Where are the churches on euthanasia?

By James Schadenberg

Churchill Park United Church

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has written about situations where Canadian churches are promoting euthanasia (MAiD) such as when Churchill Park United Church in Winnipeg Manitoba hosted the euthanasia death of an 86-year-old woman in March 2022 (Link). Recently, EPC sponsored a petition against a pro-euthanasia prayer promoted by the United Church of Canada. If you have not done so already, please consider signing the petition:

• Oppose United Church of Canada’s Pro-Euthanasia Prayer (Petition Link).

On February 27, Plough Quarterly published an article by Benjamin Crosby titled Where Are the Churches in Canada’s Euthanasia Experiment? Crosby’s article gives a good look at where the leaders of various Christian denominations stand regarding MAiD in Canada and shines a light on which denominations opposed euthanasia legislation, which ones actively supported it, and which ones refuse to speak clearly on the topic.

Crosby begins the article by discussing the state of the Anglican Church of Canada, where he serves as a priest. Archbishop Linda Nicholls, the primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has recently urged Anglicans to avoid opposing MAiD expansion, but to instead “focus on providing pastoral care to people who are considering medical assistance in dying”: As Crosby writes:

“Church should not oppose MAID law, primate says.” So reads a recent headline of the Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada. In the piece, Archbishop Linda Nicholls calls for the church she leads to avoid publicly opposing the expansion of euthanasia, or medical assistance in dying (MAID), in Canada. “The mood in Canada” is not “to consider what churches have to say about this,” she says, warning against “imposing Christian values.” Far better for the church to “focus on providing pastoral care to people who are considering medical assistance in dying,” the article paraphrases her as saying, “ensuring they have the support they need to make decisions based on the value of their life.”

The value of their lives is just what many fear would not be protected by the widespread adoption of euthanasia, so rapid and sweeping that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has raised concerns. Meanwhile, Archbishop Nicholls, the leader of one of Canada’s largest and historically most influential Christian denominations, is arguing that on an issue of profound moral gravity, the church lacks the capacity and will to say anything to the public as a whole, or indeed even to offer definitive guidance to its own members. The most the church will do is solicit essays for a new collection of theological reflections on MAID and put out an editorial by Archbishop Nicholls expressing “concern” about potential further MAID expansion while emphasizing the church’s role as a nonjudgmental provider of pastoral care. In this refusal to speak plainly, the church in which I serve is sadly not alone.

Crosby gives a summary of the history of the legalization and expansion of MAiD in Canada. After this, Crosby discusses how MAiD advocates frame the issues of disability, dying, and MAiD. He takes issue with how they frame MAiD as non-threatening and gentle while framing disability and dying as a way of living that is lacking in dignity. 

Meanwhile, an entire infrastructure has sprung up around MAID, which euphemizes the procedure as gentle and nonthreatening. Thus you can find “death doulas” who work with MAID patients and their families and friends, counseling those about to die to dress warmly and hydrate before their deaths and encouraging the bereaved to process the experience through grounding themselves in their bodies or expressing themselves through dance. What is actually going on – a doctor killing a patient – is cloaked in anesthetizing therapeutic language, presumably to make the experience more pleasant for everyone involved.

In sharp contrast to this gentle language that seeks to make death seem not so very terrible, proponents of MAID expansion use rather grimmer language to talk about the lives of the disabled and dying. They talk about experiences of dependence, diapers, or drooling as evidence of a life lacking in dignity – and thus a life that should be allowed to be ended by doctor-delivered death. It is not a stretch to see why disabled advocates have argued that the expansion of MAID sends the message that “simply having a disability is reason enough for us to want to die,” that life with a disability is necessarily a life unworthy of being lived. Their fears are already coming to pass.

In 2021, the first year the “reasonably foreseeable natural death” criterion was lifted, more than two hundred Canadians who did not have a terminal illness ended their lives with MAID. This group was younger and more likely to use disability services than those with foreseeable deaths. Many reports have emerged of people pursuing MAID because they cannot access the support services they need to live a decent life or because they are pressured to do so by their medical providers. 

Crosby details some of the stories from the past year about people choosing death by MAiD because they couldn’t get the support they needed to live. Though MAiD advocates present MAiD as non-threatening, these stories show us a disturbing point, which is that MAiD in Canada is often used, and sometimes even presented, as a “solution” to disability and poverty. Despite this, the government still hopes to expand MAiD to include “mature minors” and by advanced directives. 

Crosby then goes to the main point of his article. Many mainline Protestant churches in Canada refuse to confront MAiD itself as a moral issue, instead choosing to provide value-neutral “pastoral care”. This, Crosby argues, is not actually a neutral position, because it supports the framing of MAiD advocates that human dignity is bound up in choice and independence:

To their great shame, Canadian mainline Protestants, the historic bastions of public Christianity in Anglophone Canada, have utterly failed to speak prophetically to the broader Canadian society or even coherently to their own members since the passing of MAID legislation in 2016. While many of these church bodies opposed euthanasia before its legalization, since then they have consistently avoided taking strong positions on it, essentially conceding the Quebec doctors’ argument that MAID is at base a medical issue, not a religious one. They have largely embraced a role as providing value-neutral “pastoral care” in whatever end-of-life choices their people may make. But this sort of neutrality proves impossible to maintain. By abandoning their teaching authority, the churches end up supporting MAID advocates’ accounts of human dignity and worth as bound up in choice and independence – accounts that are contrary to Christian teaching and death-dealing to disabled people.

