Paul Tuns: Federal Justice Minister David Lametti introduced bill C-39, to delay for one year its decision to allow people who suffer solely from mental illness to seek euthanasia. This came after a public backlash to Canada’s euthanasia regime, following news stories of numerous cases of people accessing so-called Medical Assistance in Dying for social reasons, and concerns from mental health experts [...]
Rory Leishman: On Dec. 19, a six-judge panel of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts unanimously affirmed in Kligler v. Massachusetts Attorney General that no person has a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. For the United States, this ruling was not unusual. In 10 states plus the District of Columbia, legislatures – not the courts -- have legalized physician assisted suicide. However, [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Jordan Peterson, Canadian psychologist, academic, and author, has largely evaded the abortion issue. On one rare occasion when he was publicly asked for comment, he claimed that discussions about the legality and morality of abortion are “nested inside a larger discussion about the proper place of sexuality in human behaviour and, to [...]
Rory Leishman: On Nov. 29, the Toronto Star published a remarkable commentary headlined “Justice Minister David Lametti under fire for ‘unbelievable’ comparisons between euthanasia and suicide.” According to the Star’s national columnist Althia Raj, Lametti reminded her in a recent interview “that suicide generally is available to people” and explained that the purpose of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is to help [...]
Paul Tuns: Québec's seventh Annual Euthanasia Report was filed with the province's National Assembly on Dec. 9, showing there were 3663 reported euthanasia deaths between the most recent reporting period, April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022. That number represents 5.1 per cent of all deaths in Quebec and a doubling of the number of euthanasia deaths compared to 2019/2020 when there [...]
Despite widespread support for euthanasia and its rapidly growing prevalence in Canada, a pro-life hospice in British Columbia has pledged itself to the fight against Canada’s macabre focus on death as a form of healthcare, launching a three-pronged counter-offensive against the nation’s draconian MAiD program. Over the last couple of years, the Delta Hospice Society - a pro-life society located in Delta, [...]
Bioethics for Nurses: A Christian Moral Vision Alisha Mack and Charles Camosy (Eerdmans, $29.95, 256 pages) Alisha Mack, an assistant professor of nursing at Wesleyan University and Dr. Charles Comosey, a bioethicist and professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University, have come together to write the first bioethics book dedicated to nurses and nursing—Bioethics for Nurses: A Christian Moral Vision. [...]
Ray Pennings - Commentary: When Justice Minister David Lametti was a guest on the Toronto Star podcast “It’s Political” on Nov. 18, he stated that doctor-assisted suicide (euphemistically known as medical assistance in dying or MAiD) “provides a more humane way” for Canadians who are physically or mentally incapable of ending their own lives to do so. When asked if the state had [...]
Paul Tuns Amid a growing chorus of opposition to a scheduled March 17 expansion for medicalized killing for people who suffer solely from mental illness, federal Justice Minister David Lametti said he is open to working with opposition parties to pass an extension in order to develop protocols to allow people suffering from depression and other psychiatric disorders to access Canada’s Medical [...]
Canada and California have roughly the same population and both jurisdictions legalized euthanasia in 2016. In 2021, California killed 486 people by euthanasia while Canadian doctors medically killed 10,064 patients. Canada is killing people through its system of Medical Assistance in Dying at about 20 times the rate as California’s euthanasia regime. In Canada, one in 25 deaths is deliberately caused by [...]
Paul Tuns Back in 2017, the CBC assured viewers that it is a “misconception” that so-called Medical Assistance in Dying “puts vulnerable people at risk.” Five years later, what can be said assuredly about the CBC’s statement is that if anything, advocates for the vulnerable may have underestimated how wide the euthanasia net would capture not only patients within the medical system, [...]
Paul Tuns A current Conservative MP and the leader of the People’s Party of Canada have both condemned Canada’s permissive euthanasia laws that are resulting in people who have treatable conditions but living in poverty being approved for so-called Medical Assistance in Dying. Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis criticized Canada’s euthanasia regime as a money-saving measure the government is using to “rid society” [...]
Paul Tuns Bloc Quebecois, Liberal, and NDP members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities rejected a motion by Conservative MP Rosemarie Falk (Battlefords-Lloydminster) to condemn child euthanasia. During Oct. 7 testimony at the Commons’ Special Joint Committee of Medical Assistance in Dying, Dr. Louis Roy of the [...]
Paul Tuns The National Post reported that unlike other jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia, Canadians physicians are introducing the topic before patients broach the topic. Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said this might be why "euthanasia deaths have increased so quickly in Canada" compared to countries like Belgium and the Netherlands. According to the 2021 official Medical Assistance [...]
Mobile abortuaries The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the regulation of abortion to the states. Planned Parenthood had to rethink and regroup to ensure that its facilities continued to be available to pregnant moms. That is, it had to ensure that its annual revenue of $1.6 billion was not sacrificed. It’s OK to sacrifice unborn babies and their [...]