Euthanasia activists are mounting a two-front pro-suicide offensive. First are the legalizers, those who seek to open the door to doctors (or others) legally assisting suicide/administering euthanasia for some — the terminally ill, seriously disabled, chronically ill, and/or mentally ill. They often pretend that suicide isn’t suicide, by calling it “aid in dying.”

Then, there are the wildcatters (let’s call them) — led by Philip Nitschke and Derek Humphry — who basically believe that suicide is an absolute autonomy right. The wildcatters teach how-to-commit-suicide classes, sell suicide devices — with some attending the suicides of people they have “counseled” as “supporting witnesses” to self destruction.

The legalizers and wildcatters are really two sides of the same coin since both lead to the same ultimate place — the acceptance of suicide/euthanasia as a routine answer to the problems of human suffering, despair, or boredom. And the wildcatters serve the legalizers by letting them pose as the “reasonable center.”

Wildcatters demonstrate that no matter how loose the assisted suicide/euthanasia laws and practices become, it is never enough. Thus Exit Europe — a part of Philip Nitschke’s Exit International — is going to present how-to-commit suicide classes in Amsterdam (!) among other European sites. From its advertising material:

Exit Europe “Nitro & Nembutal” Workshops:

MaxDog Nitrogen arrives in Europe

• See how the MaxDog system can provide a peaceful, reliable death that is uniquely undetectable

Testing the Purity of Powder & Liquid Nembutal to Ensure Potency

• Laboratory testing using immuno-assay, melting point, water absorption & micro-titration techniques
• Demonstration of the new Exit Home ‘Dilution Purity Test’ for Quantitative Testing

How to Obtain the best end of life drug — Nembutal

• Sterile veterinary grade liquid from Mexico & South America
• Pharmaceutical grade from the US
• Chinese powdered Nembutal on the Internet

People die because of these ghouls. And in the Netherlands, if doctors believe the patient isn’t qualified for euthanasia — an-ever-shrinking category in that death culture — they are permitted to refer their patients to “how to” seminars like this. Paint me utterly disgusted.

As I reported previously, Quebec will be debating the legalization of euthanasia — not assisted suicide — a bill that does not limit medicalized killing to dying patients.

But don’t tell that to so-called journalists, who are busily about the task of badly misstating what the proposal would permit. I mentioned a Toronto Star example in my original post. Now, AFP has also misreported the story:

The government of Canada’s mostly French-speaking Quebec province on Wednesday unveiled legislation allowing terminally ill patients to kill themselves with a doctor’s help. The bill, expected to be passed into law as early as September, would make Quebec the first province in Canada to effectively legalize assisted suicide and set the stage for a jurisdictional row with Ottawa.

No! The bill allows those with “an incurable serious illness” to be killed by doctors, which is not a synonym for “terminal illness.” From the legislation:

26. Only a patient who meets the following criteria may obtain medical aid in dying:
(1) be of full age, be capable of giving consent to care and be an insured person within the meaning of the Health Insurance Act (chapter A-29);
(2) suffer from an incurable serious illness;
(3) suffer from an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(4) suffer from constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable.

And it isn’t assisted suicide, during which a patient self-administers the poison. Rather, it is euthanasia, which is administered by the doctor — e.g., a lethal injection. From the bill:

29. If a physician determines, subsequent to the application of section 28, that medical aid in dying may be administered to a patient requesting it, the physician must administer such aid personally and take care of the patient until their death.

In other words, the doctor has to kill the patient!

So, as we so often see in the reporting of euthanasia, cloning, abortion, and other contentious social issues, the media either can’t — or won’t — get it right.

Despite infanticide still being murder under (the rarely enforced) Netherlander criminal code, the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has issued an ethics opinion holding that doctors may euthanize dying babies to end the parents’ suffering. From the story (Google translation):

When parents [of a dying child] can not stand it anymore, physicians may hasten death, the KNMG decided. On this issue existed for years ambiguity. Doctors should accelerate death in a dying child [using] muscle relaxants if the death takes so long that it is better for the parents not to see severe suffering.

It’s about real life without newborns for whom further treatment by doctors is seen as meaningless. In these infants, the ventilator stopped. Most children then die quickly, but some will remain a life time and suffering. Once a doctor administering muscle relaxants, however, the baby dies within minutes. Criteria are established in the report Medical-life decisions in newborns with severe abnormalities of doctors organization KNMG, published today.