The Anglican Church of Canada used to express opposition to euthanasia. As Crosby writes:

These churches were not always so unwilling to take a stand. In 1996, the Faith and Witness Commission of the Canadian Council of Churches produced a statement critical of moves toward legalizing euthanasia, while admitting that this “convergence” was shared by “many member Churches” but not necessarily all. The Anglican Church of Canada produced a 1998 report called Care in Dying, arguing that “we believe that respect for persons would not be well served by a change in law and practice to enable a physician, family member, or any private citizen to take the life of another or assist in their suicide.” However, despite what appears to be a straightforward judgment, Care in Dying uses some carefully hedged language that anticipates the moves the Anglicans and other mainline denominations would make in years to come: the report describes itself as “a pastoral guideline rather than a policy statement,” inviting “thoughtful and prayerful engagement with the realities that people may face at the end of their lives rather than demanding obedience to closely defined teaching.” It is, unfortunately, precisely this nervousness about the church’s power to teach and expect (or even ask for) obedience that would come to define most later mainline engagement with euthanasia.

Editors note: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada and the Lutheran Church of Canada take different positions on euthanasia. The Lutheran Church of Canada opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Currently, the United Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) support MAiD, though the United Church has stated that they reject MAiD for mental illnesses. The Anglican Church of Canada tries to present itself as neutral on these matters of life and death:

Since 2016, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) have all accepted MAID with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The United Church, Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, produced a 2017 statement that “we are not opposed in principle to the legislation allowing assistance in dying” and that MAID “may be chosen as a faithful option in certain circumstances.” The ELCIC goes even further, declaring in its 2019 statement, “We affirm that everyone has the human right to assistance in dying,” assistance that explicitly includes euthanasia. Moreover, while the United Church released a follow-up statement in 2020 rejecting the expansion of MAID to those suffering solely from mental illness, as well as the practice of advance directives, the Lutherans instead expressed thanks that “fortunately” the federal government had promised to expand MAID in precisely these ways! After all, the Lutherans affirm that providing access to MAID is a means of “loving your neighbor,” somewhat bizarrely quoting as supporting evidence Luther’s explication of the fifth commandment that Christians must “neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbor, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs.” Euthanasia, the ELCIC declares, is simply part of “a respectful treatment plan developed under difficult circumstances with the best interests and the desires of our neighbor in mind.”

The Anglicans chose silence. To be sure, they had their own report, a 2018 follow-up to Care and Dying called In Sure and Certain Hope – an odd name for a statement so lacking in certainty of any kind. Unlike the United Church and the Lutherans, the Anglicans are unwilling to affirm explicitly that MAID can in some circumstances be a faithful choice. This is not because of any grave moral qualms, but seemingly because even such an affirmation would be too explicit a moral judgment. The church, the report declares, has “become increasingly skeptical of our capacity to understand and interpret the work of God in the life of another person.” Any definitive judgment about the meaning of a person’s life is off limits to the church – rather, the church simply must “listen in the encounter between God and the patient.” The church’s job is to help the dying “continue to experience meaning, purpose and control over one’s life,” facilitating whatever decisions they wish to make and “be[ing] present.” While the report encourages caregivers to seek to “build bridges between the stories told by the parishioner and the stories/teachings of Christ,” certainly any authoritative pronouncement about the nature of life or death seems out of bounds.

The Presbyterian Church of Canada has consistently condemned euthanasia. As Crosby writes:

As the Presbyterian Church of Canada, the only mainline body that has maintained a consistent condemnation of euthanasia, stated in its 2017 statement on the topic, the catechesis about a valuable life from the broader Canadian culture is directly in opposition to Christian teaching. As the Presbyterians note,

We live in a culture enamoured with the closing lines of “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley: “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” “Invictus” is a stirring work of literature, but it decries any trust by God. As Reformed Christians, we profess a different heritage, powerfully stirring to our souls, that proclaims a complete and utter trust in God.

Crosby states that the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the ELCIC have made a serious lapse in judgment in their refusal to combat MAiD:    

In their refusal to combat the culture’s discipleship of their members, the United Church and the Anglican and Lutheran churches have abandoned both public witness to those outside the church and the exercise of the teaching office to those within it. Instead, in the name of nonjudgmental pastoral presence, the churches are choosing to baptize the same values that have led to MAID’s continued expansion and an ever-rising death count over the continued concerns of disability rights groups who rightly see the dignity and very lives of disabled persons under attack. Perhaps the most vivid image of the mainline churches’ capitulation is a MAID death being carried out in the sanctuary of a United Church in Manitoba, complete with the minister telling journalists that there was a “sense of ‘rightness’” in this woman’s killing.

Crosby concludes his article on an optimistic note. In Canada, evangelical, Pentecostal, confessional Protestant, Anabaptist, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox leaders, as well as Jewish and Muslim leaders, have spoken out against MAiD, and have worked to find common cause with non-religious groups. These groups have all professed that life has value and dignity, even if one has a disability, illness, or is dependent on others. Crosby writes:

There is much to despair about concerning the current Canadian experiment with euthanasia and the mainline churches’ surrender. But there are also reasons for hope. Roman Catholics, evangelicals, conservative confessional Protestants, and other Christian groups have continued to publicly oppose MAID expansion, joining other religious communities and disability rights advocates standing against an ideology that sees independence as a necessary aspect of human dignity or a good human life. These groups witness in a Canadian context that dependence, far from being an unusual state to be shunned at all costs (even one’s death!), is an inevitable and indeed good part of the human condition.

