News
Featured Image
 Shutterstock.com

TORONTO, November 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Euthanasia has been legal in Canada for just over a year and pediatricians are already “increasingly” being asked by parents to euthanize disabled or dying children and infants, a survey by the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) has found. 

American anti-euthanasia activist Wesley Smith said the results of the survey prove the morally slippery slope that a nation slides down when it agrees that “killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering.”

“Once euthanasia consciousness is unleashed, it never stops expanding,” he wrote in the National Review.

“I guess Robert Latimer–a Canadian farmer who murdered his daughter because she had cerebral palsy–was a visionary,” he added. 

The CPS surveyed its members in light of the possibility Canada will expand euthanasia to children. Euthanasia is only available for consenting adults. 

Indeed, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government wrote that possibility into the law it passed in June 2016. 

Bill C-14 permits voluntary euthanasia for individuals of at least 18 years of age assessed to be suffering intolerably from a grievous and irremediable medical condition, and with natural death reasonably foreseeable. 

But the Commons Justice Committee added an amendment to the bill directing the federal government to review expanding euthanasia on three further grounds: for children, or “mature” minors; solely for mental illness; and allowing advance directives in the case of those with degenerative diseases such as dementia.  

The Liberals have asked the Council of Canadian Academics to research these questions, and report to Parliament by the end of 2018.

The CPS surveyed 1050 pediatricians on their experiences with “medical aid in dying” or MAID, and released a report at the end of October.

Forty-five doctors reported receiving explicit requests from parents to euthanize 91 children, it said. More than half of these requests were for “neonates or infants under a year old.”

A further 118 pediatricians had “exploratory” discussions about euthanasia with parents of 419 children.

As for requests from the children themselves, 35 paediatricians reported discussing euthanasia with 60 minors. Nine reported receiving direct requests for euthanasia from 17 minors. 

While “such consultations may be rare, minors in Canada are contemplating MAID-related concepts and approaching health care providers with MAID-related questions,” noted the CPS survey. 

“Given the evolving legislative landscape, it is reasonable to anticipate that such questions will increase in the near future.” 

The CPS also conducted an attitude survey on euthanasia, with 574 of a possible 1,979 members, or 29 percent, responding.

Of these, 46 percent supported euthanizing mature minors who have “progressive or terminal illness or intractable pain.” 

Thirty-three percent opposed euthanizing mature minors for any reason.

Mature minors are children who are allegedly capable of understanding the nature and consequences of treatment, and so judged competent to request death by lethal injection.

The CPS study suggested non-voluntary euthanasia for non-competent dying “and/or severely disabled” children is not far off.

Canada’s federal law, and Quebec’s law currently prohibit involuntary euthanasia for anyone, it said, adding:

However, given the human rights framework advanced in Carter v. Canada, the parents of a dying and/or severely disabled child who is deemed to be suffering may, in the near future, be looking to the courts to support a right to end their child’s life. Decision-making for treatment of never-competent children is based on the “best interest standard”: choosing among options that reasonable persons, acting in good faith on another’s behalf, would consider acceptable in similar circumstances.

“All this is very problematic,” says Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Euthanasia lobbyists shift the argument for legalizing the killing of children by lethal injection from the autonomy of the individual to “why do you want to allow them to suffer,” he told LifeSiteNews.

“So the idea is, well, this isn’t fair, the law has an inequality because you’re allowing adults who are capable of requesting this, but not children or mature minors.”

Parents and guardians in Canada currently can authorize no treatment or the withdrawal of treatment for non-competent minors, Schadenberg added.

“If you had a child with a significant disability, then the question at birth would be, do you want that child to receive treatment or not, and you would have the right to say yes or no,” he said.

“So the argument is well, because we already have that, therefore, what’s the difference between that” and euthanasia.

Schadenberg echoed Smith’s warning that once euthanasia is allowed, the grounds for legally killing people keep expanding, as has been demonstrated in other jurisdictions.

The Netherlands adopted the Groningen Protocol in 2004, he pointed out. 

It gives doctors impunity to lethally inject disabled infants, such as those spinal bifida or hydrocephalus.

The CPS study “shows us that the parents were the ones to ask about euthanasia. Rarely did the mature minor or child consider euthanasia,” Schadenberg said.

“The concept of euthanasia for children should be simply rejected based on the fact that children cannot consent.”