Daily Archives: June 22, 2017

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (ChurchMilitant.com) - The pioneer for legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands is denouncing a lack of ethics as legal safeguards for vulnerable patients erode.

Dutch euthanasia pioneer and psychiatrist Boudewijn Chabot wrote an opinion pieceFriday that described the "worrisome rate" at which dementia and psychiatric patients are killed. He claims the legal safeguards protecting the vulnerable are being quietly eroded. He also claims panels reviewing the requests are concealing incidents of wrongful death.

Chabot is most worried about the increase in euthanasia of dementia patients. While he considers the numbers to be relatively small with 141 killed in 2016 diagnostic tests are identifying age-related chronic psychiatric diseases earlier. Thus, this more often leads to a large increase in the number of patients with "incurable" conditions. And the cost for years of medical care can lead to financial devastation adversely affecting the patient's quality of life. He predicts "this could cause a skyrocketingincrease in the number of euthanasia cases."

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Chabot notes these patients are not euthanizedin hospitals but mostly in the country's End of Life Clinics. Like abortion mills, the doctors there do not provide care for the patient but only purport to alleviate suffering by killing him. Doctors and patients soon learn the keywords and phrases to use to get the desired result.

"Within the End of Life Clinic, a group culture has emerged in which euthanasia is regarded as virtuous labor," says Chabot.

Chabot was prosecuted for the 1991assisted suicide of a50-year-oldhealthy woman suffering from "existential distress." Though he wasfound guilty of the crime, he wasn't punished. The case became a landmark, however, leading to the Euthanasia Act of 2002, which legalized assisted suicide in the Netherlands.

Since its legalization, the Netherlands has steadily loosened its restrictions on assisted suicide. In 2016, it looked into expanding the age range for children to be euthanized, broadening it from age 12 all the way down to age one.

Chabot explains that "lawful" euthanasia must fulfill three criteria, the first being that the patient must make a voluntary and deliberate request; second, he must be experiencing unbearable suffering with noprospect of improvement; and third, there must be no reasonable alternativetreatment.

Chabot notes that dementia patients are put to death mostly by doctors and the End of Life Clinics, not in hospitals. He says since the standards for physical illnesses are being used for psychiatric illnesses, the clinic's psychiatrists won't need to enter into a treatment relationship with patients before prescribing death. A psychiatrist himself, he says it is difficult to determine if a death wish is "serious and enduring," even with a developed patient-doctor relationship.

Chabotsees the shift in thinking in the comment made byGovertHartogh, an ethicist from the evaluation committee: "The patient suffers unbearably when he says he suffers unbearably, and an alternative is not a reasonable alternative if the patient rejects it."

With this comment, Chabotnotes that the patient's own judgment of suffering is given the most weight, similar to what the abortion industry has done with the woman's evaluation of "distress"in order to get an abortion.

What worries Chabot is the recent development that prior written consent for euthanasia is now taken to have the same weight as verbal consent. The patients' own determinations of "unbearable suffering" as well as his written consent now being sufficient, "the door has been opened wide for euthanasia of patients with severe dementia."

One other troubling aspect is that in cases where dementia patients are being killed without their express consent and against their wishes, the review committees are not identifying the execution as wrongful.Chabot notes that dementiapatients are being secretly drugged prior to the arrival of doctors, either by the family or by the doctors themselves, to avoid resistance by the patients. This technique is used to execute patients with severe neurological disabilities to get around consent laws.

In one case, the doctor put sleep medication in a patient's coffee, but the woman woke up just before the injection and began to fight off the doctor. The family was called in to hold the woman down so they could administer the lethal dose. The doctor claimed the procedure was done with "care."

Current rates of doctor prescribed euthanasia at clinics are about one per doctor per month. Chabot wonders what happens to the doctors when prescribing death becomes "routine." He believes they may have good intentions, but they might be "fuel[ing] the death wish in vulnerable people who are still trying to live with their disabilities."

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Dutch Euthanasia Pioneer Disturbed by Kill Rates - Church Militant

London, England, Jun 22, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Legal efforts to bar the parents of a British baby born with a disabling medical condition from seeking treatment overseas are based on deep ethical errors, a Catholic expert in medical ethics has warned.

