Quebec National Assembly Panel Begins Debate on Euthanasia Measure

Bioethics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Feb 15, 2010   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Quebec National Assembly Panel Begins Debate on Euthanasia Measure

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 15
, 2010

Quebec City, Canada (LifeNews.com) — A committee of the Quebec’s national assembly began hearings today on a bill that would examine doctors killing patients in assisted suicides. About 30 people, including members of the Federation of Medical Specialists and physicians, were expected to speak.

The committee is holding the first hearing since the provincial government, at the request of the opposition Parti Québécois, announced it would hold hearings on the pro-euthanasia measure.

The idea behind the measure is to clarify the issues surrounding euthanasia and obtain input from the general public.

Quebec can’t legalize assisted suicide on its own, but a bill is pending in the Canadian Parliament that would do so. But some advocates of assisted suicide hope the hearings will lead to the drafting of a paper to present to MPs urging them to legalize it.

Huge Anderson, in an editorial appearing today in the Montreal Gazette, said he hopes Parliament rejects Bill C-384.

"It was while I was reading Bill C-384 that I realized that only a few more steps would be necessary for me to be killed legally by a doctor if that federal private member’s bill becomes law," he writes.

"Let’s see. I have a ‘terminal illness’: check. I ‘appear to be lucid’: check. I have a doctor willing to sign a form on which I have stated my desire to have my life ended prematurely, not necessarily my own doctor: check. I have a doctor willing to do it, usually by lethal injection, as long as the legal paperwork is in order: check," Anderson writes. "Those are the ‘safeguards’ that advocates of legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada say should comfort those of us who fret about the consequences of making this dangerous change in the law."

Anderson says, "It’s often overlooked that to give a patient the right to die, the doctor must be given the right to kill."

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