6. If elected, will you oppose any legislative or regulatory measures designed to permit the deliberate killing (euthanasia) of a human being regardless of age, state of health or “anticipated quality of life” or designed to permit “doctor-assisted suicide”?

There is growing pressure for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada and elsewhere. This is an issue that Members of Parliament will not be able to avoid addressing in the immediate future.

The euthanasia/assisted suicide movement is a direct outcome of the abortion movement which has massively undermined acceptance of the intrinsic value of every human life. Abortion has also been conditioning society to accept that there can supposedly be valid reasons for killing innocent humans. Euthanasia, therefore is one of the next logical steps as pro-life advocates have warned for years.

Euthanasia advocates emphasize that euthanasia and assisted suicide should only be permitted to take place under strict conditions and only for those who are suffering unbearably from incurable, deadly conditions. Experience in Holland and elsewhere has shown that maintaining such conditions or restrictions eventually becomes impossible once a nation has stated in its laws that some vulnerable, innocent persons may be killed for some reasons.

Others logically push the envelope and say, if some may take their lives or be killed, then why not other categories of persons? Who is to say who may live or die if the principle has been established in law that some vulnerable persons may die or be killed?

Also, the right to die invariably becomes the duty to die for persons considered a burden upon family, the medical system, institutions, the state. As well, once the practice of euthanasia becomes accepted many persons who become chronically ill or incapacitated will become afraid to enter hospitals, as they are now afraid in Holland, and will feel powerful pressure to allow themselves to be killed or to do the deed themselves.

Lastly, euthanasia is seen a solution to the huge imbalance of elderly persons resulting from the massive drop in birth rates over the past four decades because of the contraceptive/abortion and population control mentality.

It is important to note the refusal of extraordinary and burdensome medical treatment by a terminally ill patient or the patient’s legal proxy, in the case of incapacity, is not euthanasia. The bogeyman of requiring dying patients to suffer all kinds of pain and being hooked up to machines and many tubes just to keep them alive a little longer is a cruel fiction.

Patients have always and ethically had the right to refuse such treatment and allow their incurable condition to take its natural course. The current emphasis for such patients must be on quality palliative care and better provision of pain treatments. Canada is far behind many other countries in this area.

However, it should be emphasized that the provision of basic nutrition and hydration is NOT extraordinary treatment. This treatment may never ethically be removed from a patient unless it cannot actually prolong life or serve its function due to heart or kidney failure or in cases in which it may harm the patient. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly common for sick elderly and other patients to be quietly, unnoticeably and always very painfully killed through this removal of nutrition and hydration.

Abortion has proven to not be a solution to anything and has instead created numerous, serious and unexpected new problems. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are certain to create their own, severe social damage. These elements of a growing acceptance of a death culture threaten everyone and threaten to destroy the basic foundations of our entire civilization.