VANCOUVER—Thirty-two per cent of assisted deaths in Belgium are done without consent, according to Toronto human rights lawyer Hugh Scher. Activists opposed to physician-assisted suicide are warning those tragic statistics could become reality in Canada as well.
“Once you open the door it’s impossible to keep it from spreading,” Scher told The B.C. Catholic Feb 6, a few hours after the Supreme Court of Canada had struck down laws against euthanasia and left government 12 months to create new ones.
“I think it will happen here. Invariably the goal posts will be moved requiring consent, capacity, or illness,” he continued. Safeguards may limit abuses, but “they are not going to stop them.”
Scher, the legal counsel for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which intervened in the case, is worried that the abuses in areas such as Belgium, Holland, and Oregon will become reality here.
“What happens in one place affects us here. We can’t say any more that we live in a small bubble called Canada,” said Alex Schadenberg, EPC executive director.
He pointed to the most recent statistics from Holland, which show the number of mentally ill people whose doctors helped kill them tripled in 2013. He added some studies suggest 12.3 per cent of all deaths that year were from assisted suicide or terminal sedation.
“We shouldn’t be under some illusion that it’s happening in the Netherlands but it won’t happen here,” he said.
Peter Saunders, CEO of the UK-based Christian Medical Fellowship, has said those statistics prove “euthanasia in the Netherlands is way out of control.”
“What we are seeing in the Netherlands is ‘incremental extension,’ the steady intentional escalation of numbers with a gradual widening of the categories of patients to be included,” he told The Daily Mail.
Belgium also widened its categories in 2014 when it became the first country to allow euthanasia for children. If a child is in great pain and no treatment is available, and if parents and doctors are in agreement, a doctor may give that child a deadly injection.
Assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon since 1998. During a visit to Vancouver in November, Doctor Kenneth Stevens spoke against the practice.
Stevens said researchers in 2008 found 25 per cent of people seeking assisted suicide in Oregon were depressed, not in intolerable pain.
“Pain is a smokescreen. Uncontrolled pain in the terminally ill rarely occurs,” Stevens said Nov. 12. “What message does legalization of assisted suicide send to those who are considering suicide because of life’s problems?”
Luxembourg, Switzerland, Washington, Montana, and Colombia also allow some form of assisted suicide, according to Supreme Court documents.
Legal euthanasia entered Canada’s borders last year when Quebec considered it health care under Bill 52. Quebec’s law is to go into effect in December, but is facing some legal challenges.
Local advocates trumpet assisted suicide in the name of autonomy. “What this decision means is that Canadians who are suffering unbearably at the end of life will have a choice,” said Grace Pastine for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association after the Supreme Court ruled Feb. 6.
But Schadenberg said the number of deaths without consent show a different story.
“Often when we’re dealing with these cases there is some abuse of the law in other jurisdictions,” he said. “That negates all of the arguments in favour of autonomy.”
The EPC and the Archdiocese of Vancouver will host a panel discussion on euthanasia at the new John Paul II Pastoral Centre March 27 from 11 a.m. — 2 p.m., and 7-9 p.m. Schadenberg will speak along with Doctors Williard Johnson and Margaret Cottle.
