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Applying the
Brakes to Assisted Suicide--
and Then Stepping Down on the Accelerator
By Dave Andrusko
In the last month or two, we've
written about proponents of various anti-life initiatives
overshooting the mark--going so far over the top that some who
are in their camp raised a voice in protest. Everything from
grousing that Canada had refused to expend foreign aid dollars
on abortion to placing abortion advertisements on television to
complaining that Canada had not enacted an "assisted suicide"
law--all were so extreme they made some compatriots very
nervous.
 I
return today to Bill C-384, or the "Right to Die with Dignity"
Act, which the House of Commons overwhelmingly rejected 228-59.
Writing in "Lawyer Weekly," Mary J. Shariff starts out with
shrewd criticisms of C-384. I thought while she's not where we
are, this would be one of those correctives. Was I wrong! (See
www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&volume=30&number=4&article=1.
She correctly sees that there
were lots of problems, starting with the measure "appearing to
support not only physician-assisted suicide (PAS) but also the
practice of voluntary euthanasia -- the intentional and direct
act of killing on request," Shariff writes. "Still more
controversially, the Bill sought to legalize death assistance
beyond terminal illness to include assistance to individuals
experiencing physical pain or 'mental' pain, albeit severe, and
with 'no prospect of relief.'"
On top of that C-384 included all
the boiler-plate "safeguards," but only "require[ed] that a
person 'appear to be lucid' (a phrase fraught with ambiguity)
when making the written request to die, as opposed to actually
being lucid." Well…. yes, that WOULD explain why it was
"criticized."
What makes the article well worth
reading--even though its conclusions are dead-wrong--is
two-fold. Shariff understands that Canada lacks what she calls
an "assisted suicide poster child"--someone whose case is so
dramatic that the newspapers cover it in the most sensational
fashion, making the case that assisted suicide is the only
"humane response." (Great Britain is filled with such stories.)
Second (and this is my reading of
what's being said between the lines), use of "suffering" can't
work all the time; more to the point, it is self-limited. Not
everyone who wants to be "assisted" to die is suffering in a
physical sense. What to do?
Shariff gives an enthusiastic
thumbs up to a development that she sees in places like Belgium,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, in particular. There "public
debate has already progressed to the point where the principle
of 'autonomy' has emerged as the logical panacea to address the
untidy work of assessing the very subjective criteria of
'suffering' to the extent that it is being used to advocate
assisted death for simply being 'weary' of life."
"Untidy"? "Weary of life"?
Maybe I'm just too tired or
something, but Shariff appears to begin her article with an
alarum about how vague and imprecise the language of C-384 was
only to end her essay by giving a shout-out to the use of two
vague--and unimaginatively dangerous--concepts: autonomy and
weariness.
Sometimes the enemies of my enemy
are not my friend--especially not when what they propose is even
worse!
Please send your thoughts to
daveandrusko@gmail.com.
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