One of the most visible examples of Christians standing against MAID is in the 2020 open letter “We Can and Must Do Much Better,” in which evangelical, Pentecostal, confessional Protestant, Anabaptist, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox leaders joined Jewish and Muslim leaders in decrying MAID’s expansion. The letter also offered an alternative vision of how Canadians might respond to the situations of profound suffering which may lead people to choose MAID, not least through expanding access to palliative care as an alternative to euthanasia. In short, the letter is a call to solidarity: “Rather than withdrawing from those who are not far from leaving us, we must embrace them even more tightly, helping them to find meaning up to the last moments of life.”

These churches have also worked to find common cause with nonreligious groups that have similarly opposed MAID expansion, especially the disability rights community. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s response focused on the particular harm MAID might do to the disability community and echoed the language of disability advocates in declaring that “in Canada, it shouldn’t be easier to have help in ending your life than to get the support and care you need to live.” Christian and disability rights organizations alike have been weighing in on Canada’s current study about expanding MAID to mature minors and allowing it via advance directive.

Further reading:

• Support Bill C-314 - Stop Euthanasia for Mental Illness (Link).
• United Church approves pro-killing prayer (Link).
• Winnipeg Church hosts (MAiD) euthanasia death (Link).
• Christian, Jewish and Muslim. Declaration against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (Link).

Christian, Jewish and Muslim. Declaration against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

On October 28, leaders of the Christian, the Jewish and the Muslim faiths signed a Declaration against Euthanasia and assisted suicide. (Link to the Position paper and Declaration).

Based on the arguments and justifications articulated in this position paper, the three Abrahamic monotheistic religions share common goals and are in complete agreement in their approach to end-of-life situations. Accordingly, we affirm that:

➢ Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are inherently and consequentially morally and religiously wrong and should be forbidden with no exceptions. Any pressure upon dying patients to end their lives by active and deliberate actions is categorically rejected.

➢ No health care provider should be coerced or pressured to either directly or indirectly assist in the deliberate and intentional death of a patient through assisted suicide or any form of euthanasia, especially when it is against the religious beliefs of the provider. It has been well accepted throughout the generations that conscientious objection to acts that conflict with a person’s ethical values should be respected. This also remains valid even if such acts have been accepted by the local legal system, or by certain groups of citizens. Moral objections regarding issues of life and death certainly fall into the category of conscientious objection that should be universally respected.

➢ We encourage and support validated and professional palliative care everywhere and for everyone. Even when efforts to continue staving off death seems unreasonably burdensome, we are morally and religiously duty-bound to provide comfort, effective pain and symptoms relief, companionship, care and spiritual assistance to the dying patient and to her/his family.

➢ We commend laws and policies that protect the rights and the dignity of the dying patient, in order to avoid euthanasia and promote palliative care.

➢ We, as a society, must assure that patients’ desire not to be a burden does not inspire them the feeling of being useless and the subsequent unawareness of the value and dignity of their life, which deserves care and support until its natural end.

➢ All health care providers should be duty-bound to create the conditions by which religious assistance is assured to anyone who asks for it, either explicitly or implicitly.

➢ We are committed to use our knowledge and research to shape policies that promote socio-emotional, physical and spiritual care and wellbeing, by providing the utmost information and care to those facing grave illness and death.

➢ We are committed to engage our communities on the issues of bioethics related to the dying patient, as well as to acquaint them with techniques of compassionate companionship for those who are suffering and dying.

➢ We are committed to raising public awareness about palliative care through education and providing resources concerning treatments for the suffering and the dying.

➢ We are committed to providing succor to the family and to the loved ones of dying patients.

➢ We call upon all policy-makers and health-care providers to familiarize themselves with this wide-ranging Abrahamic monotheistic perspective and teaching in order to provide the best care to dying patients and to their families who adhere to the religious norms and guidance of their respective religious traditions.

➢ We are committed to involving the other religions and all people of goodwill.

Schadenberg celebrates 20 years opposing euthanasia.

This article was published on August 9, 2019 by Convivium under the title MAiD In Canada.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition stands unsurprised at this week's news of Dr. Ellen Wiebe's exoneration after she administered death to a patient in a facility where Medical Aid in Dying is prohibited.

 

Peter Stockland

By Peter Stockland

After 20 years leading Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Alex Schadenberg is unsurprised by news a B.C. doctor has been exonerated for sneaking into an Orthodox Jewish nursing home and terminating an elderly resident.

“What Dr. (Ellen) Wiebe did was completely wrong, but it was completely expected she’d be cleared of any wrongdoing,” Schadenberg told Convivium this week. “She was welcomed into that home to kill someone, and that’s what she did.”

Last month, the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons dismissed a complaint against Dr. Wiebe for taking the life of 83-year-old Barry Hyman at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital in Vancouver. The College ruled Hyman had asked for so-called Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) and was entitled to it despite the hospital administration prohibiting termination of patients on the premises. The decision was made public only this week when Dr. Wiebe shared it with the lobby group Dying With Dignity and The Globe and Mail.

Schadenberg said Dr. Wiebe could apparently kill Hyman with impunity because his hospital room was considered his home. The termination required that she and a nurse smuggle drugs and equipment into the nursing home to inject the octogenarian cancer patient with the toxins that ended his life in June 2017.

“She intentionally went into a nursing home where it had been made very clear that (the administration) did not want euthanasia going on because some of the residents had lived through (the Holocaust). I think it was unethical. I think she broke the trust of other people living their Jewish faith in that institution. But as much as I think it’s wrong, she had no problem being exonerated.”

