"SAFEGUARDS ARE AN ILLUSION": BELGIUM WARNS CANADA

Another short clip from the new vitally important documentary "Vulnerable" produced by Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition's (EPC) in association with Dunn Media.  After 14 years of legal euthanasia in Belgium, there experience is that Safeguards are an illusion. Why would we think it will be different here? See clip below.

(Contact EPC for more information on the online video series and the upcoming documentary film, Vulnerable – The Euthanasia Deception at  info@epcc.ca or call: 1-877-439-3348 or 519-851-1434.)

WARNINGS FROM BELGIUM TO CANADA ABOUT EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE

A 3 minute clip from a new critically important video "Vulnerable", by Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Dunn Media. Citizens in Belgium warning Canada not to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia. Will we listen to the warnings?

(Contact EPC for more information on the online video series and the upcoming documentary film, Vulnerable – The Euthanasia Deception at info@epcc.ca or call: 1-877-439-3348 or 519-851-1434.)

BLOG HAS THOUSANDS OF PAGE VIEWS MONTHLY: 450,000 TOTAL

The HumanLifeMatters blog is now receiving thousands of

Media interest rises
as blog numbers soar.

hits each month, to a total of 450,000 page views to date. It's beginning to raise eyebrows of interest and surprise with the media, community leaders and policy makers. Nobody is more surprised than me! Who knew that anybody would be interested in a blog written by an incurably ill and disabled nobody publishing commentaries from his little house way out on the Canadian prairies?! 

I'll keep up my commentaries on faith and life issues as long as people want to read them. Many of my posts have been republished elsewhere

.

A THOUGHT FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOST SOMEONE TO ALZHEIMER'S

Commit you loved-one to the tender care of Jesus. Memories lost will be restored. God has them in safe-keeping. All that was held dear will be held close again. Comme au premier jour. 

DO NOT BE SILENT IN THE FACE OF EVIL

Do not be silent in the face of state-sanctioned medical murder of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

ALWAYS CHOOSE LIFE!

A number of years ago, my wife and I were contacted by the mother of a sixteen year old girl who had a positive pregnancy test. I will call the teenager Katie (not her real name) and her mother Joanne (not her real name).

                       

Katie was obviously in a crisis pregnancy:  It was a crisis because Katie is so young, still in high school, and unmarried.  It was also a crisis pregnancy because she intended to have an abortion to solve her “problem.”  

Katie was ignorant to well established yet unpopular objective knowledge about prenatal life. Poor Katie, she is a victim of modern public school education that’s been ravaged by the emotions of political correctness. This political correctness has even invaded the former objectivity of many biology classes. Katie only knew the unscientific yet fashionable propaganda of the so-called “pro-choice” mindset so prevalent in today’s culture that refuses to recognize well-established knowledge of the unique humanity of life in the womb.

What’s the choice?

In such a climate, the choice remains unstated because it is the choice of death for another life, through abortion. No matter how it’s packaged or presented, abortion is offensive.

The stark choice in ‘pro-choice’ is far too visceral to articulate in polite or fashionable company. Choosing between life and death for one’s offspring is hardly the mark of a civilized or enlightened society. The “pro-choice” mindset rarely identifies the choice. Instead it directs the chooser away from the stark reality of what they are choosing between. Situational ethics reigns supreme and moral absolutes have been banished from the culture.

Fortunately, the banishment of former moral absolutes has not been complete, other than in the secular media and academe.

Many ordinary people can still feel the tug of conscience from the

residue of a previous time when the culture knew some things were absolutely right and other things absolutely wrong. We know that taking human life is absolutely wrong. For some of us, the memory of a Judeo-Christian moral consensus still burns deep within our chests. We are beneath the snobbery of academe. We are unwelcome in the lofty corridors power and ivory towers where modern philosophers, sociologists and bioethicists mingle far away from us common folk.

Like the 17^th century adulteress banished from the town with her illegitimate child, the object of insults and contempt, and branded with a scarlet letter ‘A’, we wear a scarlet ‘A’ too. It stands for Absolutes. And like the adulteress of old, we are unfaithful. Our unfaithfulness is to the 21st century’s culture of choice and moral relativism. We, too, are subjects of contempt.

Katie’s mother, Joanne, wore a scarlet ‘A’. Joanne knew what was at stake in making the wrong choice. She was acutely aware of the threat to her unborn child and then, years later, her grandchild. There was nothing relative about their situation. The threat was real and absolute! Katie was in danger of making a terrible mistake and the new human life within her was in grave danger.  