The KNMG also okays dehydrating dying and severely disabled babies to death by withholding milk. It is also worth noting that under the infanticide bureacratic check-list — the Groningen Protocol — Netherlander doctors may euthanize babies who would live with serious disabilities if the doctor thinks the life would involve too much suffering.

This is what happens in a society that sees preventing suffering as the ultimate purpose of society. Eliminating suffering easily morphs into eliminating the sufferer. Then, what constitutes “suffering” becomes very elastic, as in this case, killing a baby because the parents are suffering.

I would like to see an official English translation of the whole opinion, because from my Google translation version, it appears that the question of withholding care and/or terminating the baby is based on what doctors decide, not the family.

More details over at Bioedge.

A bill to legalize euthanasia in Quebec has been filed, and it is a radical disaster.

First, it would require that all “institutions,” e.g., hospitals, nursing homes, and residential care facilities “provide” terminal sedation (put into a coma and dehydrated to death) or euthanasia, which are included in the bill’s definition of the term, “end of life care.” From Bill 52:

8. Every institution must offer end-of-life care and ensure that it is provided to the persons requiring it in continuity and complementarity with any other care that is or has been provided to them.

As I understand the Canadian system, all hospitals, nursing homes, etc., are publicly funded, part by the province and part by the federal government. This would appear to mean that every taxpayer in Canada will be underwriting euthanasia, and moreover, that the provincial government of Quebec will require the killing of patients to be allowed in all publicly funded hospitals, residential care facilities and nursing homes.

Assisted suicide and intentional homicide are crimes in Canada, under the federal criminal code. But the provinces are in charge of regulating medicine. So, Quebec seeks to get out from under the federal criminal laws by redefining euthanasia as health care, e.g., the medical treatment of “aid in dying.”

“Aid in dying,” in turn, is defined as one example of the medical application of “end of life care:”

3. (3) “end-of-life care” means palliative care provided to persons at the end of their lives, including terminal palliative sedation, and medical aid in dying.

“Medical aid in dying,” is not limited to the terminally ill. Indeed, those who qualify to be euthanized could include people with serious disabilities, chronic illnesses that have advanced, even mental illnesses. And the suffering necessary to qualify for euthanasia is, essentially, whatever the patient determines is “intolerable” — even if the patient turns down treatment that could alleviate the symptoms they are experiencing:

26. Only a patient who meets the following criteria may obtain medical aid in dying:
(1) be of full age, be capable of giving consent to care and be an insured person within the meaning of the Health Insurance Act (chapter A-29);
(2) suffer from an incurable serious illness;
(3) suffer from an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(4) suffer from constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable.

People can also direct that they be killed in their advance directive.

True to form, media reports falsely state that the bill would “only” legalize assisted suicide for the “terminally ill.” From the Toronto Star story:

As early as this fall, Quebec could become the first province in Canada and one of the few jurisdictions in the world to permit terminally ill patients to end their suffering and their lives. Legislation introduced Wednesday by the Parti Quebecois government would allow doctors to administer lethal drugs to a exclusive group of patients whose lives are nearing the end and who are in excruciating pain that cannot be relieved by drugs.

Can’t reporters read? That’s a blatantly false description. No, it is journalistic malpractice.

Look for yourselves. The wording of the bill does not require that a patient be “nearing the end” of life at all. Nor does it require that the patient be suffering from “excruciating pain that cannot be relived by drugs.” In fact, the bill would allow a broad killing license, with psychological suffering sufficient to be killed.

As CBC president Jennifer Lahl and CBC consultant Kathleen Sloan (who serves on the national board of directors of NOW) continue their ground-breaking work in the area of third-party reproductive technology, we are happy to announce that Eggsploitation will be screened at the annual NOW conference in July in Chicago. Lahl and Sloan have been referred to as a Dream Team as they travel across the country, conducting film screenings, leading discussions, and testifying before legislators in several states.

They will be in Washington D.C. on June 20, side-by-side, testifying against a commercial surrogacy bill. Most recently they co-authored letters to legislators and have been discussed in news articles, including in the Washington Post, opposing a gestational surrogacy bill in Louisiana. They have also co-authored a letter speaking out against a bill in California, which is an industry authored, payment for eggs for research scheme.

The two first met when Jennifer was screening Eggsploitation at Harvard Law School in 2010. Women in the audience attacked Jennifer, and Kathy stood up and said, “I’m with the National Organization for Women and I support this film!” Needless to say, from that point on the two have forged a friendship and collegial relationship showing the film on university campuses and even a NOW sponsored screening on Capitol Hill.