Schadenberg, who celebrated 20 years as executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in August, noted Dr. Wiebe has become a “celebrity” euthanizer for her commitment to delivering medical death and pushing the boundaries of what Canada’s 2016 euthanasia law allows at least on paper.

“This is a person whose whole focus is on killing people. It’s what she does. You have to think about what that means we’ve become,” he said.

He stressed, though, that if Dr. Ellen Wiebe hadn’t taken on the role, it would almost certainly have fallen to another of her medical colleagues. The outcome was virtually inevitable given how sloppily the 2016 law was written, and how far it strayed from the Supreme Court of Canada’s narrower decision in the 2015 Carter judgment.

Wiebe’s clearance will ratchet up pressure on Canadian medical facilities, especially faith-based institutions, to offer MAiD service, Schadenberg predicted.

“Say you’re running a Catholic institution now where you’ve said, ‘We do not want this on the premises; this is a euthanasia-free zone.’ Well, Dr. Wiebe has basically told people ‘too bad, we’re going to do it anyway.’ The (euthanasia lobby) has been pressuring governments to change policies and pressuring hospitals to change policies. One of my fears is that all this is going to be leading to forced change.”

He is not without forecasting success. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition wasn’t able to prevent euthanasia coming to Canada in 2016, but it wasn’t for lack of foresight, warning and activist advocacy on the part of Schadenberg and his colleagues over the past two decades. In fact, he became engaged in the issue in the very early 1990s because of Robert Latimer’s gas chamber execution of his daughter.

What moved Schadenberg to action was a poll showing more than a third of Canadians thought Latimer should be acquitted, or at least not serve jail time, for putting his pre-teen child in the cab of his farm pickup truck, sealing it to make a chamber and pumping it full of gas from the vehicle’s exhaust pipe.

“People were saying he was loving father, and what he did was fine. I interpreted that as showing a very strong eugenic attitude within the culture. It wasn’t just that she was disabled, as bad at might seem to many people for a young girl. It was the fact they thought she was better off dead. That is highly eugenic because it says that certain lives are considered not worth living, that Tracy was less human than other people. I thought then that was a serious problem, and I see the same thing in the culture today.”

Schadenberg says he was troubled by the assault on the sanctity of life that Tracy Latimer’s killing represented, but also by the way it undermined basic human equality. The eugenics and euthanasia mindsets are both threats to equality rights, he says.

“People say, ‘Oh, I have equality through freedom of choice to do what I want with my body.’ No. Euthanasia destroys equality. Certain people are seen as so much less worthy that their lives should be ended. It’s not just about you ending your own life. Someone else is ending your life because someone else is deciding what your life is worth. They are deciding your life isn’t worth living.”

As he moved toward leadership of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Schadenberg was surprised by how few of those in his community were able to see the juggernaut of medical killing bearing down on Canada. He recalls a conversation with a doctor friend who assured him it would never happen here.

“His response was ‘Oh, Alex, we’ve already won. The Canadian Medical Association has held its position (against medical killing). We’re not going to follow the Netherlands. We’re not the Dutch.’ And I’m thinking, ‘What makes you think we’re any different? We’re human just as they are.’ But he was quite convinced.”

Schadenberg was fully convinced of exactly the opposite and, despite the stress it placed on his family, took on the EPC leadership role to, at least, slow down the medical killing future he saw coming. He has since become an international expert on MAiD, most recently travelling the globe to warn jurisdictions as diverse as Croatia, India, Australia and New Mexico against going down the assisted suicide-euthanasia-medical-aid-in-dying path. The EPC also worked in association with filmmaker Kevin Dunn last year to produce the documentary Fatal Flaws, which dissects the arguments propounded by, and the calamitous outcomes of, the worldwide MAiD industry.

Intriguingly, although a person of deep personal faith, Schadenberg has long argued the case against MAiD first from a secular perspective. You don’t have to believe in God, he says matter-of-factly, to believe it is wrong to kill people, especially the sick, the weak, the vulnerable, the unwanted and less than worthy.

“It’s not about being religious or not religious. It’s about living my life as a human being. It’s about answering the question of how I help and protect other human beings. You don’t have to believe in God. You can believe in whatever you want. But you have to look at the real nature of the human person, how we live our lives creating interdependent community with others.”

After 20 years of watching the MAiD juggernaut gain increasing power until it has the means to exonerate from even professional impropriety a doctor who terminates an elderly Jewish man in a hospital where Holocaust survivors live, does he still have the drive to create that kind of community, to keep the euthanasia prevention battle going long after it seems well and truly lost?

“I started doing this because I looked around and didn’t see anyone else doing it. I have to keep involved, whether at this level or not I don’t know. But the reality is, you can’t be silent. You can’t be silent about a law that allows physicians and nurse practitioners to kill people. I have no fear of death. I do fear a country that allows people to kill me.”

The truly surprising thing is that only 20 years ago, Schadenberg’s final sentence would have surprised absolutely no one.

Peter Stockland is Senior Writer with Cardus, and publisher of Convivium.

Euthanasia doctor cleared of wrong-doing for sneaking into Jewish care home to euthanize resident.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Louis Brier Care Home

In January 2018, an Orthodox Jewish Care Home filed a complaint against euthanasia doctor, Ellen Wiebe, for sneaking into the Home and killing a resident which was against the policy of the Louis Brier Home in Vancouver.

• Jewish care home accuses euthanasia doctor of sneaking in to kill resident.

