February 12, 1994—Sue Rodriguez, the Victoria B.C. woman who lost her Supreme court bid to have a physician legally help her commit suicide, is helped to die by an unknown doctor. This is reported by Burnaby MP Svend Robinson who claims he was present when the deed was done, but refuses to name the doctor, or say how, exactly, the death was accomplished. Later, the provincial coroner learns through an autopsy that Ms. Rodriguez had enough cecobarbital and morphine in her system to kill her. Robinson, meanwhile, mounts his soapbox to weep for his dead friend Rodriguez, and announce that he’s written a federal Private Member’s Bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide. To date, the doctor who killed Sue Rodriguez remains anonymous, and shielded from police investigation.
May 30, 1994—Canadian Press reports that the abortion pill RU-486 is being offered illegally to Toronto women by an unnamed female doctor. The pill, described as a “chemical cocktail” by even the staunchest of feminists, is not approved for use in Canada. It has caused the death of at least one of the pregnant women who used it. The anonymous doctor, “standing on what she believes is principle,” is handing out the drug to women who can’t face surgical abortion, but she refuses to be identified or explain how she procures the illegal killer pill.
Euthanasia and abortion. Both should be abhorrent to the medical profession. Yet mystery doctors, with not enough courage of their corrupt convictions to stand in the limelight, are breaking laws in order to advance their personal blueprint for social change in these matters. Who are these unknown architects? And why are they allowed to remain in the shadows?
There is a social precedent of course, for the nameless killer. It is a custom in the Western world for the executioner to be hooded, hidden not only from the eyes of the condemned, but from the eyes of the world as well. To be a legally-sanctioned killer, it seems, is not a noble profession.
The practice of medicine, on the other hand, had until recently been regarded as a highly noble profession. That is, until the advent of publicly approved killing in the forms of abortion and euthanasia. Now the healer doubles as a killer.
It is time for the Dr. Jekylls of this country to be dragged out of the darkness. Principled physicians must ensure that their profession not be tainted by nameless colleagues who kill.