Dore v. Morris: Assisted suicide debate deals with abuse, compassion

http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20120419/KAMLOOPS0101/120419759/-1/kamloops01/assisted-suicide-debate-deals-with-abuse-compassion

Lawyer cautions against legislating through courts

By Mike Youds, Daily News Staff Reporter
 

Margaret Dore (L) and Wanda Morris (R)

A right to medically assisted suicide may sound compassionate and just, but beware the details when it comes to the act itself, a U.S. lawyer warned Wednesday in a debate at TRU.

Margaret Dore shared some of her experiences with assisted suicide in Washington State, where the practice became legal through a ballot measure four years ago.

 "A lot of people think this is a great idea until they start thinking and reading about how you do it," she told an audience of about 30 people in the Irving K. Barber Centre.

In effect, laws in Washington and Oregon empower people who may choose to abuse the responsibility, Dore said.

"Your heir can be there to help you sign up. Once the legal dose leaves the pharmacy, there is no oversight whatsoever."

Wanda Morris, head of the Canadian charity Dying With Dignity, advocated for the right to choose to end life humanely.

"These are individuals who want to live, but they are individuals facing a horrific death," she said. "The fundamental difference is choice. Choice is important in Canada. Why is it, at the time of life when we're facing our toughest decision we could ever make, that choice is taken away?"

The issue has long been debated in Canada, where two years ago Parliament easily defeated a bill that would have permitted assisted suicide and euthanasia. Recently the subject has made headlines again with two court high-profile court cases in B.C. and Quebec.

"Autonomy is such a critical value, it is a cornerstone of modern medicine," Morris continued. "Nothing can be done without consent. And yet here, at the end of life, I'm not given that choice."

Dore said she agrees that people should have the right to choose how they die, but the U.S. laws don't give that. Four days after the Washington State law passed, the adult son of a care facility resident showed up asking how "to get them pills," she said.

"Who's choice?," she asked rhetorically. An adult child can administer the lethal dose with no one else to tell whether it was a matter of consent. "There is no oversight over administration."

Morris insisted that the law her organization has long pushed for would only apply to individuals with six months or less to live. Dore countered that such a restriction does not apply in the U.S. and pointed to a case where an Oregon woman, who was talked out of suicide by her doctor, remains thankful she has survived another 12 years.

There was a $5.4-million lobby for assisted suicide in Washington, a machine that was up against a volunteer group, she said.

"In Canada and the U.S., there is a very significant funder in this debate and it is the Catholic church," Morris said.

Opponents of assisted suicide argue from dogmatic positions and cannot be satisfied, she said.

"Excuse me, but I never said anything about Catholic dogma," Dore replied.

She warned that Canada, having rejected the idea in Parliament, is facing the possibility of legislating it through the courts with the Carter and Leblanc court cases.

"We have a blank slate and we can write in whatever controls we want to protect the weak and the vulnerable," Morris said.

The Leblanc Case: A Recipe for Elder Abuse and a Threat to the Individual

By Margaret Dore

January 26, 2012

"Those who believe that legal assisted
suicide/euthanasia will assure their

autonomy and choice are naive."

William Reichel, MD

Montreal Gazette,

May 30, 2010[1]

A.  Introduction

Leblanc vs. Attorney General of Canada brings a constitutional challenge to Canada's law prohibiting aiding or abetting a suicide.  Leblance also seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia as a medical treatment.  In 2010, a bill in the Canadian Parliament seeking a similar result was overwhelmingly defeated. 

Legalization of assisted suicide and/or euthanasia under Leblanc will create new paths of elder abuse.  This is contrary to Canadian public policy.  Legalization will also empower the health care system to the detriment of individual patients. 

Canada: The Danger of Euthanasia: "If euthanasia were legal, the wife, not wanting to die, would still be a victim"

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Danger+euthanasia/5935217/story.html

 

By Alex Schadenberg, Ottawa Citizen January 2, 2012
 

Re: Time to rethink euthanasia, Dec. 29.

Marcel Lavoie implies that legalizing euthanasia would stop violent deaths in the elderly, such as the death of Doreen Flann by stabbing.

In many of these deaths, the perpetrator-husband also kills himself for a murder-suicide.

 

In Oregon, where assisted-suicide has been legal since 1997, murdersuicide has not been eliminated. Indeed, murder-suicide follows the national pattern.

Moreover, according to Donna Cohen, an expert on murder-suicide, the typical case involves a depressed, controlling husband who shoots his ill wife: "The wife does not want to die and is often shot in her sleep. If she was awake at the time, there are usually signs that she tried to defend herself."

If euthanasia were legal, the wife, not wanting to die, would still be a victim.

Our laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia are in place to protect vulnerable people. Assisted suicide and/or euthanasia should not be legalized in Canada.

[For more indepth information, see Dominique Bourget, MD, Pierre Gagne, MD, Laurie Whitehouse, PhD, "Domestic Homicide and Homicide-Suicide:  The Older Offender," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, September 2010 (Canadian study);  Don Colburn, "Recent murder-suicides follow the national pattern," The Oregonian, November 17, 2009; and “Murder-suicides in Elderly Rise: Husbands commit most murder-suicides – without wives’ consent” ]

Alex Schadenberg,

London Ont., Canada
Executive Director,

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Canada: No Right to be Killed by Others

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/right+killed+others/5931282/story.html

Re: Poll: 67% Support Assisted Suicide, Dec. 30.

