Assisted suicide recommendations deplored

The Canadian parliamentary committee set up to make recommendations on assisted suicide made sweeping proposals triggering angry responses from medical associations and the Church, writes Peter Kavanagh.

The recommendations, released last week, include: an insistence that individual conscience rights are not infringed by requiring a doctor to redirect a patient to a doctor willing to assist suicide; and recommendations that assisted suicide be available regardless of medical condition, or age; that mental illness should not be a barrier to accessing the right to die; and that mechanisms be put in place to ensure that those incapable of seeking assisted suicide by reason of dementia be allowed “treatment” to end their lives.

The Canadian Medical Association and the Catholic Medical Associations both expressed dismay that the committee would require doctors to violate their conscience. A coalition of nine Catholic hospitals in Vancouver noted that “physician-assisted suicide contradicts the basic tenets of Catholic health care”.