The World Turned Upside Down
By MIKE MANNO
Quebec’s parliamentary election, earlier this month, gave a commanding majority — 74 of the province’s 125 seats — to the center-right Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) party. Problem: The party campaigned on a pledge to extend euthanasia to Alzheimer’s patients.
According to Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Canadian-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, the party, as part of its electoral campaign, not only announced support for an increase in funding for Alzheimer’s research; it also announced support to extend euthanasia to Alzheimer patients.
Schadenberg, a frequent guest on my old radio program, reports that the Canadian government has commissioned studies into euthanasia for Alzheimer’s patients, those suffering from dementia, children, people with psychiatric conditions, and those who have lost the mental capacity to request it for themselves. LifeSiteNews, Schadenberg, and others are also reporting that there is growing conversation in medical journals about the subject of child euthanasia for “mature minors,” whatever that means.
One example critics point to is an article entitled “Medical Assistance in Dying in a Pediatric Hospital,” in the Oxford-based Journal of Medical Ethics, that opines that Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) is an essential part of palliative care: “[I]t is wrong to force a person to live in circumstances of unendurable and irremediable suffering and the wishes of capable patients should be respected . . . in such an intimate matter as how they choose to die. Persons, in other words, have a right to life, but not a duty to live.”
Several “horrifying conclusions” are being reached, according to Michael Cook, Ph.D., editor of the website BioEdge. First is that euthanasia would be normalized to the point where it is treated as routine, just like any other medical procedure; also the suggestion that children may be allowed to choose euthanasia without parental consent or even knowledge.
Cook suggests, “If MAID is essentially a normal medical procedure, it follows that there is no need for ‘special procedures for managing communication, confidentiality, and capacity assessment.’ One consequence of this is that doctors should be proactive in suggesting euthanasia to children for they have an obligation to inform patients of their healthcare options.
“What about a young person’s capacity for consent? In Ontario, young people can be and are found capable of making their own medical decisions, even when those decisions may result in their death. This is not universally accepted in Canada, so it may be necessary to tweak the law.
“How about the role of parents? What if a young person requests MAID but their parents object? The authors argue that if a young person is capable of making their own medical decisions, there is no reason why parents have to be informed. If we regard MAID as practically and ethically equivalent to other medical decisions that result in the end of life, then confidentiality regarding MAID should be managed in this same way.”
The Journal article suggests, “If, however, a capable [legally underage] patient explicitly indicates that they do not want their family members involved in their decision-making, although healthcare providers may encourage the patient to reconsider and involve their family, ultimately the wishes of capable patients with respect to confidentiality must be respected. If we regard MAID as practically and ethically equivalent to other medical decisions that result in the end of life, then confidentiality regarding MAID should be managed in this same way.”
“My concern,” Schadenberg told OneNewsNow, “is that it appears that there’s some sort of decision already being made. We’re seeing in the journal articles — different ethics journals or in the case of pediatric journals — this discussion about how they’re going to do the euthanasia of children and things like that.”
He suggests that the decision on child euthanasia is no longer if it will be approved, but how to implement it. The Journal article continues:
“In order to protect staff members from potential violence and social harassment, we will not make public the names of the healthcare providers at The Hospital for Sick Children who have volunteered to provide MAID, nor will we disclose a full list of persons who comprised our working group.
“We will, however, as an institution, publicly discuss the provision of MAID in an effort to normalize this procedure and reduce social stigma for everyone involved. It is right and appropriate for this duty to fall to a well-resourced institution rather than rest on the shoulders of individual patients and providers.”
Of course, the suggestion from the article is that euthanasia, once considered immoral, illegal, and a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, should now be normalized to the point where children can be “humanely destroyed” like a sick animal without any involvement by the parents is a concept that should not only scare the bejeebers out of any parent, but especially those of depressed teenagers.
Canada is not alone in its infatuation with euthanasia — the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Colombia have some form of legal euthanasia. The Supreme Court of Colombia, which ruled that doctors could not be prosecuted for euthanizing patients, and ordered its congress to establish rules and procedures for legal euthanasia, has recently said that euthanasia rights should be extended to children.
Of course we’ve seen this all before in many in similar circumstances: adherence to the fabric of human life is diminishing, even by those trained and pledged to protect it, along with the continual erosion of parental rights.
Abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and euthanasia all belong to that new wave of intellectualism that holds God’s gift of life as an anachronism from some other time or place. Same with parental rights, children can now receive birth control and abortions without parental involvement. They can also be taught life’s lessons, not from their parents’ beliefs, or the beliefs of the church they attend, or the beliefs they follow. Nope. For the “greater good” children can be taught the gospel of the state without challenge.
They can also be denied critical medical care against their parents’ wishes if that would become too burdensome for the state, just ask the parents of Charlie Gard, or any one of a hundred others whose case did not make the national news. It’s easy to say we are entering into a world that is topsy-turvy; but that’s not true: we’re already there.
When the British surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, it is said that the British band under Lord Cornwallis played The World Turned Upside Down.
“Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
“Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
“Holy-dayes are despis’d, new fashions are devis’d.
“Old Christmas is kick’t out of Town.
“Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.”
Probably as fitting for today as it was when the British lost their American colonies. The world, indeed, has been turned upside down.
(You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)
