Three panelists defend their positions for and against ‘death with dignity’ laws

The B.C. Catholic
LANGLEY



Legalizing assisted suicide grants doctors a licence to kill, warned the head of LifeCanada.

“The notion of physician-assisted death is kind of an oxymoron. Physicians enter the profession to heal, not to become executioners of the state,” said Natalie Sonnen.

She, Langley-Aldergrove MP Mark Warawa, and Trinity Western University political science professor John Dyck debated the topic March 17.

“We’re not talking about individuals taking their own lives; that is something that happens in our culture and we always consider it a tragedy,” she said in a filled auditorium at TWU.

“What we’re talking about here is restructuring our moral and ethical codes and restructuring our legal system to allow one person to take another person’s life. This is where the issue becomes so difficult. This is not about suicide. This is about one person being licensed to kill another person.”

She argued there exists no “right” to assisted suicide. “Allowing some people to deliberately harm others makes all other ethical principles moot or invalid.”

Dyck argued that assisted suicide, for those who choose it, is a right.

“In the case of certain individuals who have a disease that is progressive and is going to be terminal, if they themselves have agreed that this is what they choose to do, I don’t think we can prohibit them. The only way we can prohibit them is in fact to deny them the right over their own body,” he said.

“We can encourage them not to take that route, but if that is the route they are going to take, how are we going to stop them?”

Warawa agreed the courts have called assisted suicide a right in certain cases.

The conservative politician was one of 16 members of a parliamentary committee struck to provide suggestions for new legislation. Their report, released Feb. 25, made 21 recommendations.

These included allowing assisted suicide for patients with terminal, non-terminal, or psychiatric illnesses, and for children under age 18. Committee members also wrote that publicly funded hospitals should provide assisted suicide, and doctors who refuse to participate should refer patients to doctors who do.

“There is no hypothetical slippery slope. We jump right to the bottom,” said Warawa, who, with a tiny minority of committee members, filed a dissenting report, saying the suggestions didn’t do enough to protect the vulnerable.

Following the 21 recommendations “would create a regime of assisted suicide and euthanasia that would be the most liberal in the world.”

Moderator Chris Morrissey, a fellow of the Adler-Aquinas Institute, asked the debaters for their thoughts on palliative care.

“One of the tragedies right now with palliative care is that it’s not accessible to, I would say, 80 per cent of the population,” said Sonnen. Only about six per cent of Ontarians have access to this type of care, which treats symptoms and eases suffering of terminally ill patients, she added.

“This is a vital service. If we’re talking about rights, this really is a right that should be granted to people to have a real death with dignity.”

Sonnen added that expanding palliative care is not enough to help those who might seek assisted suicide because “one must be dying to receive palliative care.”

Dyck said setting up high-quality palliative care across the country “is going to involve immense amounts of money, and at this stage in the game I don’t think our governments are close to spending that kind of money.”

It is currently easier to qualify for assisted suicide than palliative care, said Warawa.

Though asking a doctor to kill you is still illegal until new laws come out in June, patients can seek legal exemptions. An Alberta woman with ALS died this way at the hands of B.C. doctors Feb. 29.

Though the debaters differed on several points, they found much common ground when the discussion turned to faith.

“I believe that God is in control of my life,” said Dyck, who was diagnosed with Pompe disease, a terminal genetic disorder, in 2011.

“My faith in Him is that He will allow me to die at a time which is in the best interest of myself, of Him, and of my family. I have no difficulty with that.”

Sonnen, a Catholic, said human pain is not in vain. “Our suffering is united to Christ’s.”

Warawa, in a speech rarely heard from politicians and which gained enthusiastic applause, said his faith inspires all that he does.

“Who gave us life? The breath we breathe, is that from God? Are we an accident or are we created in the image of God? I believe we have dignity because God has created us. I don’t think that we have the right to decide when our life ends,” he said.

“I do not have autonomy. I gave that up when I decided to follow God.”