407) to legalize assisted suicide in Canada.
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) Executive Director Alex Schadenberg condemned the measure saying, “This bill is so wide open it provides no effective restrictions whatsoever and if passed it will be assisted suicide on demand.”
The bill died on the table when an election was called in December of that year, but Lalonde vowed to resurrect the measure “sooner than later.”
Had Lalonde’s bill C-407 passed, the law in Canada would have allowed any individual to “assist” someone to commit suicide with or without a doctor present.
At the time, Dr. Joseph Ayoub, an oncologist and professor of medical ethics at the University of Montreal said, “Assisted suicide does not honour human dignity – especially now in the modern era of medicine, when there are ways to heal patients physically and psychologically,” and described opening the door to legalized assisted suicide as the “slippery slope” that would lead to widespread acceptance of assisted suicide and eventually euthanasia.