What is unique about their common cause effort is their ability to move forward without letting their differing views on abortion stop them from working together. It has been refreshing to find so many students on university campuses happy to work together on common cause with student groups they otherwise would not come in contact with.

And quite significantly, to find legislators surprised and pleased to have bi-partisan bills on which they can work across the aisle.

Eggsploitation, winner of the Best Documentary award at the 2011 California Independent Film Festival, has been the catalyst for these successful partnerships and efforts.

We are thrilled that the film will now be shown before hundreds of women’s rights activists this summer in Chicago who will become aware of and educated about the risks to young women who are targeted for their eggs, either for infertile couples, menopausal women, same-sex couples, and now, for scientific research.

In celebration of this big victory, we are re-offering our (very successful) sale price of $7.99 +S&H for a copy of this important film. If you already have a copy, great!

Consider buying another one as a gift to a young woman who may be headed off to college this fall. She will surely find herself confronted with ads to sell her eggs. As the film warns, if you’re thinking of selling your eggs, think again!

Order the Eggsploitation
DVD ($7.99 +S&H)

Child euthanasia: It’s all over but the final voting in Belgium as the Parliament agrees across party lines that doctors should be able to euthanize children. From the Presseurop story:

In the wake of several months of testimony from doctors and experts in medical ethics, a Belgian Senate committee will on June 12 examine the possible extension of the country’s euthanasia law to include children. “On both sides of the linguistic border, liberals and socialists appear to agree on the fact that age should not be regarded as a decisive criteria in the event of a request for euthanasia,”De Morgen. They want doctors to decide on a minor’s capacity for discernment on a case by case basis.

Treating a child like a sick horse is what passes for “compassion” these days.

As we are in the midst of an elder-suicide crisis, we see elder suicide promoted within the assisted suicide movement and its camp followers in the media.

Now, continuing the recent pattern, the 2002 joint elder suicides of Admiral Chester Nimitz, Jr. and his wife Joan has been extolled in Slate. Euthanasia activist, Dr. Lewis. M. Cohen recounts how the Nimitzs’ killed themselves together. Members of the Hemlock Society, neither were terminally ill but experiencing the usual circumstances of octogenarians. According to Cohen, these suicides were, “Deaths With Dignity.” From the piece:

Nurses were employed at their home to attend to Joan Nimitz’s worsening health problems, but the couple did not want to squander all of their money on such care. They were both appalled at the vast sums spent at the end of life to sustain people who were frail and sick and not likely to get better. They could clearly envision — and they rejected — the idea of spending their remaining years in a nursing facility. The admiral particularly worried his heart condition might suddenly worsen and his wife would be unable to commit suicide by herself. Joan Nimitz confided to the children that she, too, feared that without her husband’s help, she would not be in a position to ingest the barbiturate pills they had been stockpiling. The admiral told his daughter, “That’s the one last thing I have to do for your mother.”

It is appalling that such attitudes should be extolled rather than mourned. Anyone who loves and/or cares for elderly parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, friends, cousins, or others should understand that their loved ones are imperiled by such advocacy as explicitly promotes elder suicide as empowering and somehow the most “dignified” — at a time when elderly people worry about becoming burdens — which is our fault, not theirs.

But this is where assisted suicide advocacy aims, with the terminal illness limitation being just a political ploy to get people to accept the principle that killing is an acceptable answer to the problems of suffering. As the Admiral’s daughter — fully supportive of her parents’ suicides — admits:

Van Dorn appreciates that the [Vermont] law would not have directly helped her parents, as neither had a “terminal” disease. She understands that a civil rights movement, such as death with dignity, takes politically expedient and incremental steps. She anticipates that in the future the infirmities and suffering of advanced age may also qualify people to request this option (as is presently true in Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands). Meanwhile, one more American state will allow its citizens further control at the end of life. And Van Dorn is looking forward to the day “when kids and their parents will regularly sit around the dining room table and talk about end-of-life issues the way you talk about college planning. Because, after all it is just another kind of planning.”

In other words, planning suicides over coffee.

So, where is the Suicide Prevention Community? Silent! Perhaps afraid of being controversial — which never stops the pro-suicide crowd — they gently discuss suicide prevention, often in the narrowest of terms, and certainly rarely (if ever) publicly opposing assisted suicide. Indeed, usually the topic isn’t mentioned. Meanwhile, suicide promotion is growing increasingly brazen — which substantially explains why each year “invisible Suicide Prevention Day” comes and goes, making nary a ripple.