Joanna Alphonso: Euthanasia is legally defined as the deliberate killing of someone by action or omission for the intention of relieving that person of their suffering. Belgium, Canada, Colombia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Spain, and most recently Portugal as of 2023, permit active euthanasia (administration of lethal drugs) for irreversible terminal illnesses for adults and in some of these countries, for [...]
Hungary fights for the family The European Union, presently comprised of 27 nations, operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making. The larger countries such as Germany and France, are run by governments that are at the vanguard of social liberalism’s many experiments, and they control many decisions in the EU. Currently, they are fighting to strip Hungarian parents of [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey It’s perversely fitting that an act that renders so many speechless (literally and figuratively) lacks any appropriate descriptors in speech. “MAiD” or “medical assistance/aid in dying,” as it’s most commonly referred to now, is the latest inception of a long evolution of palatability-tested phrases. “Medically-assisted death” was discarded, presumably because the unfortunately [...]
Critics say government’s directives will promote Medical Assistance in Dying Paul Tuns: On March 27, Health Canada released its new “Model Practice Standard for Medical Assistance in Dying,” direction for physicians that critics say will continue the federal government’s promotion of euthanasia, which has killed more than 31,000 Canadians since it became legal in 2016 under the euphemism Medical Assistance in Dying [...]
Presbyterians rarity among mainline Protestant churches to oppose euthanasia James Schadenberg, Special to The Interim: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has written about situations where Canadian churches are promoting euthanasia (MAiD) such as when Churchill Park United Church in Winnipeg Man., hosted the euthanasia death of an 86-year-old woman in March 2022. Recently, EPC sponsored a petition against a pro-euthanasia prayer promoted by the United [...]
The last canticle of Dante’s Divine Comedy begins with the poet taking stock of his unprecedented enterprise. Thus far, his imaginative journey has taken him, like the epic heroes of old, to the depths of the underworld. But, unlike them, he does not return to the world. Instead, he passes through the realm of forsaken souls to ascend the purgatorial terraces of [...]
How do contraception, abortion, transgenderism and euthanasia fit in? Paul Tuns Editor’s Note: Part I appeared in the March edition of The Interim. Technology, as the writer Sean Haylock points out in a 2017 essay in Crisis “is mechanistic (reductively focused on efficient causation), utilitarian (reasoning by a calculus and willing to treat persons as means to an end), and voluntaristic (taking [...]
Paul Tuns: The Parliamentary Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) issued its report with recommendations that include extending euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide to adolescents deemed mature enough to understand the lethal decision they are making. The joint committee of MPs and senators issued its 138-page report, Medical Assistance in Dying: Choices for Canadians. There is one full section dedicated [...]
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. [...]