In the 1990s by the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that assisted suicide is not a constitutional right. But the Court has again taken up the issue–and hence, I suspect the handwriting is on the wall.
That seems so clear that culture of death advocates are already making serious proposals to determine the look of the beast that seems to be a-aborning. University of Victoria bioethicist Eike-Henner W. Kluge has made news with a “Legislative Proposal” that would:
1. Establish euthanasia death courts–also being proposed in the UK–in a country that doesn’t permit capital punishment;
2. Allow a broad license to be euthanized based on almost wholly subjective criteria;
3. Allow the courts to order the incompetent to be euthanized.
Here are a few specifics. First, the right to be killed would be totally subjective, based on “values” of the person wanting to die:
If a person suffers from an incurable and irremediable disease or medical condition, and if that person experiences the disease or condition as violating the fundamental values of that person.
Good grief, that could mean anything beyond the transitory.
There would be Death Courts:
that person may make application to a superior court for permission to request the assistance of a physician in terminating his life as quickly and as painlessly as possible in keeping with the fundamental values of that person;
Can you imagine who would teach the judges about how to decide these issues? It wouldn’t be professors or “experts” who believe in the sanctity/equality of human life or the Hippocratic Oath!
At least the suicidal patient has to be “competent.” But wait! The incompetent could be killed too:
Any person who suffers from an incurable and irremediable disease or medical condition, and who, by reason of incompetence, is unable to make application to a court as allowed under sec. yyy.1, may have such application made for him by a duly empowered proxy decision-maker using appropriate standards of proxy decision-making.
People who were never competent could be killed, by the way. What could go wrong?
Maybe I missed it, but there are no conscience exemptions provided for doctors–or for that matter, judges.
Also note: The killing would be paid for by the government as Canada as a single payer health care system.
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Please don’t say that Canada would never adopt a killing regime so unconstrained as Kluge’s proposal. Quebec’s new law is almost as radical.
At the very least can we finally acknowledge that this issue is not about terminal illness?
Of course we can’t. We live in culture that shelters from reality through the intentional embrace of pretense.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
