ALLIANCE ALERT 02/11/2016

Sanctity of Life: Euthanasia in Europe (and Canada), and Abortion in Scotland

You may have heard (and if you haven't, welcome to the Alliance Alert Daily Digest!) that the BBC is airing a documentary showing the final moments of a man who died in a Swiss euthanasia clinic. The documentary aired part two on Wednesday night, which depicts Simon's death. Of course, this was all despite Simon's wife's desire that her husband remain alive. A new group in Portugal, called "Direito a morrer com dignidade" (Right to die with dignity), is calling for a referendum on euthanasia. If Portugal managed to approve euthanasia (which is still far off; this call for a referendum does not mean Portugal will be enacting euthanasia laws tomorrow), it would be the fourth member of the European Union to do so, following the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. A special joint parliamentary committee in Canada has been looking over the issue of physician-assisted suicide. The background for the committee? Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that a ban on physician-assisted suicide was unconstitutional. Legislatures were given time to draft rules surrounding physician-assisted suicide, and Quebec confirmed the first legal assisted suicide earlier this year. During the special committee's hearings over the last few weeks, a number of groups testified, arguing for both sides of the issue. One noteworthy speaker was Cardinal Thomas Collins of the Toronto archdiocese, who argued that physicians are morally obliged to preserve the life of their patients, not end their lives. He argues that Canada ought to fund palliative care, rather than allowing physicians to kill their patients. How did we get here? If American thought on bioethics lines up at all with international thought, you will find this article at Public Discourse valuable. The arguments the author makes are not primarily about physician-assisted suicide (and, in fact, are actually about the rise of abortion in the U.S.), but don't miss the connection: In the same way that "American medical ethics shifted from a model of paternalistic beneficence to a model of patient autonomy" in abortion, so did it shift for physician-assisted suicide. After all, what could be more full of "patient autonomy" than allowing the patient to order a physician to end his or her life? There's a chance that more pressure will be applied to the current American presidential candidates to talk about the issue. The author of that last piece suspects that Republicans will need to speak out in favor of euthanasia fairly soon, since their constituents skew older. Given their pro-life stances (both the candidates and the constituents!), I don't suspect that will be the case. Scotland is now debating changes to their abortion laws. One pro-life group's fear? The nation will become a "tourist destination" for women who cannot procure abortions in their home countries.