When Joanne was in the same position as Katie. The authority figures in Joanne’s life advocated that Katie’s brother be aborted (He’s a full-grown man now). Joanne was told ― like so many other women facing crisis pregnancies ― that she was too young to be a mother. A baby would ruin her life and aspirations!  Joanne was told abortion would solve her problem. Joanne knew instinctively that her “problem” was a human being portrayed as a blob of tissue, like a tumor.

Before Joanne gave herself over to an abortionist, my wife and I

had the opportunity to show her the stunning photography of prenatal life taken by renowned Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson, during the 1960s.  Nilsson was ahead of his time, using the emerging technology of endoscopic photography to capture images of a developing child before birth. 

The images spoke for themselves. Joanne realized that the life within her was not a ‘blob of tissue.’ It was not ‘potential life’ … it was actual life. It was the life of her child! She rejected the naysayers and cynicism that would have led her down the dark path to an abortionist’s door. Joanne needed someone to hope and believe in her life and the life of her baby. My wife and I tried, in our pale and uncertain way, to show Joanne there was always hope wherever there is life. Joanne canceled her appointment at the abortion clinic.

We found ourselves in a similar position with Joanne's daughter Katie. Once Katie was given the full information about prenatal life and life-affirming alternatives available to her through a local crisis pregnancy centre, Katie cancelled her abortion too.

Today her happy child runs and plays, skips and peddles her bike in the fresh spring air, with the sun warming her shoulders. That little girl will grow up to be her own person and take her rightful place in society.

What’s my point? Never give up on any life. Do not listen to the pied pipers of choice who lead the parade of North America’s procession for the new culture of death. 

Always choose life that you and your descendants may live! Click image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX4fC4WFCIU For Big Tent Revival "Choose Life".

NEVER SACRIFICE THE ETERNAL FOR THE TEMPORAL

Every city has its hip area with trendy shops offering locally made trinkets, markets for vendors of organically grown produce, and faux-French cafés. Accountants and stockbrokers who wear power suits Monday to Friday may transform on Saturday into hipsters in faded jeans, t-shirts, bandannas around their heads or floppy straw hats to saunter around trendy areas of city.  

It is harmless fun being seen as a part of the 'scene'. I get caught up in the pretense myself. Although it’s hard to look trendy in an electric wheelchair, I still enjoy sipping a mocha latte at a sidewalk café and watching an assortment of hipsters strolling down the street. 

But I occasionally find myself wondering if I’m watching a small outward expression (one of many) that is indicative of the age in which we live. Superficiality of image becomes everything, where taste and manners without deep-rooted substance stunts spiritual progress of the human soul.

While sipping my Americano espresso recently, I read an essay by Matthew Schmitz in First Things magazine entitled “Between the Hipsters and Hasids”. He wrote about a trendy area of Brooklyn where he lives and the superficial culture of its hipsters. 

Fashionable shops that play on themes of tradition, vintage and

heritage to market cheese, fresh produce and beer.  They want themes but not substance. Schmitz wrote: “Respect for the way

monks brewed their ale (ora et labora) is not matched by a similar appreciation for the prayer that structured their lives.” He continued: “A desire to emulate grandmother’s knitting, pickling, and needlework does not extend to the habit she felt to be the most important: daily Bible reading.”  He then delivered a stinging and succinct observation: “Hipsters are ambivalent reactionaries who love every aspect of tradition ― except its authority.” 

Near the end of his essay, Matthew Schmitz wrote with stunning clarity that our generation loves an endless parade of “things that excite our desire without demanding our love.” The milk in my Americano turned sour. He’s right. 

This is the state of many fashionable people of 21^st Century in North America. Successive generations have rejected absolute truth for relative truth.  People seek pleasure, titillation and entertainment.

Christianity calls us to something different. Catholicism demands our complete love for Christ and loyalty to Him. We are called to desire things eternal not things temporal or superficial that require little cultivation of the interior life.  Christ and His Church draw

people ever nearer to eternal truths revealed to us in the Scriptures and sacred traditions of the Catholic Church. It is when we immerse ourselves totally in these teachings and surrender more and more deeply to Christ that we begin to understand the purpose and meaning of our existence:  To love God with our whole being and love others as we love ourselves and to spend eternity with a God who is the very essence of love.  

