Seven senators sat in a committee in Ottawa for 15 months, hearing from 150 witnesses, reading over 300 briefs, only to conclude that the law is too harsh on those convicted of killing the terminally ill or disabled.

No doubt there are many who will read those words and accuse The Interim of deliberately distorting a sensitive issue, of not showing compassion and understanding for those driven to desperate acts.

Many will point to the senator’s unanimous championing of palliative care and patient’s rights, and their recommendation that medical professionals receive more training in modern methods of pain control.  Many will add that the committee did not, after all, actually recommend that euthanasia and assisted suicide be legalized in Canada.

There is no doubt that many euthanasia killings are heart-wrenching.  But it is surely misplaced compassion to harden our hearts against the victims and instead give all our sympathy to the feelings of the murderer.

By focusing our attention on the father who poisons his disabled child with exhaust fumes, or the elderly woman who feeds her Alzheimer-afflicted husband an overdose of pills, we forget the rights and needs of those who died.

It would be hard to overstate the impact this Senate report is having on those who are fighting so hard for the rights of the disabled to live as valued and productive members of our society.  As Jim Derksen, a board member of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, put it.

“We, as people with disabilities, are the objects of pity, our lives have often been judged by those around us to be not worth living, and now a Senate Committee recommends that those who kill us should not receive the full penalty of the law but be given a lesser sentence.  This is barbaric.”

The shame of this Senate report is that the committee had an opportunity to act decisively and honourably on behalf of some of the most vulnerable members of our society.  Yet the senators failed to face this challenge.

We do not need a crystal ball to foretell the next step in this nightmare.  John Hofsess, of the Right to Die Society, has already broadcast his messages on the Internet for all to read.  His is challenging his supporters to openly commit euthanasia killings/suicides.  He claims that any resulting court case will see an end to all legal prohibitions against euthanasia.

This is the legacy of the Morgentaler saga reaching its inevitable conclusion.