It seems to me completely wrongheaded that the state should be stepping in here when the decision that the parents are making is really aimed at the best interests of the child, Dr. Melissa Moschella, a Catholic University of America philosophy professor, told CNA.

Its not crazy, its not abusive, its not neglectful. Its the decision of parents who want to, however they can, to give their very sick child a chance for life.

She said such a decision should be completely within the prerogative of the parent, citing the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to Moschella, that declaration clearly indicates that the parents, not the state will have primarily responsibility.

Charlie Gard, now aged 10 months, is believed to suffer from a rare genetic condition called mitochondrial depletion syndrome, which causes progressive muscle weakness. The disorder is believed to affect fewer than 20 children worldwide. Charlie has been in intensive care since October 2016. He has suffered significant brain damage due to the disease and is currently fed through a tube. He breathes with an artificial ventilator and is unable to move.

His parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, have wanted to keep him on life support and transport him to the United States in order to try an experimental treatment.

However, their decision was challenged in court by hospitals and an attorney appointed to represent Charlie. The parents appealed a High Court decision, and their appeal to the U.K.s Supreme Court was rejected.

Their final legal challenge is presently before the European Court of Human Rights. The court has said Charlie must continue to receive treatment until its judges make a decision.

Moschella said the legal decisions favoring ending life support for Charlie are effectively telling the parents that their childs life has no value and that therefore they should cease any effort to heal him of his disease.

These decisions represent a quality of life ethic and an ideology that say human life is valuable only if it meets certain capacities.

Its the same ideology that underlies allowing euthanasia or physician assisted suicide, she said. Thats completely opposed to the Catholic view in which every human life has intrinsic value regardless of the quality of that life.

Charlies parents have raised more than $1.6 million to help seek experimental treatment for him in the U.S. Their decision faced legal challenge from Great Ormond Street Hospital, where he is being treated.

In early April, the babys hospital challenged their efforts. The hospitals experts argued in court that long-term life support should be withdrawn from the baby because his quality of life was so poor.

Charlies court-appointed lawyer argued before a High Court judge that any treatments in the U.S. would be experimental and long-term life-support would only prolong the process of dying.

Charlies parents had their own legal representative in the case, who argued that travel to the U.S. for treatment would not cause the boy significant suffering or harm and could give him another chance.

Yates, Charlies mother, has argued that she would welcome any treatment that could help him live. She also suggested anything learned during an experimental treatment could help treat future babies who suffer from the disorder.

According to Moschella, who has a background in parental rights and medical ethics, said parental rights derive both from the special intimate relationship they have with their child and from their primary obligations to care for their own children. Interfering with their conscientious best efforts is akin to violating religious freedom, she said.

It is a deep violation of conscience, when, without a very serious reason, the state presents parents from fulfilling that conscientious obligation, she said.

She noted that what Charlies parents are trying to do by helping secure extraordinary treatment is not ethically required by Catholic ethics.

It would be perfectly morally acceptable should they choose to forgo seeking further treatment and take the baby off life support and allow him to pass away naturally due to the underlying disease, the professor said. But its also acceptable, on Catholic ethics, to do whatever you can to heal a person if you think that theres any chance that a treatment could have a positive effect.

She suggested that extraordinary treatment could be unethical only when there is absolutely no hope of any benefit whatsoever and the treatment is painful to the patient, or the treatment would take away important resources that are needed to help other patients who could benefit.

Moschella said there should only be legal intervention against the wishes of parents in cases when there is a clear case of abuse or neglect or some significant threat to the public order.

Neither of those situations is the case here.

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Euthanasia mindset looms over disabled baby's legal fight, ethicist warns - Catholic News Agency

Keating Hall at Fordham University (Doug Olson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Panoramio and Wikimedia Commons)

Blogs | Jun. 21, 2017

Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. (CCC 2324)

Why is a supposedly Catholic university pushing assisted suicide? That's what some are asking Fordham University in New York. Last week I joined agroup opposed to assisted suicide outside the school. Assisted suicide/euthanasia has become a very hot debate in New York State (the so called Medical Aid in Dying Act) yet few really understand what legalization would actually mean.