From my Catholic faith I have come to understand my own

suffering throughout thirty-three years of chronic illness in broader contexts than my reality.  Pope John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloros extensively addressed my questions about the Why of Suffering.  Pope Benedict XVI spoke to me about hope in his book The Yes of Jesus Christ.  He told the reader who suffers from illness or handicaps that God wants us to give Him a “down-payment of trust.” The Pope told the reader that God is saying to us: “I know you don’t understand me yet. But trust me:  believe me when I tell you I am good and dare to live on the basis of this trust. Then you will discover that behind your suffering, behind the difficulties of your life, a love is hiding.” This trust will serve as a vehicle of transcendence beyond my physical circumstances and suffering.  The superficiality and cynicism of the world does not understand this. Trust involves vulnerability and self-denial of inner control. It is the antithesis of our age.

 

The desire to wrap myself in attractive diversions of life is harmless until it leads to constantly frittering away precious time on the trivial and superficial at the expense of using my trials and pain to cultivate an interior life in Christ.  Saint Clement of Alexandria (150-215) said, “Bearing the Cross means to separate our souls from the delights and pleasures of this world.”

Never sacrifice the permanent for the immediate or trivial, the eternal for the temporal.  Never prefer delights of the palate to the Bread of Heaven. Never desire the finest earthly wine over wine changed to the Blood of Christ.

[Click link below for  I Am The Bread of Life by John Michael Talbot.]

NATIONAL POST COLUMNIST, ANDREW COYNE, ON ASSISTED SUICIDE

Andrew Coyne

Canada's National Post newspaper columnist Andrew Coyne wrote on 18 April about the perils of assisted suicide. He has a razor sharp analytical mind. He sees the issue beyond the shallow one dimensional view of most of the media. They either parrot the autonomy mantra or draw the false dichotomy of  intractable pain versus suicide. (Modern pain control techniques can control virtually all physical pain.) Andrew Coyne thinks independently. He does not blindly and dutifully fall into line with the messaging of Canada's secular media. He's brilliant and is one of my favourite Canadian columnists.  See http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-assisted-suicide-makes-us-all-complicit-in-anothers-death 

Mark

A LETTER TO MY DOCTOR NOT TO KILL ME

I knew this day was coming to Canada. First reading of a bill to legalize physician assisted suicide was introduced into the Canadian Parliament on April 13 2016. In anticipation of this day, I gave my family doctor a letter at the end of 2015 to put on my file instructing her never to allow or cause me to be euthanized regardless of what I request. The text of that letter is below.

________________________

Dear Dr. __:

I can hardly bring myself to write these words but a dark reality in Canada requires it. I am referring to legalizing physician assisted suicide scheduled to begin in 2016.  For over 20 years I have feared that a time such as this would come to my country and against the Common Good of society at large.  I have spoken across Canada and America against euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Should I ever request assisted suicide, I want you to refuse to help me. On this point I am emphatic. Presume that I am speaking out of depression or that multiple sclerosis has begun to affect my mental state. I would not make such a request in my right mind. If, in your judgment, I am suffering from depression please get me the counselling I need; if the MS is affecting my mind protect me from myself or others who would take my life before my natural death. Regarding my end of life care I ask you to provide treatment in accordance with my Roman Catholic faith (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos 2276-2282) .

I have such deep respect for you and the proper application of your profession (in its Hippocratic tradition) I would not ask you to stop being my healer and become my killer, unless my mental faculties were impaired by depression or disease.

Sincerely,

Mark Davis Pickup

   

CANADIAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE EDUCATES LAITY ABOUT ASSISTED SUICIDE

Catholic Archbishop
Richard Smith addresses Catholic
laity about euthanasia
& assisted suicide

The Canadian Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton has hosted a 5-part series on assisted suicide and Catholic responses and understanding. Five sessions entitled "Every Life Matters" (ELM) were held at different locations throughout the archdiocese about these important topics. The sessions included prayer, personal witness, medical and legal expertise, and teaching from the Most Reverend Richard Smith, Archbishop of the Archdiocese. Each session also included time for questions and answers from audiences and from webcast viewers. You can watch each of the five sessions by clicking here  http://caedm.ca/ELM-EasterSeries.aspx 

Other bishops should follow Archbishop Smith's lead and explain Church teaching about assisted suicide and euthanasia and palliative services available people in their time of need.   

ASSISTED SUICIDE: CANADA'S DEADLY SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

Canadian legal landscape is shifting under my wheelchair. On April 14th 2016, Canada's Liberal government introduced in Parliament for 1st reading it's assisted suicide legislation.[1] Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially said he was going to whip his majority government into supporting the bill for state-sanctioned assisted suicide. Unnamed sources informed me he was faced with a potential Caucus revolt over that. We are now hearing rumbling that Bill C-14: Medical Aid in Dying may go to a free-vote in Parliament. We'll have to wait and see. 