Kelly Grant, the Globe and Mail health reporter, in writing about Ellen Wiebe being cleared of wrong doing stated:

In a letter dated July 5, 2019, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) dismissed an official complaint against Ellen Wiebe, saying the Vancouver doctor did not break any of the regulator’s rules when she helped Barry Hyman, 83, die inside the Louis Brier Home and Hospital. 

“The committee determined... that the patient had consented and that Dr. Wiebe had met all requirements for provision of MAiD,”

Grant wondered if this decision may affect other religious hospitals and nursing homes. She wrote:

The CPSBC decision is believed to mark the first time that a medical regulator has weighed in on the thorny question of whether doctors could be professionally punished for defying the wishes of a faith-based health-care facility in order to fulfill those of a patient eligible for a medically assisted death. 

However, the self-regulating colleges in each province – all of which have the power to grant and revoke medical licences – generally keep their decisions secret unless they send a case to a formal disciplinary hearing.

Grant reported that the Louis Brier home criticized the decision and changed their rules to prevent similar situations:

David Keselman, the chief executive officer of Louis Brier, criticized the college’s decision and said his organization has tightened its credentialing and privileging process to prevent others from following Dr. Wiebe’s example. 

“I think [the college] disregarded many of the elements that were in the complaint,” Mr. Keselman said, stressing how upsetting it was to learn afterward that a doctor had managed to sneak into the home without staff’s permission. 

“We have quite a number of Holocaust survivors in the building. This is a huge concern … as this came out, it created a very significant level of anxiety and chaos, specifically for those individuals," Mr. Keselman said.

One goal of the euthanasia lobby is to force religiously affiliated health care institutions to allow MAiD (euthanasia) on their premises. 

Euthanasia activist and academic, Jocelyn Downie, has been pressuring St Martha's hospital in Antigonish Nova Scotia to permit euthanasia on their premises because they are the only hospital in the region.

We mourn the death of Vincent Lambert, while thankful that an agreement will protect the life of Hannah Cement.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Vincent Lambert with his mother.

We mourn the death of Vincent Lambert, a cognitively disabled man who died by dehydration after France's highest court ordered that he be denied food and fluid, that they defined as medical treatment.

Our online petition pleading that President Macron save his life received more than 139,000 signatures.

While the death of Vincent Lambert is a tragic case of disability discrimination, Hannah Cement, a woman in Ottawa, will live until her natural death.

In early May, 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities intervened in the Lambert case stating that causing Lambert's death by dehydration contravened his rights as a person with disabilities. 

Section 25f of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires nations to:

25(f) Prevent discriminatory denial of health care or health services or food and fluids on the basis of disability.

The decision of the highest court of appeal in France, to withhold food and fluid from Lambert, was a death sentence and a denial his human rights.

Lambert was a cognitively disabled man who was not otherwise dying or nearing death. To directly and intentionally cause his death by withholding fluids is euthanasia by dehydration. Lambert's fluids were withheld for the purpose of causing his death, rather than allowing a natural from his medical condition.

Today EPC was informed that Hugh Scher, the lawyer for the Cement family, achieved a negotiated agreement whereby Hannah will continue to be fed and hydrated and receive basic medical care until she dies a natural death.

Hannah Cement is a 62 year-old woman with Down Syndrome and dementia, who is a life-long member of an Orthodox Jewish family and community. The substitute decision makers for Hannah, her family, refused to consent to a course of treatment that constituted the withdrawal of all treatment and care, including food and fluids and providing only comfort care.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) was granted limited intervention standing, in the court, based on our concerns related to the definition of food and fluid as medical treatment.

In late March, 2019, the Consent and Capacity Board (medical decision making tribunal) made a terrible decision in the Cement case, essentially ordering the withdrawal of all medical treatment from Hannah. This would have led to Hannah dying a similar death as Vincent Lambert.

The family appealed the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, once again, sought intervention standing in the case.

The news that the doctor, the hospital and the Cement family reached an agreement to assure that Hannah will continue to receive basic medical care until she dies a natural death is an incredible victory.

While we mourn the death of Vincent Lambert, we are very thankful for the legal agreement to enable Hannah Cement to continue living until she dies a natural death.

Rabbi's get it right! Jews for Torah Values condemn Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

This article was published by Euthanasia Prevention Coalition USA.

Psak Halacha

Regarding attempts to pass “Death with Dignity” legislation:

The chiyuv (Torah injunction) of “Lo sa’amod al dam re’echa”, obligates everyone to do what he or she can, to help prevent assisted suicide and/or euthanasia. 

Allowing the legalization of “assisted suicide”, even if this particular law in practice would only result in assisting a suicide and not euthanasia, is to allow shefichas-domim (bloodshed). Furthermore even rendering such actions not being subject to prosecution, is allowing shefichas-domim (bloodshed), al achas kama vekama (how much more so), in cases of assisted suicide leading to euthanasia.

Voting on the basis of this issue. This obligation would include:

1) Thus, when voting for any public official, this issue must be considered as top priority, certainly overriding financial considerations, government programs, etc. By voting for people who support these laws, we become accountable for their actions. This ruling would still apply even if these laws were to be passed, we would still be forbidden to vote for legislators who voted for these laws. This is the most important way to fulfill our obligation. 

2) Urging one’s legislators to vote against these bills, if and when they arise[1] and to urge the governor to veto such bill, were it to pass the legislature. 

3) Helping in efforts to repeal such laws, in areas[2] where such legislation was already passed.

