In the 1980s, pro-life groups intervened in the Morgentaler case, but not the Borowski case. When the Supreme Court brought down the Morgentaler decision on Canada’s abortion law it said the Borowski case on the issue of whether the unborn was a person under the Charter was rendered moot. REAL Women’s Gwen Landolt said it was a mistake to not intervene in [...]
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has good reason to commend the unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal in the Rasouli case on June 29, which holds that physicians have no right in Ontario law to withdraw life support from a patient without the consent of the patient or a qualified substitute decision-maker. Hassan Rasouli [...]
On June 29, the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously upheld a lower court decision requiring doctors to obtain consent from substitute decision-makers before withdrawing life-support, where such a decision is anticipated to result in the death of the patient. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition applauded the unanimous decision. The Court of Appeal ruled that it is necessary for doctors to raise any [...]
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s third annual International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide was held in Vancouver, June 3-4 and organizer Alex Schadenberg called it an “incredible success” that “exceeded expectations.” The conference was entitled “Celebrating our successes; preparing for new challenges,” and to that end Schadenberg, executive director of the EPC, brought together speakers from Australia, Canada, Netherlands, [...]
On June 3, euthanasia advocate and convicted murderer Jack Kevorkian passed away naturally in Royal Oak, Michigan after being hospitalized for difficulties connected to pneumonia and kidney problems. His death occasioned laudatory obituaries in the media that ignored the man’s ghoulish history. The Detroit News and Washington Post compared him to civil rights heroes, fighting for what the News euphemistically referred [...]
The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association filed a lawsuit challenging Canada’s ban on assisted suicide. The suit was filed in the province’s Supreme Court on April 26 on behalf of Lee and Hollis Johnson. The couple took Lee’s mother, 89-year-old Kay Carter, to Switzerland in January 2010 to have her killed by lethal injection, a crime that is punishable in Canada by [...]
Swiss voters rejected a proposal to ban assisted suicide and suicide tourism in the Canton (political district) of Zurich. In a referendum on May 15, about 85 per cent of voters in Zurich rejected a proposal to end legalized assisted suicide while about 78 per cent rejected a separate proposal to stop the practice of suicide tourism by foreigners in their Canton. [...]
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition seeks intervener status The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is seeking intervener status in the Rasouli case, which will be heard before the Superior Court in May. The Rasouli case is a precedent-setting case of national importance that will decide whether doctors must obtain consent before withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment. EPC has retained lawyers Hugh Scher and [...]
Baby Joseph, son of Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader of Windsor, is one year old and suffering from a undiagnosed neurological disorder that impairs his breathing. He was put under the care of the London Health Sciences Centre and is staying alive with the help of a respirator. LHSC officials said that Joseph is in a vegetative state and will [...]
Now that baby Joseph Maraachli has gone to the Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, it is important to once again consider why this battle occurred and why the Ontario government needs to change the Health Care Consent Act. The baby Joseph case was not about euthanasia. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition became involved in the baby Joseph case because the way [...]
An expert witness for the Quebec National Assembly’s Special Commission on the Issue of Dying with Dignity testified on Feb. 17 that legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide will lead to widespread abuse and the killing of the vulnerable. Dr. François Primeau, a professor of psychiatry at Laval University and Chief of Geranto-Psychiatry at the Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis Hospital, used the Netherlands as [...]
On Nov. 29, child murderer Robert Latimer was granted full parole. Latimer, 58, was convicted in 1997 for second-degree murder after the 1993 gassing death of his daughter Tracy, then 12 and who had cerebral palsy. Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer, was granted day parole in March 2008, but last year the parole board refused to grant him full parole. He [...]
Robert Latimer has been granted full parole. I am not surprised by the decision, just ticked off. It sends a terrible signal to society that the life of a person with a disability is less valuable than the life of an able-bodied person. That is sick, perverse and dehumanizing. Canada is better than that. As the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s Alex Schadenberg says, “the EPC has [...]
A study published in the Oct. 5 British Medical Journal found that nearly half of all euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium were not reported. This study combined with the recent study that was published in the CMAJ in May 2010 that indicated that 32 per cent of all euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium were without request [...]
For many years the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has been analyzing Canadian survey results related to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The first major survey that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition commissioned was part of an Environics Group – National Omnibus survey in April 2001. The recent Environics Group survey, sponsored by Life Canada, shows that the EPC strategy not only convinced MPs to vote [...]