According to its web site, Fordham has hosted at least four workshopsfor student creditin collaboration with the pro-euthanasia group End of Life Choices New York(EOLCNY) in justthe past year:

1.Being Mortal Documentary and Discussion(September 6, 2016) by EOLCNY and Fordham University, School of Social Work

2.How to Die in Oregon:Screening and discussion of NY Medical Aid in Dying Act (October 18, 2016) by Department of Sociology and Anthropology/Compassion & ChoicesLaurie Leonard, LMSW, Executive Director,EOLCNY

3. Choice in Dying: Current Legal, Policy and Ethical Issues(February 25, 2017) Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service

4.Palliative Art: Using the Arts to Improve Care at the End of Life(June 7, 2017) by EOLCNYFordham University, School of Social Work

EOLCNY is backing the Medical Aid in Dying Act currently being pushed in New York. The law allows terminally ill patients to request medication from a doctor to kill themselves. EOLCNY is a previous affiliate of Compassion & Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society). EOLCNY became independent of Compassion & Choices that same year courtesy of a $300,000 grant from the billionaire globalist George Soross Open Society Foundations.

The group'smission states clearly, We advocate to legalize medical aid in dying in New York through litigation or by legislation. EOLCNY has initiated a lawsuit which is currently making its way through the system. We seek a ruling to clarify that a mentally competent, terminally ill patient has the right to obtain medicine by prescription that he or she could ingest to achieve a peaceful death.

David Leven, executive director emeritus and senior consultant for EOCNY, and a regular guest lecturer for Fordham Graduate School of Social Service, gave the Fordham presentation in February. He's said publicly that neither the Catholic Church for any other religious group has a say in end-of-life issues, dismissing the voice of the disabilities rights community as well.

It's disturbing that a Catholic university hasn't offered a single presentation or workshop on theCatholic perspective on assisted suicide. In fact, the NY Alliance Against Assisted Suicide has offered to present, with no response. Calls to the university for comment were not returned.

Outside the university, we had dozens of interactions with students, faculty, and administrators of Fordham. Most had no idea how one-sided the euthanasia issue is being presented to students. We encountered many peopleon the street who say they support the legalization of assisted suicidebut have no idea what is actually in the Bill says and what the real-life ramifications are. Some were truly shocked to learn the facts.

I didn't either until I was clued in. It's not as simple an issue as assisted suicide advocates would have us believe.

Did you know the family of the person seeking to end his life does not have to be notified? One pro-euthanasia person I spoke to found that very surprising. She said she strongly supports assisted suicide laws so that people can check out when they want to. Actually, she didn't believe me that the family wouldn't be notified. But it's true. The pending New York law does not require the immediate family who very well might want to discuss such a drasticfataldecision with the personbe informed.

Did you know that doctors cannot opt out of participating inan intentional deathassisted suicide? Legalization requires them to either provide the lethal dose or refer to a doctor who will do so. What about their freedom of conscience? And what about a physician who knows he can cure the patient but is denied the opportunity to use his medical skills and curative treatment (along with the patient who is similarly denied such treatment)? One student I spoke to who is from Oregon described what a disaster legalization has been for his state.

Did you know the law doesn't allow for protecting a patient from any financial pressures from someone else that they end their life now? A Fordham law student I spoke with said, That's insane. Someone who'sgetting an inheritance might be urging assisted suicide, and if the pressured person is disabled, has a mental health issue, or is on medication, they could be especially vulnerable to such pressure.

Did you know that the death certificate for a person who dies by assisted suicide/euthanasia reads 'terminal illness' rather than assisted suicide? This only helps someone with murderous intentions, someone who could benefit from the person's death, as there would be no legal way to prosecute. One woman on her lunch breakhad no idea legalization would actually protect a potential murderer from 'getting away with murder.' This woman stood and chatted with us for a while, signed our petition against legalization, and helped us hand out brochures with the factsall on her way tonoonMass.

Did you know that most disability groups oppose legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia, understanding that it discriminates against the disabled in encouraging them toend their lives? They resent being viewed only as a financial burden and not as individual people with innate dignity. A young guy passing our group in his electric wheelchair stopped to read our signs and our brochure andmade this crucial point to us.

Assisted suicide poses a threat to those with disabilities or who are in vulnerable circumstances. When assisted suicide becomes an option, pressure can be placed on these individuals to take that option. Research shows that most people who say they want to die by assisted suicide would not want to if they had sufficient love and support around them. Prescription requests from terminally ill individuals for suicide drugs are often based on fear and depression. Most cases of depression among terminally ill people can be successfully treated. Yet primary care physicians are generally not experts in diagnosing depression. Nothing in the Oregon or Washington assisted suicide laws compel doctors to refer patients for evaluation by a psychologist or psychiatrist to screen for depression or mental illness.