Even a few votes can make a major difference, both by legislators and the public—sometimes the vote of a single legislator can decide the fate of these laws—as is evidenced by the recent vote in the New Jersey State Assembly (in November 2014), where an assisted suicide bill was passed by just one vote. We have seen in several recent races in Jewish neighborhoods, that even a handful of votes can make the difference in the outcome of the election[3]. Furthermore, some legislators keep track of the calls that are made to their offices on particular controversial issues, and vote according to their results.

May the Creator of all life grace us with the merit to save innocent lives, fulfilling our role as an or legoyim (light unto the nations). In that merit, may we help usher in the Final Redemption by Moshiach Tzidkeinu.

Rabbonim are listed alphabetically.

Mordechai Chaim Auerbach, Monsey

Eliyahu Ben-Haim, RIETS/Kehillah Yotzei Mashad

Haim Benoliel, Bnai Yosef/Mikdash Melech

Gad Bouskila, Netivot Israel

Yitzchok M. Braun, Shaaray Zion

Shlomo Breslauer, Bais Tefiloh

Eliyahu Brog, Bais Yisroel

Simcha Bunim Cohen, Khal Ateres Yeshaya

Yitzchok Cohen, Yeshiva University RIETS

Moshe Donnebaum, Hechel Hatorah/Adas Yisroel/Melbourne

Menachem Fisher, Vien Monsey

Noson Yermia Goldstein, mechaber of “Migdalos Noson”

Avrohom Gordimer, Coalition for Jewish Values

Shmuel Gorelick, Mesivta Ohel Torah

Moshe Green, Yeshivah D’Monsey

Yisroel Dovid Harfenes, Yisroel Vehazmanim

Boruch Hirschfeld, Ahavas Yisroel, Cleveland

Zalman Leib Hollander, Khal Nachlas Moshe, Spring Valley, NY

Shmuel Kamenetsky, Talmudical Academy of Philadelphia

Yosef Meir Kantor, Cong. Agudath Israel of Monsey

Elya Nota Katz, Stamford Yeshiva

Eliezer Langer, Cong. Israel, Poughkeepsie, NY

Yeshaye Gedalye Kaufman, Hisachdus Moetz, Kruleh Dometz

Amram Klein, Ungvar

Shloime Ben Zion Kokis, Zichron Mordechai

Grainom Lazewnik, Khal Adar Gbir

Philip Lefkowitz, Jackson, NJ; mult. congregations in US, UK & Canada

Moshe Tuvia Lieff, Agudath Israel Bais Binyomin

Shmuel Miller, Yeshiva Bais Yisroel

Avrohom Yaakov Nelkenbaum, Mirrer Yeshiva

Yechiel Perr, Yeshiva of Far Rockaway

Steven Pruzansky, Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck

Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, YU Gruss Kollel

Avrohom Reich, Hatzolas Yisroel

Dovid Ribiat, mechaber “The 39 Melochos”

Yosef Yitzchok Rosenfeld, Monsey Dometz

Chaim Schabes, Knesses Yisroel

Dovid Schustal, Bais Medrash Govoha, Lakewood

Yaakov Shulman, Talmud Torah of Flatbush

Moshe Silberberg, Shuvu/mechaber “Zichron Tzvi Meir”

Moshe Soloveitchik, Chicago

Yitzchok Sorotzkin, Mesivta of Lakewood

Tzvi Steinberg, Kahal Zera Avraham, Denver

Shlomo Stern, Debreciner Rov

Elazar Mayer Teitz, Chief Rabbi of Elizabeth, NJ

Elya Ber Wachtfogel, Yeshiva of South Fallsburg

Boruch Hersh Waldman, Siach Yitzchok, Suffern

Moshe Weissman, Ohel Moshe

Benjamin Yudin, Shomrei Torah, Fair Lawn, NJ

Yeruchum Zeilberger, Stamford Yeshiva

Gavriel Zinner, Nitei Gavriel

Institutions are listed for identification purposes only.

[1] as is currently in New Jersey [2] such as Washington state and Oregon

[3] most noticeably (demonstrated) in the Senate election between David Storobin and Lew Fidler, where Storobin won by less than 20 votes.

Sponsored by Jews for Torah Values

jewsfortorahvalues@gmail.com

The alarming trend of Bullying Hospitals and Hospices into doing Assisted Suicide.

This article was published by Huffington Post on January 29, 2018.

Increasingly aggressive euthanasia activists are attempting to rewrite the meaning of palliative care across Canada.

Dr Will Johnston

By Dr Will Johnston, a family physician and Chair of EPC-BC.

Canadians who are sick and suicidal can now be put to death under various medicalized and government-approved protocols, following court and legislative victories by euthanasia activists. These activists are now turning their considerable talents to a coercive makeover of the palliative hospice movement by demanding that hospices founded on a promise to never deliberately hasten death should provide a death-hastening service.

Before they got their way in the Canadian Supreme Court, the public posture of euthanasia advocates was one of caution, reassurance and limitation of objectives. After their victory, partisans of the medical killing movement have become impatient with individuals or institutions who want no part in suicide and euthanasia. Activists recommend expanding access to include all the people who were strategically excluded from the plan that had been sold to the public: children, people with chronic nonfatal conditions, the physically disabled, the cognitively disabled, psychiatric patients.

Now, even changing the location of a patient requesting suicide — from a euthanasia-free hospital or hospice, to one that does offer it — is being protested as a cruel imposition. In doing so, the death-seeking person is set up as a victim, and the hospital or hospice is portrayed as a victimizer. Never mind that hospital wards routinely transport people in complete comfort to procedures like X-rays or scopes, or to another location to continue care.

The implications of this are dire. Many hospices serve patients who want nothing to do with assisted suicide, and there will be much harm done by forcing it into their midst. Every community in this country has the resources to provide a distinct euthanasia-free space. That distinct space and its staff could be specialized and uncoerced into death-hastening.

Louis Brier home.

The unpleasant alternative was demonstrated by the recent "sneak attack" on Louis Brier Hospital, a Jewish retirement home in Vancouver. This was the work of euthanasia activist Ellen Wiebe, idolized by like-minded columnists for her aggressive death-providing practice. Rather than arrange a simple transfer — perhaps to the home of one of the suicidal father's daughters — the patient was killed by Dr. Wiebe against the firm policy of a facility with an understandable aversion to euthanasia.

• Jewish care home accuses euthanasia doctor of sneaking-in and killing a resident.

As Louis Brier's director protested, "We have a lot of Holocaust survivors. To have a doctor sneak in and kill someone without telling anyone. They're going to feel like they're at risk when you learn someone was sneaking in and killing someone."

What Dr. Wiebe was doing by giving the finger to Louis Brier is a form of ethical bullying, masquerading as an altruistic claim that her client should come first and trump other people's rights about the kind of place they want to live in.

Wanting Dr. Wiebe to kill you is a tragedy, not an emergency. It is a personal preference, sadly now provided by the Canadian health-care system, but without any judicial or parliamentary authorization to force others to accept involuntary proximity to your actions. It is also, increasingly, about people who are not dying, except in Dr. Wiebe's elastic interpretation, but about those who have lost meaning and hope. What they get from the euthanasia provider amounts to a heartless endorsement of the hopelessness of their situation, cloaked in the language of autonomy.

Rather than look for a win-win compromise over this issue, the board of Fraser Health Authority, a large B.C. hospital system, has imposed euthanasia provision in all its palliative hospices. This edict, totally uncalled for by provincial or federal guidelines, caused the high-profile resignation of Palliative Care Medical Director Dr. Neil Hilliard.

Meanwhile, our governments are, in Dr. Hilliard's words, "guilty by neglect" of a "palliative care access gap," and your sick family member who seeks care, not death, may not find it "equitable or timely."

Forcing hospices to betray their no-kill founding principles will not close that gap, it will just torpedo the 40-year struggle to convince often-fearful patients that palliative hospices are not about hastening death.

Fraser Health and any other misled health bureaucracies across Canada should back down. Don't bully hospices as though there are no fair alternatives. Don't bully Catholic hospitals, founded on a reverence for life long before the public purse got involved.

• Euthanasia activists have taken control of Canadian thought.

Jewish Care Home accuses euthanasia doctor of sneaking in and killing a resident.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Louis Brier Care Home

An Orthodox Jewish Care Home filed a complaint against euthanasia doctor, Ellen Wiebe for sneaking into the Home and killing a resident, which is against the policy of the Louis Brier Home in Vancouver.

According to Susan Lazaruk, of the Vancouver Sun, the Jewish Home stated in its complaint that Wiebe's actions were “borderline unethical.” David Kesselman, CEO of the Louis Brier Home stated:

“It was hidden,” 

“There’s no documentation. She came in and I don’t know who you are. You can tell me you’re a physician, you could tell me you’re an astronaut, how do I know?

Kesselman continued:

“Imagine the implications for our staff and our residents and their families,” 

“We have a lot of Holocaust survivors. To have a doctor sneak in and kill someone without telling anyone. They’re going to feel like they’re at risk when you learn someone was sneaking in and killing someone.”

Kesselman explained that Wiebe was well aware of ethics policy of the home:

He said the home has a defined policy devised by an ethics committee that includes allowing its residents to have a MAiD assessment done at the home. But residents are transferred to a health-care facility for the procedure.

• Dr Will Johnston: New assisted dying laws claims unintended victims.

Wiebe admitted to sneaking into institutions to do lethally injection. Susan Lazaruk reported:

Judge grants injunction to continue treatment for Toronto Jewish man.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The family of a Toronto man won a court challenge when a Toronto Judge issued an interim injunction ensuring that Shalom Ouanounou (25) will not have his ventilator withdrawn.

• Is a Toronto Jewish man dead or alive?

According to the Canadian Jewish News:

Ouanounou, 25, is breathing with the help of a respirator, after suffering a cardiac arrest brought on by an asthmatic attack on Sept. 27. Doctors say he is brain dead and want to remove him from life support. A death certificate has already been issued. 

Ouanounou’s family say he is breathing, his heart is beating and that “Shalom and traditional Orthodox Judaism does not accept brain death as death.” 

“Under Jewish law, and in accord with Shalom’s beliefs, Shalom is alive and the application of the brain death criteria expressly violate Shalom’s religious beliefs and thus discriminate against him based on his religion,” read a statement provided by Max Ouanounou, the young man’s father.

Hugh Scher

Hugh Scher, the lawyer for the Ouanounou family, told the National Post:

Laws allowing loved ones to demand continued treatment of the brain-dead for religious reasons already exist south of the border in New Jersey, New York state, California and Illinois, he said. 

And it does not matter that there is a difference of opinion on the issue among Jewish leaders and scholars; what is important under human-rights law is an individual’s convictions.

Mark Handleman, a lawyer for the Ouanounou family told the National Post:

“We do many things in our multicultural society to reflect the firmly held beliefs of all members,” 

“Now you have a person at his most vulnerable moments. Why is that different than any other accommodation?”

The Judge ordered the hospital to continue providing medical treatment until a full hearing can be heard. The timeline for that hearing is unknown. The hearing will consider the deference that should be granted to a patient's religious beliefs concerning the definition of brain death.

