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| Assisted suicide bill faces likely defeat |
| Life |
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C-384, a private member’s bill that would legalize assisted suicide in Canada, seems to be headed for defeat when it is put to a vote on second reading – or approval-in-principle – sometime in the next few weeks. But pro-lifers are warning that this is no time for complacency.
“I feel that there are adequate numbers to defeat this bill,” Manitoba Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge told Today’s Family News. “It seems that there are a number of Liberal MPs as well as a number of New Democrats, plus a high number of Conservatives that will be voting against it.” This is the third time in about four years that Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde has tabled a version of this bill. But this is the first time it has advanced this far. C-384 would protect a “medical practitioner” from facing criminal charges for helping a person aged 18 or older commit suicide, provided that person is either terminally ill or in unremitting severe physical or mental pain and has stated twice in writing a desire to hasten death. “I do not understand why people prefer to wash their hands of this suffering that cannot be relieved, that can only be relieved by death, because the time that passes is a kind of torture,” Lalonde told MPs during the first of two scheduled hours of debate on her bill. But Bruinooge, who chairs the non-partisan, 35-member Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, said he is confident that most MPs “truly don’t believe in what she’s bringing forward and they see it as a poor outcome for society.” “I would guardedly share his optimism,” said Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada. “But what concerns me more,” he added, “is not this particular bill but rather the trend that bill is showing. It’s sort of a war of attrition, if you will, continuing to push and push and push until something happens that allows it to be approved.” Bruinooge agrees that Lalonde and the “death with dignity” lobby have no intention of backing down. “They only need one victory, and then it becomes essentially impossible to overturn,” he said. And even if MPs remain opposed to legalizing assisted suicide, Quist points out that its proponents could still win through the courts. In the Sue Rodriguez case in 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada came within one vote of declaring the ban unconstitutional. |