I am greatly perplexed when I hear euthanasia proponents talk about a "basic human right to die," when there is no such thing. We are all going to die anyway, so let's please be honest and call it what it is: The right to be killed by somebody else. I am deeply disturbed by people who overlook the failure of the euthanasia experiments in other countries. Why do they coldly dismiss all those hundreds of people who have been euthanized without their consent? Do they consider them collateral damage? Would they call for an absolute right to drive for everybody, even if they knew lots of innocent people would be killed by incompetent drivers? I don't think so.

Canada rightly forbade capital punishment, due to the fact that no system can guarantee that no one will be killed by mistake. We have the freedom to make choices, but those choices should not hinder the safety of others, especially our most vulnerable.

Rene Leiva, physician, Ottawa.

Canada: "It's too dangerous to allow others to kill us"

http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/dangerous+allow+others+kill/5776735/story.html

By Brian Purdy - Calgary Herald - November 28, 2011

Suicide is legal, assisting it is not. The debate about the legalization of assisting suicide is in the news again, with another court case approaching the Supreme Court of Canada.

There are two points of view. The first is that every person has a right to end one's own life, so why should it not be legal to assist someone to do so? A person at the end of life can get help to end suffering and an unbearable dwindling away to an inevitable end. Why should a doctor or anyone else be made a criminal for an act of mercy?

The second view is that legalizing assisting a suicide is a dangerous slippery slope. Lord Acton, who famously said "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," also said something else about power. He said, "do not grant powers on the assumption they will not be abused."

Those who take the second view think that legalizing assisting suicide would lead to the likes of "Dr. Death" Jack Kevorkian not only assisting but encouraging people to commit suicide, often in highly inappropriate cases. It might lead to "suicide parlours" where depressed but otherwise healthy people could have a final lethal cocktail. Doctors might rid themselves of long term comatose patients without proper consent. Licia Corbella has pointed out in these pages that a very large number of patients in the Netherlands have been terminated by their doctors without any consent by the patient.

Canada: Anti-suicide laws have served him well

http://www.timescolonist.com/health/Anti+suicide+laws+have+served+well/5731465/story.html
By John Coppard, Times ColonistNovember 18, 2011

The editorial "Time to talk on right to die" asserts the time is now right to discuss this critically important topic (Nov. 16). 

I submit that the time passed a little over a year ago, when parliamentarians overwhelmingly rejected private member's bill C-384 seeking to legalize physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia by a vote of 228 to 59.
Representatives of all parties recognized the dire risks to public safety of giving physicians the legal right to take their patients' lives, and our health-care system, and even friends and relatives, the legal right to steer ill people toward suicide. Our democratic representatives correctly saw this as open to abuse, and bad public policy.

The "Carter case" now ongoing in Vancouver is an attempt to end-run Parliament.

As a person who is "grievously and irremediably ill" with Grade IV brain cancer, I would be affected should this case succeed. Two and a half years after being given a 20 per cent chance of surviving five years, I am doing very well on a medication approved by Health Canada only a year ago, within a week of my cancer coming back.

Had I been given the legal choice of assisted suicide when I first received my terrible prognosis, or when my cancer returned, when I felt hopeless, I don't know what I would have done.

Now I'm doing very well, thanks to medical advancements that are coming faster than at any time in our history. Our anti-suicide laws protected me and gave me a chance for a long and happy life, just as they were intended to do.

John Coppard
Victoria

Patient Wishes Opposed

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/132679923.html

I read with sadness the Oct. 21 article about Anne Rostecki, Alleged deprivation of senior probed, by Alexandra Paul.

My mother died in a similar situation. A mild stroke led to her involuntary starvation and dehydration in a Nova Scotia care facility.

There is now a push in Canada to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia as a supposed voluntary choice. But as evidenced by my mother's and Rostecki's cases, doctors now impose their wishes on patients without their consent.

Doctors cannot be trusted with the power they have. Legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia would give them even more power to effect patient deaths. The idea that legalizing these practices will somehow give patients more autonomy and choice indicates a society gone mad.

KATE KELLY
Coral Harbour, Nunavut

Canada: Assisted Suicide Too Easily Abused

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Assisted+suicide+easily+abused/5525325/story.html

By John Coppard, Times ColonistOctober 9, 2011

Re: "Assisted dying should be an option," Oct. 4.

The danger in legalizing assisted suicide is that people's choices can so easily be undermined and abused. Whether it's greedy relatives hoping to speed up their inheritance, or cash-strapped bureaucrats looking to save on health-care costs, the weak and vulnerable can be all-tooeasily steered toward a death they do not truly want.

In Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal and the government health plan is empowered to steer patients to suicide, two cases have gained public prominence - Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup. Both wanted treatment, but their plan offered them suicide instead. Canadian laws prohibiting assisted suicide exist for a reason. Let's keep it that way.

John Coppard Victoria

Do we really want euthanasia?

http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3260811

I would like to comment on Brian MacLeod's "Point of View" which appeared in the Aug. 8 Expositor.

Mr. MacLeod writes that the Conservative government will not allow a debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide. He knows that a debate on this issue did take place in Parliament and the bill was soundly defeated. I do not think this matter should be decided by the courts but by our elected representative in Parliament.

I feel eminently qualified to speak on this matter because, six years ago this summer, we came home from vacation to find our beloved son, Keith, dead on his bed. He was 32 years of age. He had suffered from bipolar disorder for years and nothing seemed to help.

He had accessed an assisted suicide website and he followed their instructions to the letter. His death devastated our family and the pain never goes away.

Mr. MacLeod seems to believe that a majority of Canadians support legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. I do not know if this is true, and I do not care. Is our society not corrupt enough? Are we really ready to throw the most basic of all moral principles on the ash heap? "Thou shalt not kill."

Sheila Fischer Brantford