Author Archives: Maria

TheStar.com: Disability Rights Groups Especially Sensitive to Dangers of Assisted Suicide

Monday, 18 July 2016 12:08
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Elderly holding hands

Source: thestar.com

By Dow Marmur

Two years ago, when assisted suicide legislation had been again on the agenda in Canada, I wrote on this page: “My faith teaches that life is God’s gift and, therefore, sacred. For humans to take it away in murder or suicide is criminal and sinful. Despite its claim to compassion, assisted suicide may be of that ilk.”

In view of the current debate around Bill C-14 I’d like to reaffirm my advocacy for effective palliative care in place of one or other version of the bill. I wrote then that “my faith also teaches that as God’s creatures we’re obligated to lighten the burden of others and do our utmost to relieve them of suffering. Palliative care for the terminally ill is of that ilk.”

I’m not alone in this among my colleagues. Statements by two Canadian rabbis as reported in the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reflect a similar view.

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Why States Should Resist Assisted Suicide

Thursday, 16 June 2016 12:22
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By Jay Evensen

My father’s final days did not fit any textbook definition of a quality life. He suffered from the advanced stages of dementia. He didn’t know who I was. In a rare moment when he seemed somewhat lucid, I asked him if he was scared. The look in his eyes as he nodded still brings tears to my eyes.

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Doctors Should Save Lives, Not End Them Through Assisted Suicide

Wednesday, 08 June 2016 12:32
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Trib Live

Source: Tribune-Review, Letter to the Editor

Regarding Christina Thomas’ letter “Legalize physician-aided suicide” : Killing patients has never been a part of the ethical framework of the medical profession going back to the Hippocratic Oath. It has no place in either civilized society or the medical profession as it often targets those who are sick and disabled, those very persons society should be committed to compassionately assisting. Often one hears the reason for allowing this barbaric practice is excruciating untreatable pain that candidates for assisted suicide must endure. This is myth-making on the part of advocates. Doctors are capable of treating pain effectively.

The disability community is very concerned about this push to legalize the practice of killing patients. The advocacy group Not Dead Yet reminds us that many disabled persons live very meaningful and useful lives. Consider the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking who has lived with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) for over 50 years. Also, in some European countries where euthanasia is legal, individuals have been euthanized by their own requests not for terminal illlnesses but because of grief over the death of a loved one, depression and nonterminal illnesses.

Sadly, some will always find a way to commit suicide. Why would Pennsylvanians want their doctors, those responsible for their healing and comfort, to be co-opted to become their killers? Thomas’ own professional organization, the American Nursing Association, opposes this practice.

Dr. Ralph A. Capone

Greensburg

The writer is a physician board-certified in hospice and palliative care and a bioethics instructor at St. Vincent College.

Instead of Assisted Suicide, Let’s Help the Vulnerable

Friday, 03 June 2016 15:17
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Montreal Gazette

Source: Montreal Gazette

By: Asher Jacobson

A flora of terminology is being used to convince the public that assisted suicide is indeed a righteous act, with fancy and empathetic phrases, such as death with dignity and compassionate death. What we don’t seem to realize are the terrible ramifications that this law will have on our society as a whole — and the way we treat the most vulnerable among us.

In my 20 years of comforting the ill, I have learned that when a patient says something as severe as “I want to die,” they don’t always mean it literally: It just rips them apart knowing that they have become a burden to their family and society.

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Buffalo News: “Aid in Dying” Just a Euphemism for Assisted Suicide

Friday, 20 May 2016 12:56
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Source: Buffalo News

By Philip Reed

Last week, a New York Appellate Court unanimously ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. This decision echoed two U.S. Supreme Court cases nearly 20 years earlier, in which the court ruled, also unanimously, that a ban on assisted suicide expresses a legitimate government interest in preserving life.

Proponents of the right to die pressed their case two decades later on the grounds that laws prohibiting assisted suicide do not apply to physicians helping terminally ill patients end their lives because this practice is not assisted suicide. Instead, it is “aid in dying.”

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