LONDON, ON, Dec 5, 00 (LSN.ca) – Rhonda Clarke, a member of the Toronto-based Right to Die Society has publicly admitted to being present at assisted suicides and also admits she is currently “counselling” at least one Lou Gehrig’s sufferer intent on ending his life. The revelations appeared Saturday in a London Free Press article sparked by the Dutch decision to legalize euthanasia.
The article contrasts right-to-life and euthanasia activists. Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the London-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario, said in an interview that “The Netherlands has one of the weakest palliative care systems anywhere. The answer isn’t to end lives but to provide the best possible palliative care so those in chronic pain don’t see death as their only option. . . “The question we should be asking is, in a society as affluent as ours, why do so many people feel abandoned, alone and depressed enough to want to end their lives?”
Meanwhile Clarke, who in 1994 staged a hunger strike to secure signatures on a petition calling for legalization of doctor-assisted suicide in Canada said, “I have a friend right now whose misery is so unbearable, I have to pull myself back from placing a pillow over his face and putting him out of his pain.”
(London Free Press, December 2, 2000)