Don't you just marvel at the ingenious euphemisms people will conjure up to cast abhorrent things in a positive light and make distasteful topics more palatable? Skilled conjurers of euphemisms can make murder seems altruistic, even virtuous, to a gullible public. We find one such phrase on the government's new assisted suicide bill under the deceptive title "Medical Aid In Dying". Absolutely Orwellian! Medical aid in dying used to be called palliative care. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists helping suicidal sick or disabled people kill themselves is properly called MEDICAL KILLING and that's what C-14 should have been called, to be accurate. But accuracy would not help the bill pass into law. It must be sugar-coated with a euphemistic title. 

A TV reporter came to my house to interview me about my opposition to Canada's shiny new bill for assisted killing suicide. How could I deprive someone suffering in pain of a death with dignity if they request it? Well, first of all, thanks to an advanced array of 21st century analgesics and pain control techniques people do not need to suffer in physical pain. Secondly, the reporter's question was couched in a one dimensional context. Assisted suicide has far reaching implications beyond the individual. It changes the proper and historic role of physicians from healers to killers. The doctor can become the most dangerous person to sick and disabled people in a community. Assisted suicide helps to entrench the notion that some lives are unworthy of life[2]. Acceptance of medical killing coarsens a nation's conscience. 

Acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide decreases the interest in, and stature of, palliative care. We see this played out in the Netherlands after many years of legal assisted suicide. In their recent book It's Not That Simple: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Today, palliative care nurse Jean Echlin and Ian Gentles wrote that the Netherlands "now has a total of only 70 palliative-care beds, in contrast to the many thousands of such beds in Britain, which has not legalized euthanasia."[3] State-sanctioned medical killing, such as Canada is about to embark upon, will fundamentally alter the moral, medical and legal character of Canada. 

That is why a suicidal sick, dying or disabled person should not be given help to kill themselves.  He/she is entitled to the very best palliation available and comfort until natural death.  That's what a civilized society does. There's more than one dimension to assisted suicide. Canada's narcissistic pretty boy Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government do not seem to understand that. They are about to make Canada a land of dark and dangerous shadows under the guise of autonomy.  

Mark Davis Pickup
_________________________
Notes
[1] http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=8183660
[2] The Nazi's spoke of life unworthy of life as "lebensunwertes Lebens."
[3] Jean Echlin and Ian Gentles, It's Not That Simple: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Today (Toronto: The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 2015), p.7.

CATHOLICS AND ASSISTED SUICIDE

A New Dark Age of medical killing suicidal disabled, sick and

Archbishop Richard Smith

mentally ill Canadians draws near (June 6th 2016). Archbishop Richard Smith of the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton conducted a series of educational evenings for Catholic laity about Church teaching and responses to euthanasia and assisted suicide. At his request, I agreed to participate in that process. In the last session I was one of three speakers: Archbishop Smith, palliative care physician Dr. Anna Voeuk, and me.

I spoke as someone for whom physician assisted suicide is intended. 

I utterly reject the contrived new right for PAS Canada's Supreme Court conjured up against centuries of Common Law which prohibited and punished assisted suicide. In my brief address I spoke about grief associated with acquired adult disability and incurable sickness. I addressed community versus autonomy and my responsibility to act for the Common Good of society despite living with long-term chronic illness.

I am available to speak to other Canadian venues and American jurisdictions considering legalizing physician assisted suicide. Contact me by email at HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca

Mark  

I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE

After more than thirty years with degenerative MS, I know this to be true.

LET US PRAY FOR THOSE WHO SERVE

Below is the latest video link to Catholic Social Services (Edmonton Canada) weekly prayer request. Keep them, and all Christian service agencies throughout North America and the world, in your prayers and daily devotions. Thank you and God bless.

https://vimeo.com/162112315

NOW MORE THAN EVER! STAND FOR THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE

This May, it is especially important for Canadians to stand up for the equality and sanctity of all human life. If you can, join the national March for Life in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to whip his majority government to support wide-reaching legislation for assisted suicide that will include the mentally ill and minors. MEDICAL KILLING began 47 years ago with abortion (under the first Prime Trudeau) is about to start a new phase of MEDICAL KILLING: suicidal Canadians with illnesses, diseases or disabilities. It is critical for Canadians of good will to take a firm and resolute stand against all state sanctioned killing! Now more than ever, stand for the value of every human life.