“The Poster Boy of the Euthanasia Movement” in Canada
Part Two of Two

Editor’s note.. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Bioethicist and friend Wesley J. Smith often reminds me to check his blog daily; there’s likely to be something provocative that will stimulate my increasingly ancient brain.

Sure enough, I skipped yesterday and discovered today at www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog a fascinating piece on Canadian Robert Latimer, convicted in 1993 of murdering his daughter.

Twelve-year-old Traci had cerebral palsy. Latimer is now out on day parole after serving seven years in prison.

Wesley uses as inspiration a column that ran in the Winnepeg Free Press written by Tom Oleson titled, “Latimer Has a Problem With the Truth.”
[www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/columnists/top3/v-printerfriendly/story/4146955p-4736701c.html]

Latimer, alas, has considerable support in Canada, according to public opinion polls. “Mercy killing”—combined probably the two ugliest words in the English language--turns the brains of many otherwise hard headed people into mush.
According to Oleson,

“After two trials, two guilty verdicts from basically sympathetic juries… [Latimer] still believes that he did nothing wrong. He feels no remorse, but he does feel bitter that what he did should be considered a crime by society, the law, the courts and other Canadians. He objects to the fact that the two juries that convicted him were only asked to judge whether he had in fact killed his daughter, an act to which he had already, if somewhat belatedly, confessed.”

By “belated confessed,” Oleson is referring to the fact that “Latimer initially lied to the police about it, saying that she died in her sleep, in her bed. In truth he carried the girl out of the house, placed her in his pickup truck, ran a hose from the exhaust pipe and filled the cab with poisonous gas until she was asphyxiated. Then he carried her back in the house and put her in her bed. It was only when an autopsy revealed that she had been murdered in this cold and calculated fashion that he confessed.”

Latimer, according to Oleson, “the poster boy of the euthanasia movement,” says he “will not join that cause while on parole.” Oleson is not persuaded.

“Even here, however, Latimer has a problem with the truth,” Oleson writes. “He says that he won't campaign in favour of euthanasia or a ‘right-to-die’ law. What he will campaign for is a jury that will say that his murdering Traci was the right thing to do.”

Oleson says many Canadians – “particularly disabled Canadians”--are “afraid of Robert Latimer and people like him who think that they have the right and should have the authority to judge the quality of our lives and to decide whether those lives should continue, as Latimer did with his daughter.”

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part One