Mark Pickup: Euthanizing Canada

This article was published by Mark Pickup on his blog on December 18.

Supreme Court of Canada

By Mark Pickup

2016 will see the beginning of a new dark chapter for Canada. Killing off the sick and disabled will receive official government sanction. As you may know, in a UNANIMOUS decision Canada's Supreme Court struck down the nation's laws against assisted suicide and gave the federal government a year to put in place parameters for physician imposed death within a new legal framework.

What parameters?! It's going to be wide open season on the sick, disabled and depressed. In the high court's low decision they declared laws against assisted suicide to be "void insofar as they prohibit physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life; and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition. "Irremediable" it should be added, does not require the patient to undertake treatments that are unacceptable to the individual."

Translation: It's wide open euthanasia and assisted suicide beginning in 2016. Guidelines will be a ruse, mere formalities to give an air of respectability to murder.

Mark Pickup with Kevin Dunn

Recently I was interviewed by the documentary filmmaker Kevin Dunn as we await Canada's Brave New World to come into its full and hideous bloom. What did I say? I said that by definition civilized, and enlightened societies never endorse or support killing its citizens -- especially those you have despaired of life and are vulnerable to suicide.

Civilized people certainly don't help the suicidal kill themselves. Autonomy is a myth. If I choose suicide it doesn't affect me alone. It will affect my wife, children and grandchildren. It will affect my physician because I will ask her to stop being my healer and become my killer. And in a small way it will impact my nation by helping to further entrench the notion there is such a thing as a life unworthy to be lived. No matter how sick I become I still have a responsible to others, the Common Good and posterity.

You can't have unfettered autonomy and interdependent community too. They are diametrically opposite ideas. You can't have both. You must choose which it shall be.

Canada post-2016 will not only kill its sick and disabled, it may well kill the collective conscience of a nation and gut its soul.

For interviews or bookings to speak contact Mark at HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca