Canadian euthanasia party propaganda story.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The other day I published an article about a Seattle assisted suicide party propaganda story. One of our supporters sent me the link to a Canadian euthanasia party propaganda story, a story that I did not write about when it was first published.

Similar to the Seattle story, the Canadian story is designed to promote MAiD (euthanasia) and break-down social barriers towards euthanasia.

The story by Susie Adelson was published by Toronto Life features Adelson's grand mother, Sonia Goodman (88). 

Goodman visits Sunnybrook hospital in pain and with sepsis and tells the medical team that she wants them to end her life. Adelson writes:

At first, the doctors suggested palliative care, but she was adamant: no more surgeries, no more drugs, not even antibiotics. She had watched her friends pass away and my mother suffer, and she didn’t want to go through that. Neither did I: seeing my mom languish in a hospital bed for months left me anxious and terrified of death.

Adelson is concerned that her grandmother would languish in a hospital bed for months. Clearly this statement is designed to cause fear but it indicates that she is not terminally ill.
 
There is more to the story. The woman does not appear to be terminally ill - "natural death is not reasonably forseeable" but demands and receives death by lethal injection.

The article raises a concern with the social approval of elder suicide. When the doctors decided that she was qualified to die, the decision seems based on her age (88). The fact that she demands to die seems very similar to suicide. When did approving suicide based on age become acceptable?

Adelson then builds the propaganda by emphasizing how they all shared a celebration drink and spoke about their memories of Goodman. Adelson writes:

Relishing the spotlight, she encouraged us to go around the room and share our memories of her. She was delighted when person after person remarked on her glamour. When it was my turn, I thanked her for giving me my mother—and for her advice to never leave the house without a coat of lipstick. She laughed, and I held her hand. When it was time, we raised our Dixie cups: “To Yaya!”

We all want the focus to be on us in our final days, but it doesn't require a lethal injection to make it happen.

The euthanasia lobby is promoting death. As I stated in my response to the Seattle article - assisted suicide was once an avant garde concept, now normalizing assisted suicide is really another propaganda tool.

Its time for real journalism with real life, juxtaposing stories, complicated reality, and not propaganda.

Seattle assisted suicide party propaganda.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
 

The following story may seem like a plot from a bad horror film, but it is simply another assisted suicide propaganda story.

The Associated Press (AP) published an article by Gene Johnson about an assisted suicide party in Seattle. The story is designed to make you open to assisted suicide, but this story leads to questions about assisted suicide and why AP decided to publish assisted suicide propaganda.

*Washington State: Nearly 25% more assisted deaths in 2018.

The AP story, concerns Robert Fuller (75) who planned his suicide party and this story gives Fuller his 15 minutes of fame.

The story goes something like this, Fuller, who is a nominal Catholic, marries his male partner, Reese Baxter, in the morning. He then moves down to the common room, in his seniors building, to greet friends, well wishers and later that afternoon he injects a fatal drug cocktail into his feeding tube and dies.

* Order the Fatal Flaws film from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and see the other side of the story (Link).

It appears that Fuller may have had a life-long problem with suicidal ideation.

When Fuller was 8 his Aunt died by a suicide drowning in the Merrimack river. Johnson states that seeing her body began Fuller's long relationship with death. According to Johnson, Fuller stated:

"If life gets painful, you go to the Merrimack River."

Johnson describes how Fuller survived a suicide attempt in 1975. His marriage ended after telling his wife that he was gay and he was drinking too much.

Johnson writes that as a nurse in the 1980's, Fuller cared for people with HIV. Fuller admits to intentionally killing a patient, with a drug overdose, to "end his battle" with AIDS.

Johnson also writes that Fuller intentionally lived a risky sexual life-style in the 80's, a lifestyle that verged on suicidal. Johnson quotes Fuller as saying:

"I think I wanted to get AIDS,"

"All my friends were dying."

When Fuller was sought assisted suicide, were his suicidal tendencies examined? It is difficult to differentiate between a "rational" wish to die and suicidal ideation.

To offer the other side of the issue, Johnson publishes a few quotes from bioethicist Wesley Smith, who opposes assisted suicide. Smith states:

to allow people to hasten their deaths represents an abandonment, a signal to the terminally ill that their lives are not worth living, he said.

"We should be very concerned that we are normalizing suicide in our society, especially at the very time during which, practically out of the other side of our mouth, we are saying suicide is an epidemic," Smith said.

I think that Smith, hit the nail on the head, but the article contradicts Smith's comments, and continues with its suicide contagion narrative to explain that Fuller rejected treatment and "chose death" but not until he lived out a few "bucket list" experiences.

The article undermines the Catholic Church. Fuller attended a Catholic parish where the priest and many parishioners appear accepting of death by assisted suicide. The parish priest even had a group of children bless Fuller at his final mass before his death. (Link to the Archdiocese of Seattle statement)

Finally the article describes the "death midwife" participation and how his death was without complications. Data shows that many people who die by assisted suicide do not experience a death without pain, suffering and complications.
 
Why am I writing about the AP propaganda article?

I guess I am giving this propaganda article attention. Yes, this is a pro-assisted suicide article designed to undermine opposition to doctor prescribed suicide.
 

Johnson seems to have little concern about how glorifying suicide leads to a suicide contagion effect. 

Popularizing assisted suicide is not about creating awareness but providing new customers for the assisted suicide death business.
 
The article admits that suicide was a integral part of Fuller's life experience. What effect do these articles have on other wounded individuals who are scarred by their suicide experiences or suicide attempts. Society must not trivialize suicide as it deeply effects a person's inner most being.

Finally, did AP have to gain by promoting assisted suicide. Assisted suicide was once an avant garde concept, now normalizing assisted suicide is another political propaganda tool.

Its time for the media to provide real journalism with real life, juxtaposing stories, complicated reality, and not propaganda.

Order the Fatal Flaws film from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and see the other side of the story (Link).

CBC cameras roll as doctor gives lethal injection to patient

This article was published on the Fatal Flaws Film website on December 13, 2017.

By Kevin Dunn, the Director of the Fatal Flaws Film

Sign the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition petition to Tell CBC to stop producing one-sided propaganda programs on assisted death (Link).

Kevin Dunn

Last night, the CBC (Canada’s public broadcaster) aired a mini-doc about an assisted suicide party. It ended with (audio of) the doctor giving patient Nancy Vickers a lethal injection under the provisions of Canada’s “Medical Aid in Dying law”. Nancy had Parkinson’s disease.

Two years ago this doctor could have been charged with homicide under Canada’s criminal code. Today, he is lauded by the media as a trailblazer.

Link: Fatal Flaws Film: Legalizing Assisted Death (Early Preview).

Please understand I have incredible empathy for what Nancy was going through. Parkinson’s is a horrible, debilitating disease. I can understand why she would become so hopeless about her condition, so fearful of what was to come – that she would want to access Canada’s new law which allows for an assisted death under certain conditions. I get it. I truly do. A very dear family friend recently passed away (naturally) from a Parkinson’s related disease. It was heartbreaking to see her deteriorate and struggle as she did. I loved her dearly.

But this post is not about Nancy’s (so-called) right to an assisted death. Nor is it about my friend who died of her disease naturally. It is not about demonizing doctors – or anyone for that matter.

It is, however, about the underlying message that these stories send to the rest of society.

The headline reads ‘My life these days is hell on Earth and I don’t want to be here anymore’. With all due respect and compassion for how she felt at the time, it is the use of this headline scares the hell out of me. And it should scare all of us. Why? Each of us probably knows someone who has uttered similar words. Perhaps we have had thought them ourselves.

We can talk about safeguards and due criteria all we want, however the underlying motive is clear. Stories like this are about ‘normalizing’ the idea of having someone end our lives when we are facing significant suffering, fear, burden or depression. Or perhaps we become just ‘tired of life’. Am I crazy for suggesting such things? Look at the Completed Life bill in the Netherlands.

This is about a radical culture shift; one that society seems so eager to embrace.

Dr. Watkins (the doctor who gave the lethal injection) says about the law, “This is very progressive for us as a country.” Yet progressive by definition means ‘happening in stages’. We have to ask ourselves what these next stages might be – especially at a time when the current law is being challenged in radical ways.

Take for example the pressure to remove “reasonably foreseeable (death)” from the language of the law. And the request to extend the law to “mature minors” and those with psychological conditions. Are these indeed ‘progressive’ moves?

Kevin Dunn outside the Netherlands euthanasia clinic

How commonplace will euthanasia clinics, like the one pictured here in The Netherlands, be in North America in the near future? Will we be able to stop abuse and coercion in a society where healthcare costs are spiraling out of control? Which of us will soon become ‘disposable’ when our quality of life is deemed unworthy of support? These are not radical considerations. These are serious questions being asked by disability rights groups and advocacy groups in America and around the world. Not many realize there is a silent majority actively opposing such laws and who have been relatively successful in holding back a tsunami of legislation.

The CBC article quotes the doctor as saying to the patient “You know, of course, you can change your mind at any time, It doesn’t affect any of the medical care you get.” An appropriate measure given the irreversible decision about to be made.

Still, I wonder how these laws are going to affect the medical care and research available to us in the future, when assisted death becomes the ‘viable’ option. Already we’ve seen cases where insurance companies will not pay for life sustaining medication while suggesting they will indeed pay for an assisted death.

That’s why we are making this film. To consider what is happening in countries like The Netherlands, Belgium and USA – whose laws have been in place for some 15-20 years.

There is no doubt in my mind that doctors like the one in this story – in fact the entire pro-euthanasia lobby – truly believe they are doing ‘good’ and providing a ‘valuable’ service to those wishing to access assisted dying laws. I disagree with their logic but would never deny their perceived ‘good’ intentions.

No matter your convictions on this issue, I believe it’s time we ask ourselves the major philosophical question of our age: “Is it right to to give doctors – or anyone – the right and law to end the life of another human? And just as important, what do these laws do to the collective conscience of society over time?”

Please consider helping us fund this film.

-Kevin Dunn, Director, Fatal Flaws film

Assisted Suicide Word Engineering Propaganda

This article was written by Wesley Smith and published on January 26, 2014 on his blog. 

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Was it Eldridge Cleaver who said that he who controls the definitions, wins the debate? I seem to recall reading that in Soul on Ice.

Cleaver or no, the assisted suicide advocacy group Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices has spent years blurring definitions and redefining terms–with the active compliance of the media.

Now, assisted suicide–a descriptive term that means helping someone take their own life–has been redefined to the euphemistic “aid in dying,” or “death with dignity.” From the Albany Democrat Herald story, entitled–get this–“Terminology Associated With the Death With Dignity Act” compiled by Compassion and Choices:

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) launches complaint concerning CBC National program

To the CBC National:

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) has noticed that the CBC National is focusing on the issue of euthanasia next week.

We are concerned that we will once again witness one-sided propaganda programs.

There has been no attempt, by CBC National to contact EPC and there has been no attempt by you to contact any of our contacts.

In your program you are using the term Dying with Dignity which represents the name of the group that promotes legalizing assisted suicide.

You continue to avoid talking about the real evidence of direct danger to Canadians if this were legalized.

You will likely put a spin on the recent court decisions.

By the way, it is also not balanced programming to produce a 10 minute segment that includes a 10 or 15 second comment from someone opposing euthanasia or assisted suicide.

A public broadcaster should be balanced.

If you choose to be unfair and unbalanced EPC will do everything possible to challenge your programming to the applicable authorities. We are also seeking legal advice concerning other avenues.

These issues are far from being one-sided. There are many strong arguments against euthanasia and assisted suicide that should be heard and aired equally.

CBC National contact. or CBC contact.

Complaints to the CRTC. or CRTC link.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

1-877-439-3348

info@epcc.ca