By PEGGY MOEN
ST. PAUL — The Supreme Court of Canada made “a horrific decision” when it struck down the country’s ban on assisted suicide, said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, here to address the February 11 Legislative Dinner of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.
In his remarks, Schadenberg said the court’s February 6 ruling used “totally subjective” language, leaving Parliament to decide many particulars without objective standards to guide it. He said the ruling would allow both assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Assisted suicide, he explained, is when someone helps you to take your own life, while euthanasia is when someone “lethally injects you.”
Of the decision, he said: “You need to read it . . . to understand the end game,” especially if you think something like that can’t happen in the United States, Schadenberg told his audience of 200.
The United States might not allow active euthanasia now, Schadenberg said, but once killing is permitted, “the only question is how we’re going to do it.”
Anti-life forces are “trying to sell the world on aid in dying,” he said — but palliative care is the true aid in dying.
The Canadian ruling permits euthanasia and assisted suicide for both physical and psychological suffering, said Schadenberg, who lives in London, Ontario.
To show how psychological suffering can include almost anything, Schadenberg cited some killings allowed under euthanasia laws in the Netherlands and Belgium.
In the Netherlands, an otherwise healthy blind woman who became “obsessed with cleanliness” requested and got euthanasia in 2013. Medics administered a lethal injection.
In another 2013 Netherlands case, a 63-year-old man whose work had been his entire life became overwhelmed by depression as retirement approached. He feared loneliness. He asked for and was given euthanasia.
In 2012 in Belgium, a 64-year-old widow, depressed by the end of a subsequent long-term relationship, requested and got euthanasia, with the approval of one psychiatrist. Other psychiatrists had refused her application.
The woman’s son, Dr. Tom Mortier, a chemistry professor in Belgium, learned of his mother’s death from the hospital that committed the euthanasia — one day after it took place. He’d had no prior notification.
Schadenberg said that Dr. Mortier has a case before the European Court of Human Rights regarding his mother’s euthanasia.
The Netherlands, said Schadenberg, does a meta-analysis concerning euthanasia every five years. In 2003, 1,815 euthanasia deaths took place; ten years later, in 2013, that number rose to 4,829. These statistics, he pointed out, do not include unreported euthanasia deaths. Furthermore, in 2013, 97 of those who died by euthanasia were suffering from dementia.
Oregon, notably, has never arranged an outside study of assisted suicide in that state, said Schadenberg. The doctors who carry it out merely self-report. Assisted suicide has been legal there since 1998.
“So we don’t know what’s going on in Oregon,” he said.
He emphasized the suicide “contagion effect” — “legalizing suicide will lead to an increase in suicide.” Similarly, once assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal, the reasons for it will expand. Witness Belgium, which has now legalized euthanasia for children, even though 160 Belgian pediatricians condemned the measure.
While the death promoters claim that it’s all about choice and autonomy, Schadenberg said, it’s really about the elimination of suffering.
As an example, he noted a 55-year-old man in Flanders, Belgium, who in 2014 arranged the deaths of both his parents who feared being the one left alone when the other died. The son also claimed that it would be impossible for him and his two siblings to provide care for a surviving parent.
“Doesn’t that sound like elder abuse?” asked Schadenberg.
Schadenberg also cited a case from a Seattle attorney specializing in elder law — assisted suicide is legal in Washington.
The father of a family reportedly refused to take the prescribed lethal dose for his assisted suicide: “You’re not killing me. I’m going to bed.” Then, the next night, high on alcohol, he took the dose, raising questions as to whether the suicide really was voluntary.
In Washington, Oregon, and Vermont, where physician-assisted suicide is legal, Schadenberg asked: “Is there any further oversight” to ensure that taking a dose is in fact voluntary?
Concluding, Schadenberg highlighted the 1920 book, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living by German scholars Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding. The book was a foundation of euthanasia under the Nazis. He termed the arguments in that book “identical” to arguments used by today’s euthanasia proponents.
After Schadenberg’s talk, The Wanderer asked him about the efforts of the Canadian Catholic Church against euthanasia and assisted suicide. Schadenberg praised the work of the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF), which does “fabulous work on this” issue. He hopes that churches will use COLF resources in the fight ensuing from the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling.
The Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops, www.cccb.ca, provides a link to COLF.
The MCCL Legislative Dinner brings together Minnesota lawmakers and their pro-life constituents at the beginning of each legislative biennium.
At the dinner, MCCL President Leo LaLonde recalled how pro-life leader Dr. John Willke once said that Roe v. Wade “set us upon a very slippery slope.” That prophecy has come true.
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