Brian Lilley has a very good column at The Examiner on the issue of euthanasia and the dishonest talking point mistaken belief that it involves the right to “pull the plug.” Euthanasia is not the ending of treatment (a passive act) to let a patient die, but a deliberate action to bring about the death of the patient.
Lilley notes, “Those who say euthanasia should be allowed because they alone should get to control when they die seem to forget that it is not their actions that will kill them but those of another human being, a doctor.” And as he also points out, Canada does not treat our criminals that way:
What [C-384] proposes to do is allow active euthanasia which requires a planned and purposeful act such as a doctor giving a patient a lethal injection. In the United States lethal injection has been challenged in court as a cruel and unusual punishment for death row inmates, here in Canada we have banned the death penalty as inhumane, too fraught with mistakes. Now Parliament is considering allowing the sick to be given what we find unacceptable for criminals.
That comparison will be dismissed as going too far by some but I’ll stand by it, if we as a country believe that the state should not take the life of its citizens even for heinous crimes such as murder or rape, why should the state be allowed to participate and sanction the taking of a life when a hospital patient has cancer or is paralyzed.
Changing the law on euthanasia has less to do with giving patients new rights than it does providing doctors legal protection when they actively kill their patients.
