Once euthanasia forces no longer have to contend with democracy, they show their true authoritarian colors. Canada’s Supreme Court took democracy out of the death equation by conjuring a “right” to be made dead under very broad circumstances.
Now, pressure is starting to force religiously-affiliated medical institutions and doctors to kill.
After a Catholic hospital refused to euthanize a patient, who apparently received inadequate pain relief in the process of transfer, calls are being made to force Catholic and other faith institutions to commit what the Church considers a cardinal sin.
From the National Post story:
[Ian]Shearer’s experience at St. Paul’s Hospital [in Vancouver] highlights one of the thorniest issues concerning assisted death: the decision of most faith-based — but taxpayer-funded — health-care facilities to play no part in a practice made legal by the Supreme Court of Canada and federal legislation.
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Lackie [his daughter] said the suffering her father endured shows why it is important that church-governed facilities, including dozens of hospitals, nursing homes and hospices across Canada, be required to allow assisted deaths within their walls.
Not so. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion
That’s an explicit and enumerated right.
If that right is to retain any heft, Catholic and other religiously-affiliated institutions should promise to close their doors before buckling under to the boot of the state.
That would leave Canadians with a choice: Do they want more good hospitals available, some of which won’t allow euthanasia, or would they prefer fewer facilities all of which willingly allow homicide.
If the culture of death prevails on this issue, it will euthanize Canada’s explicitly guaranteed right of “freedom of conscience and religion” on the altar of the wholly invented “right to die.”
That’s tyranny.
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.
