The other night our kids started discussing the Robert Latimer case at the dinner table. I know where I stand on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide generally, and I want none of either. But absolutism in such matters can seem such a heartless and cruel stance when you're confronted with a uniquely difficult and agonizing case. Agonizing choice And Robert latimer's murder of [...]
Current and former state senators said December 28 that they wre appalled Jack Kevorkian apparently has continued to assist in suicides only weeks after a bill was approved making the practice a felony. It's insulting to our Legislature," said former senator John Kelly, D-Detroit, an Oakland University poltical science professor. Kevorkian has no respect for the law. He feels he is outside [...]
Part II of Interim interview with sister of Kevorkian victim On August 13, 1997, Long Island resident Karen Shoffstall died at the hands of infamous US euthanasia champion Jack Kevorkian, nine days before her 35th birthday. A highly successful salesperson, Karen had been living with multiple sclerosis, a chronic, progressively debilitating disease. She was well enough at the time of her death [...]
Oregon voters November 4 strongly reaffirmed their support of doctor-assisted suicide on the same day the state attorney general's office said the original law is now in effect. The vote and the legal interpretation mean a person who is mentally competent and diagnosed as having less than six months to live could request a lethal prescription from a doctor immediately, wait the [...]
(Ed note: Although a second trial found Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer guilty of second-degree murder in the death of his disabled daughter, Tracy, there is concern over the jury's recommendation of leniency. Does it indicate a two-tier justice system, one for the able-bodied and another for the disabled?) The disabled community is speaking out and the right-to-die movement is getting nervous. "A [...]
I was in Newfoundland at a national conference when the story broke on Karen Shoffstaff, a former Guelph resident who committed suicide in the Holiday Inn, Farmington a suburb of Detroit. Found close to Karen's body was a typewritten letter signed by her which stated that Jack Kervorkian and his assistant, Janet Good, were involved in her death. Outgoing spirit I did [...]
It's time for another Sue Rodriguez to bring euthanasia back before Parliament, says Senator Sharon Carstairs. "We need this on the table once again," the Winnipeg Liberal said from Ottawa recently. "There are citizens in this country dying in great agony." Carstairs, who sat on the Senate committee on euthanasia in 1994-95, said there are thousands of cases in Canada in which [...]
By Interim specialIn the debate on legalizing physician-assisted suicide, the pro-life movement may have found an ally in psychiatrists. That psychiatrists almost universally oppose physician-assisted suicide is amply discussed in an article published last fall in an American psychiatric journal. Authors Thomas Zaubler and Mark Sullivan, both doctors, note that psychiatrists oppose physician-assisted suicide because of their view that suicide is an [...]
Dutch courts and physicians have turned euthanasia into a "cure" for chronic illnesses like depression and diabetes, says the author or a new book on euthanasia in Holland. Dr. Herbert Hendin, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said the Dutch like to boast that their suicide rate has dropped in the 20 years since their courts became the first [...]
The Canadian abortion movement had Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Now, the Canadian euthanasia movement may have Dr. Nancy Morrison. Morrison, a respirologist at Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, is facing a first-degree murder charge in connection with the death last November of 65-year-old Paul Mills. The Moncton, N.B. resident, who was under Morrison's care, died after a battle with cancer of the oesophagus. [...]
Two news events, initially unrelated, send a disquieting message to those concerned with the diminished respect for human life in this country. In Quebec, a woman found guilty of killing her autistic son is given a 23-month suspended sentence, despite the Crown's insistence that a three-year sentence be served. Admittedly there were difficult circumstances which led to the woman's action, and it [...]
As Canadians await the next round in the Robert Latimer story, another "mercy killing" case has caused some unease among pro-life organizations and those working with the disabled. The case involves the drowning last November of six-year-old Charles-Antoine Blais of Montreal by the child's mother Danielle. The child suffered from autism, and the mother, citing depression, anxiety and a lack of services [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) - In a unanimous decision that will echo through hospitals and homes, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in late June that terminally ill people do not have a constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, whose wife died in 1991 after a long battle with ovarian cancer, wrote the decision. He said the idea of having someone [...]
Low birth rates “My opinion is that the drop [in births] is due to many factors: a bad economy, relatively small numbers of women at peak childbearing age, delayed marriages and the socially accepted conundrum that children are damaging to the environment and to personal happiness.” Katherine Dowling from her article “Mothers and Other Strangers.” (L.A. Times, March 3, 1994) Handicapped are [...]
Interim special A new analysis of doctor-assisted death in the Netherlands – considered a model by some advocates of assisted suicide in the United States – suggests that doctors there have increasingly taken the next troubling step: Ending patients’ lives without their permission. The assessment contradicts Dutch government data publicized last year and widely interpreted as evidence that assisted suicide, which is [...]