CANADA'S NATIONAL BROADCASTER GETS IT WRONG (AGAIN)

Well, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is at it

again, promoting medical killing (a.k.a., assisted suicide). They reported that a legal challenge has been started by disabled British Columbia resident Julia Lamb (25), in concert with the pro-assisted suicide British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA). The original story said the the challenged has been launched against Canada's new assisted suicide law because it is only for terminal conditions. Wrong! 

Even Canada's tax funded national broadcaster must have known it was wrong and later revised the story. But on the morning of June 27th 2016, the original story appeared with the following text which I copied and pasted below:

"A B.C. woman with spinal muscular atrophy is joining the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to challenge the federal government's new assisted dying legislation.

Julia Lamb, 25, of Chilliwack, B.C., launched the challenge with the BCCLA in Vancouver on Monday morning.

She said that if her condition worsens, she could find herself trapped in physical and mental suffering for years and even decades.

"If my suffering becomes intolerable, I would like to be able to make a final choice about how much suffering to endure," Lamb said.

The lawsuit challenges the new assisted dying law, which only allows medically assisted dying for Canadians with terminal illness. It does not permit assistance in dying for those who are suffering with no immediate end in sight. [EMPHASIS ADDED]

"This legislation is clearly unconstitutional. It deliberately excludes a class of Canadians – those who are suffering with no immediate end in sight. How can we turn away and ignore their pleas?" said Grace Pastine, litigation director for the BCCLA.

New legislation was ordered by court

The Liberal government's controversial assisted dying legislation was approved on June 17, after passing a vote in the Senate earlier that day.

It was spurred by a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that struck down the ban on physician-assisted dying on the grounds that it violated Canadians' Charter rights.

But the legislation was criticized in part because it was limited to those facing a "reasonably foreseeable" death.

Critics say that excludes people with a non-terminal illness, including Kay Carter, who launched the original court challenge with the BCCLA before her death.

"The new legislation will have the perverse effect of forcing seriously ill Canadians to resort to violent methods or the 'back alley,'" said Pastine. "People will find ways to end lives that have become unbearable, even if that means choosing a violent, risky death. No one should be forced to make that cruel choice."

The government said it was operating under a compressed timeframe to meet a June 6 deadline imposed by the Supreme Court of Canada and promised there will be further study and amendments could come down the road.

Spinal muscular atrophy is a progressive neurodegenerative diseasecharacterized by loss of motor neurons and progressive muscle wasting, often leading to early death.

The story was false. The law does not limit assisted suicide to the terminally ill.

Let's look at what Bill C14, actually say, not what CBC falsely presents. C14's criteria for assisted is that a person's must have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition". They have a grievous and irremediable condition if (a) they have a serious and incurable illnesses, disease or disability; (b) they are in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capacity; (c) that illness, disease or disability or that of decline causes them enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerant to them and cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable. (d) their natural death has become reasonably foreseeable, ..." 

Do you see the word "terminal"? No. What does reasonably foreseeable actually mean anyway? Everyone's death can be reasonably foreseen! Most people will only live for 79.6 years. That's reasonably foreseen. The term is so vague as to be meaningless. Reasonably foreseeable is a judgement call.

The legislation has lots of autonomy but it does not state assisted suicide is limited to terminal conditions as the CBC article falsely reported. (Psst! The CBC knows that.) They later revised the story. (See below.) 

Merchants of death strategy

Let me speculate about what is actually happening with the case out of Chilliwack. Pro-assisted suicide groups like the BC Civil Liberty Association want to mount a series of legal challenges that will ultimately strike down or weaken the assisted suicide legislation. Their goal is to bring a case, yet to be determined, to the Supreme Court to hopefully strike down C14. (And with the current crop of Justices they may well do that.) Part of the strategy will be to try and ensure the environment around restrictions on assisted suicide will be so toxic -- courtesy of the merchants of death like the BC Civil Liberties folks and the death with dignity crowd stirring the pot -- that no Parliament will want to touch the issue. There will be no law. That's the goal of assisted suicide proponents. They are using the abortion template for a replay of the Canadian Supreme Court abortion decision in 1988. History really does repeat itself.

As I said earlier, while I was writing this blog entry this morning, the CBC revised the story. Now the story has the title "Assisted dying legislation faces new legal challenge: B.C. Civil Liberties Association to contest new law limiting right to to those nearing death." Link to the updated article can be seen here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bccla-assisted-dying-legislation-1.3654220

See how the story changed? Perhaps even the CBC saw how false their original rendition was and decided to revise. A bias too blatant? 

Mark