Culture & Ethics
Medicine
Quebec Can’t Wait to Kill
Waiting periods for reflection are supposed to be a “safeguard” against abuse in euthanasia and assisted suicide. That has been exposed as mere veneer as Quebec euthanasia advocates are furious that the province has imposed a ten-day waiting period.
The federal assisted-dying law requires a 10-day delay between a patient’s request for doctor-assisted death and the administration of the procedure.
Quebec’s law doesn’t stipulate a waiting period before a doctor-assisted death is administered, though patients have typically received the procedure within 48 to 72 hours. “When you’re really ill, you’re at the end your life and you’re really suffering….Each hour, each day can be an interminable agony.”
“They changed the law by simply sending out a letter,” said Hivon, who is among five candidates campaigning to become the new PQ leader.
Once you accept killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering, the time will come when getting dead takes first priority, not protecting the lives of the despairing ill and disabled.
Things are deteriorating in Canada very swiftly. U.S., take warning!
Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.
Photo: Parliament Building, Quebec, by dszpiro on Flickr [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.