Kill C14: Trust Patients and Doctors on Assisted Dying

DAMMIT JANET! has a not-so-radical proposal. Treat medical assistance in dying (MAID) like abortion.

In other words, adopt no new law on it and let patients and medical professionals figure it out.

In both Carter and Morgentaler, the Supreme Court called on Parliament to craft new laws.

In declining to create a Charter exemption, SCC said in the "remedy" section of Carter:

Complex regulatory regimes are better created by Parliament than by the courts.

And that is exactly where we disagree.

Parliament is NOT the place to create complex regulatory regimes. Parliament is a contentious, partisan arena, subject to lobbying by all the usual suspects, with all the usual agendas.

Look at its track record on abortion.

The government tried twice.

The Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Mulroney made two attempts to pass a new abortion law. The first proposal, in the spring of 1988, did not pass the House of Commons. The second attempt, introduced by the Minister of Justice as Bill C-43 in late 1989, would be defeated on a tie vote by the time it came to third reading in Senate on January 31, 1991, leaving Canada without criminal legislation governing abortion.

And then there were the private member's bills. Plus the current one, C225, Exploiting Grief to Attack Abortion Rights.

Good scientific information and research along with conscientious practice have been emphatically demonstrated by Canada's post-Morgentaler abortion experience to be the avenue towards compassionate, reasonable, and respectful medical care.

Nobody is happy with C14 as presently proposed.

Not the doctors.

Not the gawd-botherers.

And not Canada's number uno medical writer, André Picard, who captures the essence of C14 perfectly.

The draft law is not respectful of the wishes of the majority of Canadians, nor is it patient-friendly; it’s patronizing and risk-averse. In trying to offend no one, the Liberal government has failed everyone.

What we have here is not a right to die, but a guarantee that too many Canadians will continue to suffer unnecessarily at the end of their lives.

And unlike in 1988 when there wasn't a clear consensus on what Canadians wanted to do about abortion, now there definitely is consensus. Eight out of ten of us want assistance in dying when we bloody well decide to go.

Canadians learned with abortion. We know how to do this. Trust doctors and patients to work out how to go about the details of this non-issue.

We want to be able to die on our own terms. Let us work out those terms with our own doctors.