CHILIWACK—Pro-lifers two years ago warned allowing assisted suicide into Canada would put the country on a slippery slope. Now some say we are already traveling down that slimy path.
“An opening of the door to euthanasia allows it to infiltrate every part of the health care system,” wrote members of the Association for Reformed Political Action on a Facebook event page Feb. 24.
ARPA hosted a public event at John Calvin School in Chiliwack that day to inform the community about recent attempts by the Fraser Health Authority to force hospices to provide assisted suicide. An estimated 125 people, including MP Mark Warawa and MLA Laurie Throness, attended the event.
Emcee and ARPA member Levi Minderhoud said the large crowd brought up many concerns, including “whether euthanasia is being implemented as a cost-saving measure” and “whether individual hospices will actually be able to refrain from providing euthanasia despite Fraser Health’s decision.”
Most people in the room, said Minderhoud, were strongly opposed to expanding assisted suicide to hospice and palliative care homes. “How far down the slippery euthanasia slope will we slide?”
This was the second public event hosted by ARPA to draw awareness to the issue and encourage concerned citizens to act; the first was held in Langley Feb. 10.
“How far down the slippery euthanasia slope will we slide?”
ARPA is not the only group speaking against Fraser Health’s proposal to force hospices in its jurisdiction to end lives of willing patients. Many hospices, doctors, politicians, and volunteers in the Lower Mainland are saying assisted suicide and hospice care are fundamentally at odds.
“Hospice palliative care, as defined by the World Health Organization, does not hasten or prolong death,” wrote Nancy Macey, executive director of Delta Hospice Society, in a letter to Health Minister Petitpas Taylor and seven other politicians Feb. 1.
Doctor Neil Hilliard, medical director of Fraser Health Palliative Care, has quit over the issue. “Providing euthanasia or physician assisted suicide is not in accordance with palliative care,” he wrote in his Dec. 19 resignation letter.
Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, has issued a statement calling on Fraser Health to stop imposing assisted suicide in hospices.
Meanwhile, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of B.C. launched a petition on CitizenGo to challenge Fraser Health’s move to provide euthanasia in all hospices.
The EPC calls it “an infringement on the conscience rights of medical staff.” The petition, addressed to Fraser Health president Michael Marchbank, says it is the duty of the health authority and government to “uphold the rights of health care workers and institutions by upholding conscience rights.”
In less than two weeks, the petition garnered nearly 10,000 signatures.
