OTTAWA, Nov 30 (LSN.ca) – Following the news that the Netherlands had passed a law legalizing euthanasia, homosexual and euthanasia activist MP Svend Robinson (NDP) promised to push the issue again in Canada. In an interview with the Globe and Mail published yesterday he said he will introduce a private member’s bill early in the next Parliament calling on the House of Commons to “look at the recent developments in the Netherlands and also to look in depth at the whole issue of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide and make recommendations to Canadian law.”
Meanwhile the move in the Netherlands continues to receive condemnation both from within the country and internationally. Pro-Life InfoNet distributed a Cybercast News Service report yesterday noting that Dutch pro-lifers are warning that the pressure on elderly people will be growing. If someone has Alzheimer’s, others will say: ‘Why don’t you euthanize yourself?’.” Bert Dorenbos of the pro-life group Cry for Life told CNS “we … will continue to relate [euthanasia] to the practice of the 1930s in Germany, where the doctors and lawyers and politicians had the same line of thinking, and ended up killing demented and handicapped people [through compulsory castration, sterilization and euthanasia laws].”
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario echoed the Dutch concerns in a press release saying “Vulnerable Dutch Citizens Are Threatened by Legalized Euthanasia.” The release noted, “Holland is also renowned for the almost non-existence of hospice/palliative care. Proper pain and symptom management should be considered essential to the art of medicine, and yet due to the acceptance of euthanasia the Dutch have not developed the needed hospice and palliative care programs. The Dutch euthanasia program has turned killing into the only available ‘caring’ option.”