TORONTO, Ontario, January 6, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Starting Friday, Canada’s largest national pro-life organization will send a powerful warning to households across the country about what could happen if the courts acquiesce to recent pleas for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Campaign Life Coalition has launched a month-long national media campaign with 60-second TV ads running on the Sun News Network from Jan. 6-29. It is expected to reach over 3.2 million viewers.
Mary Ellen Douglas, CLC’s national organizer, said the campaign comes at a crucial time as there has been a renewed push to legalize euthanasia in the courts after Parliament rejected it overwhelmingly in 2010.
“With the push on for assisted suicide and the statistics that are coming out with people supporting this, it certainly looks like we’re having another anti-life measure going in place. So we need to educate the people on what it really is,” said Douglas.
The ad aims to warn Canadians about the slippery slope that has already been experienced in Holland, where practice of the deadly act was initially meant to have strict safeguards.
In the ad, CLC points out that by 1997 Holland’s law was expanded to allow the euthanizing of disabled infants, quoting a study in The Lancet medical journal that revealed 8% of infant deaths resulted from lethal injection.
They also relate Dutch government data from 2005 that shows there were 550 cases of euthanasia without the patient’s request or consent.
The media campaign comes as Justice Lynn Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court considers the Carter/Taylor case, an attempt by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association to overturn Canada’s ban on euthanasia and assisted suicide. Observers expect the case will eventually reach Canada’s Supreme Court.
“Euthanasia is taking a life, in many cases in situations where people are now at the point where it is no longer a question of choice. It’s a question of ‘we’ll decide when you’re going to go’,” said Douglas. “Life is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death.”
“Our lives are a gift from God, they’re sacred, and it’s not our decision to end our lives,” she added.
CLC says their goal is to inspire Canadians to contact their Members of Parliament and urge them to uphold and vigorously defend Canada’s law. If the courts eventually rule to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, Parliament has the power to overrule the court by invoking the Charter’s “notwithstanding clause.”
For more information, visit Campaign Life Coalition.
Contact Information:
Hon. Rob Nicholson, Justice Minister & Attorney General
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 613-995-1547
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 613-992-4211
Contact info for all Members of Parliament.