Hugh Scher is also representing the family of Taquisha McKitty (27) who was declared brain dead by doctors at the William Osler Health system in Brampton Ontario. McKitty's family are arguing that Taquisha was prematurely declared brain dead, and is alive.

The Vaad Harabonim of Toronto and the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada are intervening in the case.

Is a Toronto Jewish man dead or alive?

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Canadian Press reported that the family of a Toronto man is challenging Ontario's brain death guidelines because based on the Jewish faith, their son is not dead, but alive. The Canadian Press reported:

Shalom Ouanounou’s family is asking the court for an injunction to keep him on a ventilator and feeding tube while it pushes to have his death certificate revoked. 

A notice of application filed by Ouanounou’s father and substitute decision-maker shows he seeks to challenge the Canadian guidelines on brain death on grounds that they do not accommodate religious beliefs. 

The document says those guidelines define death as the irreversible cessation of brain function and of the capacity to breathe. 

It says that Orthodox Judaism, the faith Ouanounou practises, considers death to be complete cardiac and respiratory failure. 

The application argues that disregarding those beliefs would represent a serious assault on Ouanounou’s human dignity and religious liberty. 

It says the matter raises a “serious constitutional issue.”

Shalom Ouanounou, 25, had an asthma attack at home on September 27 and was taken by ambulance to Humber River Hospital, where he was intubated and placed on a respirator. Three days later doctors declared Ouanounou as brain dead and issued his death certificate.

• Ontario family asks for more time to prove that their daughter is alive.

The case is being heard in a Toronto court today. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is considering intervenor standing in this case.

The Nazis' First Victims Were the Disabled.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The sad reality is that people will often forget human history. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Kenny Fries

I think that everyone needs to read the article, The Nazi's First Victims Were the Disabled, that was published in the New York Times on September 13.

This excellent article is written by Kenny Fries, an author who recently published “In the Province of the Gods.” Fries is writing about his explanation to a young German neurologist of the truth about how the Nazi's T4 euthanasia program killed as many as 300,000 people with disabilities. The killing techniques were developed in the Psychiatric hospitals and then used in the Nazi death camps. Fries takes the killing of people with disabilities personally:

I have a personal stake in making sure this history is remembered. In 1960, I was born missing bones in both legs. At the time, some thought I should not be allowed to live. Thankfully, my parents were not among them. 

I first discovered that people with disabilities were sterilized and killed by the Nazis when I was a teenager, watching the TV mini-series “Holocaust” in 1978. But it would be years before I understood the connections between the killing of the disabled and the killing of Jews and other “undesirables,” all of whom were, in one way or another, deemed “unfit.”

Nazi euthanasia victims

Many facts about the Nazi T4 euthanasia program are not well known. Fries explains:

While he does know that approximately 300,000 disabled people were killed in T4 and its aftermath, he doesn’t know about the direct connection between T4 and the Holocaust. He doesn’t know that it was at Brandenburg, the first T4 site, where methods of mass killing were tested, that the first victims of Nazi mass killings were the disabled, and that its personnel went on to establish and run the extermination camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. 

Three years earlier, when I first arrived in Germany, I was consistently confronted with the treatment of those with disabilities under the Third Reich. But I soon realized I had to go back even farther. In the 1920s, the disabled were mistreated, sterilized, experimented on and killed in some German psychiatric institutions. In 1920, the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche and the jurist Karl Binding published their treatise, “Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life,” which became the blueprint for the exterminations of the disabled carried out by the Third Reich. 

I am also Jewish. At the Karl Bonhoeffer psychiatric hospital in the Berlin suburb of Wittenau, where the exhibition “A Double Stigma: The Fate of Jewish Psychiatric Patients” was held, I learned about, as the exhibition title suggests, how Jewish patients were doubly stigmatized by being separated from other patients, denied pastoral care, and were cared for not at the expense of the Reich but by Jewish organizations. Jewish patients were singled out for early extermination; by December 1942, the destruction of the Jewish patient population at Wittenau was complete.

Nazi euthanasia victims

Fries explains why the history of the Nazi T4 euthanasia program important to us today:

Why is it important to know this history? We often say what happened in Nazi Germany couldn’t happen here. But some of it, like the mistreatment and sterilization of the disabled, did happen here.

A reading of Hoche and Binding’s “Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life” shows the similarity between what they said and what exponents of practical ethics, such as Peter Singer, say about the disabled today. As recently as 2015, Singer, talking with the radio host Aaron Klein on his show, said, “I don’t want my health insurance premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments.” 

These philosophers talk about the drain on “resources” caused by lives lived with a disability, which eerily echoes what Hoche and Binding wrote about the “financial and moral burden” on “a person’s family, hospital, and state” caused by what they deem lives “unworthy of living.”

Many people think that these attitudes towards people with disabilities are in the past. Fries asks the question:

What kind of society do we want to be? Those of us who live with disabilities are at the forefront of the larger discussion of what constitutes a valued life. What is a life worth living? Too often, the lives of those of us who live with disabilities are not valued, and feared. At the root of this fear is misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and a lack of knowledge of disability history and, thus, disabled lives.

• Catherine Frazee: The Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program is part of my history as a disabled person.
• Brain tissue from Nazi euthanasia victims discovered at German research institute.
• Dr Peter Saunders: Lets not forget the lessons of history and the leading role doctors 
  played in the holocaust.
• Memorial to the T4 euthanasia program victims opens in Berlin.
• Historian Götz Aly: The Victims of Nazi Euthanasia Have Been Forgotten.