CATHOLIC SOCIAL SERVICES AND CANADA'S LEGALIZED ASSISTED SUICIDE

In 2016, Canada legalized medically assisted suicide for terminally ill and severely disabled Canadians. Many Christian social service agencies did not know how to respond to this new legal framework, not only as professionals but as Christians. The federal government's law was couched within the euphemism Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to make the murder of sick and dying people sound respectable. 

[NB: After more than two years of Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying, less than 1% of patients were assisted self-administered suicides. More than 99% were lethal injections by a doctor. That is not assisted suicide, it is euthanasia. It is not medical assistance in dying, it is medical killing.]

Even before the law passed pressures began to force Catholic institutions to kill suicidal patients who fit the criteria Canada's odious new law (bill c-14). For example, liberal newspaper columnist Paula Simons wrote a column: "If Covenant Health won't obey law, it shouldn't get public funds to run public hospitals"  It must have pleased the Prime Minister. He recently appointed this awful woman to the Canadian Senate. (Ah, the rewards of being on the progressive left in Canada.)

When the C-14 became law, I was asked to address Catholic Social Services in Edmonton, Alberta, to try and make sense of this horrible new reality. I spoke as chronically ill and disabled person—and placed my address within a context of Catholic teaching.  Click below to hear what I said. MDP