Posted on 08/02/2011 4:23:23 PM PDT by wagglebee
VANCOUVER - A New Westminster, B.C., assisted-suicide foundation is headed to the B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday to renew a fight for what it calls “the right to die.”
The Farewell Foundation For The Right to Die, representing 113 members, hopes to pressure the Canadian government to adopt Switzerland’s model for assisted suicides, which does not require a presiding doctor but insists on the patient’s full consent and proof of “unbearable pain or unsustainable treatment.”
Foundation director Russel Ogden filed a civil claim against the attorney general of Canada in early February, arguing a person has the constitutional right to kill himself.
In the last two decades, other places around the world have enacted laws enabling physician-assisted suicide, including Oregon, Washington, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Switzerland, however, has been practicing its non-physician model for 21 years. Ogden said under Swiss law, assisted suicides are fully “accountable” and coroners, police and the courts are brought in after each death to ensure no foul play is involved.
Coquitlam, B.C., resident Jim Preece, 77, said he has supported the foundation since its inception in February. He said many supporters suffer from long-term diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cancers and other “rigorous” diseases. Preece added with assisted suicide, the patients end their own lives without interference.
“No doctor will be sticking a needle into your arm,” he said. “You are the person to ingest the pharmaceutical.”
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association also has a similar action in court and represents five plaintiffs, the most recent being Taylor, 63, of Kelowna, B.C.
It’s a criminal offence in Canada to assist a person’s suicide; offenders can be jailed for up to 14 years.
Both filed in February this year, the court actions come 18 years after the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal of Sue Rodriguez, a woman suffering from ALS, of obtaining a physician’s help in dying.
So, according to the culture of death, it's the needle that makes it evil.
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Dying and killing are two different things.
Right and wrong are two different things.
"Legal" and morally legitimate are two different things.
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal.'" -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
These people are insane, and I mean that in the clinical sense.
The main characteristic of insanity is the inability to make appropriate distinctions between right and wrong.
We’re all going to die. We don’t need some special right for that. Now killing, that’s a different matter entirely. There is no right to commit murder.
Is it illegal to die in B.C.?
“Right to Die” is such a misnomer. These people have the right to die. They can buy a pistol, stick in in their mouth and pull the trigger. No one can really stop them from doing that. What they want is a right to have doctors and others help them die and probably for a taxpayer subsidy for these types of doctor consultations.
They don't have the "right" to kill themselves. There is no right to do wrong. Never has been, never will be.
What I mean is that if they want to kill themselves, they already can do it. I agree it isn’t right in a moral sense but you can’t stop someone who really wants to kill themselves. What this “right to die” movement advocates is much more than simply a right to kill yourself. Its state-sanctioned MEANS to kill yourself. It will become part of taxpayer subsidized healthcare at some point.
I understand.
Just trying to make the point that having the power to do something doesn’t equate to having the right to do something.
I agree. I’m not sure what the agenda is here, other than the further corruption of society.
One who “helps” another to die should be held fully accountable under all circumstances. After all, murderers can argue they “helped” their victim to die, life is indeed terminal. Isn’t it couched in such loving, caring terms?
But people are free and more than welcome to off themselves. Poison, guns, hanging, jumping off bridges, etc.... Have at it, as far as I’m concerned!
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