If assisted suicide is made legal, it quickly becomes just another form of treatment and as such, will always be the cheapest option. In an already cost-conscious healthcare environment, this is a serious concern. Oregonian Barbara Wagner was denied coverage of her cancer treatment but received a letter from the Oregon Health Plan that stated the plan would cover assisted suicide. Another Oregon resident, Randy Stroup, received an identical letter, telling him that the Oregon Health Plan would cover the cost of his assisted suicide, but would not pay for medical treatment for his prostate cancer.

One would think that even asecularuniversity would offer at leastone opposing viewto fourpresentations all with the same agenda.

There are hundredsof groups that are sincerely opposed to assisted suicide legalization, including the group I protested with, NY Alliance Against Assisted Suicide,doctors and nurses groups, pro-life groupsand disability groups, including the poignantlynamed, Not Dead Yet. Other groups that have been suggested to Fordham to present the authentic Catholic view include the Human Life Alliance and Catholic Hospice.

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Fordham Won't Pull the Plug on Pro-Euthanasia Efforts | ncregister ... - National Catholic Register (blog)

Catholic pro-life advocate Patty Knap works hard to raise awareness about the growing push to legalize assisted suicide in the United States.

The Catholic Church strongly opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia, as well as abortion, because they destroy precious, valuable human lives. And Knap and many other Catholics are uniting with disability rights groups, medical professionals, pro-lifers and others to stop assisted suicide from becoming law across the U.S.

So Knap said she was extremely concerned to learn that Fordham University, a Catholic school in New York state, hosted several workshops with a pro-euthanasia group during the past school year. In contrast, Knap said she could not find a single workshop at the university that presented the Catholic perspective on assisted suicide.

In a column for the National Catholic Register, Knap wrote:

According to its web site, Fordham has hosted at least four workshopsfor student creditin collaboration with the pro-euthanasia group End of Life Choices New York(EOLCNY) in justthe past year

EOLCNY is backing the Medical Aid in Dying Act [doctor-prescribed suicide] currently being pushed in New York. The law allows terminally ill patients to request medication from a doctor to kill themselves. EOLCNY is a previous affiliate of Compassion & Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society). EOLCNY became independent of Compassion & Choices that same year courtesy of a $300,000 grant from the billionaire globalist George Soross Open Society Foundations.

Knap said the New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide, an alliance of disability rights, health care, civil rights, faith-based and patient advocacy groups, offered to give a presentation at the university, but it did not receive a response.

New York state lawmakers have been debating legislation that would legalize doctor-prescribed suicide in the state. The bill euphemistically describes the deadly procedure as medical aid in dying. It would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to an adult patient with intention to commit suicide.

An analysis by the New York State Catholic Conference states the bill lacks basic safeguards to protect vulnerable patients and adequate conscience protections for health care workers.

Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter.

Knap said she and a group of fellow advocates held an event outside Fordham last week to educate people about the bill.

Most had no idea how one-sided the euthanasia issue is being presented to students, she said. We encountered many peopleon the street who say they support the legalization of assisted suicide but have no idea what is actually in the Bill and what the real-life ramifications are.

Knap said many different groups are opposed to assisted suicide for various reasons, including doctors and nurses organizations, disability rights groups like Not Dead Yet and the Catholic-based Human Life Alliance, any one of which could provide a life-affirming perspective on the issue at Fordham.

One would think that even asecularuniversity would offer at leastone opposing viewto fourpresentations all with the same agenda, she wrote.

Society increasingly is encouraging vulnerable people to end their lives prematurely rather than receive treatment and support. Canada recently legalized assisted suicide, leading to nearly 1,000 government-condoned suicide deaths in the first year. In the United States, five states and Washington, D.C. now allow people to commit doctor-prescribed suicide. Data indicates that depression is the most common link to these suicide deaths, not physical pain.

