‘Suicide is not health care’
The B.C. Catholic
Bishops are calling the latest government report on physician-assisted suicide “deeply disappointing” and “completely unacceptable.”
The report, released Feb. 25 by a committee created to study the issue, gives 21 recommendations.
“Canadians, especially those dying or suffering from illness, deserve better,” said Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, of Vancouver. “It’s alarming how easily suicide is being offered.”
The report recommends patients who have terminal, non-terminal, or psychiatric illnesses should be eligible for “medical assistance in dying,” their term for assisted suicide.
It says that all publicly-funded health-care institutions should provide assisted suicide, and that doctors who refuse to kill their patients should be required to “provide an effective referral” to those who will.
The report adds that in less than three years, children under the age of 18 should also be eligible to die at the hands of their doctors if they are competent and make a request.
“Canadians from many ethical traditions just won’t be able to go along with this,” wrote the archbishop.
He was troubled the committee did not move to protect the rights of doctors and nurses who conscientiously object to killing their patients. He has repeatedly written letters to government about this and asked his flock to do the same.
“Where is the plan for protecting the Charter rights of Canadians who don’t want to participate in causing patients to die?”
He also criticized the committee for treating palliative care as an afterthought.
“It’s dismaying that a committee would propose assisted suicide as a ‘choice’ to people who are suffering. Without a real, effective, alternative, what kind of free choice is that?”
Palliative care, in which terminally ill patients have symptoms and pain controlled until they die naturally, is not widely available across Canada.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has said the recommendations “completely fail to be ‘patient-centred’ or to assist and support the dying and vulnerable.”
CCCB president Bishop Douglas Crosby, OMI, of Hamilton, calls the recommendations the approach of a “throw-away” society.
“The teaching of the Catholic Church and the stand of the Catholic Bishops of Canada is clear. Suicide is not part of health care. Killing the mentally and physically ill, whether young or aged, is contrary to caring for and loving one’s brother and sister.”
He urged those of other faiths or no faith to stand against the “completely unacceptable” practice of assisted suicide.
