OTTAWA, June 6 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Campaign Life Coalition New Brunswick president Peter Ryan, an expert on euthanasia, issued a press release on the Senate subcommittee report released yesterday entitled, Quality End-of-Life Care: The Right of Every Canadian. Ryan notes that “the report deserves much credit for pushing for badly needed improvements in our current medical system.” However, “too many Canadians suffer needlessly before dying,” says Ryan. “Pain relief and other palliative care needs to be regarded as a right, not a matter of good luck. Poor care fuels a desperate demand for assisted suicide and euthanasia.”
The key issues overlooked by the report include:
– It fails to consider – and reject – the call for a “compassionate homicide” category of crime issued by the Senate’s 1995 report Of Life and Death. Killing is not compassionate and the law must not treat it as such.
– It does not address the problem of inappropriate withholding and withdrawal of treatment. Some people are labeled as dying when they are not dying at all – they are just old or disabled. Hence they are denied proper treatment and left to die.
– Among several ethical principles for end of life care that it mentions, it overlooks the most basic one: respect for life. If we do not respect someone’s life, we will not care for them properly. It is not a matter of preserving life at all costs, but of not ending life prematurely.
Ryan testified before the Senate subcommittee and its predecessor, the Special Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. He has worked several years in group homes for disabled persons. In 1996 he completed a postgraduate dissertation examining the Canadian debate over legalized euthanasia.