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Catholic Fordham University Hosts Workshops With Euthanasia Group Promoting Assisted Suicide - LifeNews.com

From June 12 to 15, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice heard legal arguments relating to conscience rights for doctors in Ontario. Five doctors and three physicians organizations want the court to declare portions of policies created by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) a violation of doctors rights enshrined in the Charter. A decision is expected later this year.

CPSO, the respondent in the case, has stated they may suspend or sanction a doctor that refuses to participate in an assisted suicide, which they duplicitously in my opinion call medical aid in dying (MAID). Euthanasiasts prefer the euphemism because aid in dying sounds softer and gentler than kill. But the true definition of MAID is palliative care, whose future as a medical discipline has been thrown into uncertainty by the CPSOs bullish stance on assisted suicide.

The CPSOs conscience-hostile position is both unnecessary and unjust.

It is unnecessary because conscientious objection does no harm.The CPSOs concerns are based largely on invented hypotheticals about helpless patients being blocked by conscientious objectors from receiving referrals to doctors who can assist with their suicide.A practical system can easily route patient wishes without moral agency having to be exercised by the objector. Nobody presently eligible for euthanasia need suffer from some doctors exercising their conscience rights. In cases where geographic isolation and dependence on a single care-provider is a concern, there are easier and better solutions (tele-consultations, for instance) than forcing a local doctor to act against his or her conscience.

It is unjust because conscientious objection is the outward expression of many individuals core identity.The fact that this identity tends to coincide with Christian faith (a politically unpopular belief system) does not mean it should receive less respect in a democracy than a core gender identity that claims to need its own pronouns (a more politically trendy cause that presently receives near-reverential public respect).

But it is not the practical progress from A (the wish for euthanasia) to B (death) that bothers the CPSO; rather it appears the CPSO is disturbed by some members temerity in harbouring politically incorrect beliefs. We saw the same attitude in 2008 in a policy document(currently under review) issued by the CPSO on physicians conscientious objection to performing or referring for abortions.There was no shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions. Yet the documents thrust was to threaten conscientious objectors with aggressive Human Rights Commission retaliation for failing to co-operate with abortion provision or referrals.

I find it passing strange that physicians bent on practicing only the primary tenets of their noble profession whether it is facilitating healthy pregnancies and deliveries, or healing illnesses and mitigating suffering should endure shunning within their professional organization merely for holding to the originalist criterion of their vocation.

If the CPSO were a country, it would be Sweden.

Ellinor Grimmark is a Swedish midwife and devout Christian who was professionally blacklisted in Sweden for her pro-life beliefs. She had taken up her vocation in order to deliver and provide after-care for mothers, and assumed she had the right to a conscience carve-out (as a few other doctors and midwives had before her). In the birth wards where Grimmark worked, only one per cent of pregnancies, all late-term, ended in abortion and those were pre-planned. Moreover, Sweden is drastically short of midwives. So her assumption would seem to have been well-founded.

But Swedens infamously rigid opinion corridor is becoming more and more punitive of dissenters from what is considered correct thought. In the final term of her studies, when she made her conscientious objections to abortion clear, Grimmark was denied the right to practice. One hospital supervisor furiously demanded, How could you even think of becoming a midwife with these opinions? Elsewhere, she was offered counselling to overcome her views. In January, a TV segment framed Grimmark as emblematic of a global wave of oppression against women.

Grimmark was forced to accept a position in neighbouring Norway, where objectors are accommodated (this involved a four hours commute each way; eventually she and her husband moved there, where she has delivered over 200 babies). Grimmark sued her countyand claimed damages for violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been Swedish law since 1995. She lost her case, but will now appeal it to the European Court of Human Rights, which cannot overrule Swedens courts, but can order a compensation payment.

Norway and Denmark manage to deliver abortion services to all who require it without abrogating conscience rights. According to Grimmark, weve had mothers dying (in Sweden) because they didnt have midwives. Its crazy. Shes right.

Puritanism has been defined as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. The CPSO knows there is no shortage of abortionists and euthanasists. They are beset by the haunting irritation that some doctors somewhere harbour politically incorrect opinions. The CPSO is locked into its very own windowless, anti-democratic opinion corridor. Lets hope our courts have the wisdom to emulate the Norwegian model of conscience accommodation, rather than the Swedish one.

National Post kaybarb@gmail.com

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Barbara Kay: Doctors who conscientiously object to providing euthanasia referrals should not be forced to do so - National Post