Euthanasia in Canada, Supreme Court Ruled this Morning

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Kimmio said:
If the "voiceless" don't get to decide who kills them or not because they are deemed worthless and powerless, how are they going to affect change with the political process?
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This went to the Supreme Court due to some people with disabilities.
 
Yes. It appears there are some people with disabilities who don't want equal rights for people with disabilities. Kind of like gay Republicans. Read the CCPD links (or don't). Up to you.
 
Ahhh so they're wrong because you are the arbiter of what all people with disabilities want?

I notice that you won't own up to what you said earlier about Robert Latimer and are instead attacking my knowledge of people with disabilities. Some of the people I know with disabilities want the option to choose - like my friend, like my Dad and like me. I guess my experience doesn't count for anything because I don't agree with you and didn't read a bunch of stuff that you had just posted and instead focussed on what my concerns were (which I notice again you didn't address)

I didn't read it yet (it's suppertime her in the East) - I had planned on it but given that it is not open season on the hunting of healthy and unsuffering people with disabilities who do not want to make the choice to have an assisted death it's really not germane to the conversation we are having. I mean, really, do you think we'll see Elmer Fudd posters that say we're hunting PWD? If you don't want this to be an option for yourself under any circumstances make that known in your living will - mine will say help me to die humanely and without suffering if I can't be saved - that is my belief and I'm entitled to have it under the Canadian Constitution.

I also notice that you don't address the MP or Susan Rodriguez - I guess they don't count either because they're not in your Venn diagram of what it means to be right and just.

And, yes, I do know that women, people below the poverty line and people with disabilities are underrepresented at the political level but we're not going to get our voices heard by screaming, mud slinging and refusing to engage in the unjust process. Rosa Parkes didn't demand a better bus for blacks but sat on the same bus and changes were made because of that - not easy and not necessarily fair but that is the system we have so it is up to us to figure out how to get our voices heard.

I will bow out of this part of the discussion now - I will never be able to make my point and I don't like how I feel having this debate with you again - I'm mad at myself for lowering myself to mudslinging and the need to whip out my credentials/experience to show you how big they are.
 
I remember daisy Janes nuanced input back in the day.

Kimmio, contrary to your assertions, you do not speak for everyone or understand the variety of lives

Justme, i honour your openness to your vulnerability.

My mother lived with trigeminal neuralgia, also known as the suicide disease. She wanted to die. She talked about parking the car on a train track. She quit eating. Didn't take care of health concerns. In fact, having open conversations with the doctor may have helped resolve the issue earlier. She was pain free for the last 6 months of her life, but I know she would have been gone without the solution. Life was excruciating 24 hrs per day, 7 days per week
 
Justme said:
I don't think you are understanding me - I have no problem with your BELIEFs. I may not agree with them, but that's what makes the world go around and why we live in a democracy where our elected officials make legislation ostensibly based on what their constituents - the people who elected them - want.

What I do have a problem with is when you DEFAME someone by saying what his reason was for doing what he did. Not only do I think (my opinion which you are free to disagree with) that it is morally wrong to do so it is also illegal.

(I'm waiting for you to respond saying that society is ableist and not willing to take the rights of people with disabilities into consideration so therefore lawmakers are not in the right position to make laws)

(Regardless this is not about Latimer - it's about being able to make one's own decision to end one's life on their own terms when there is proof that it will end)
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Robert Latimer murdered his daughter. He's on record saying that he didn't think her life was worth living anymore. He's on record saying that the day she was born was sadder than the day she died. The Latimers were due to have another child when Tracy was killed. I don't doubt the family's life was difficult at times (changing diapers and feeding her was part of the difficulty - it was about to get harder with a feeding tube and he had no right to decide) but I do believe he did not act compassionately with HER best interest in mind - even if he thought so. I do believe he got his own best interest mixed up with hers.
 
Far more germane to this discussion is the case of Dr. Donald Low. He died about 15 months ago, apparently, of brain cancer. He would have liked to have died a little earlier, and with a little more dignity, than he did.

He makes his own case, here:


His widow describes her husband's death and his cause, on CBC's White Coat, Black Arts: http://www.cbc.ca/radio_template_2012/audiopop.html?autoPlay=true&clipIds=2625501643
 
Justme said:
Ahhh so they're wrong because you are the arbiter of what all people with disabilities want?

I notice that you won't own up to what you said earlier about Robert Latimer and are instead attacking my knowledge of people with disabilities. Some of the people I know with disabilities want the option to choose - like my friend, like my Dad and like me. I guess my experience doesn't count for anything because I don't agree with you and didn't read a bunch of stuff that you had just posted and instead focussed on what my concerns were (which I notice again you didn't address)

I didn't read it yet (it's suppertime her in the East) - I had planned on it but given that it is not open season on the hunting of healthy and unsuffering people with disabilities who do not want to make the choice to have an assisted death it's really not germane to the conversation we are having. I mean, really, do you think we'll see Elmer Fudd posters that say we're hunting PWD? If you don't want this to be an option for yourself under any circumstances make that known in your living will - mine will say help me to die humanely and without suffering if I can't be saved - that is my belief and I'm entitled to have it under the Canadian Constitution.

I also notice that you don't address the MP or Susan Rodriguez - I guess they don't count either because they're not in your Venn diagram of what it means to be right and just.

And, yes, I do know that women, people below the poverty line and people with disabilities are underrepresented at the political level but we're not going to get our voices heard by screaming, mud slinging and refusing to engage in the unjust process. Rosa Parkes didn't demand a better bus for blacks but sat on the same bus and changes were made because of that - not easy and not necessarily fair but that is the system we have so it is up to us to figure out how to get our voices heard.

I will bow out of this part of the discussion now - I will never be able to make my point and I don't like how I feel having this debate with you again - I'm mad at myself for lowering myself to mudslinging and the need to whip out my credentials/experience to show you how big they are.
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We're talking about what constitutes a valuable life...and if we support laws which determine when it's okay to kill someone based on level of impairment it is a very slippery slope and does not bode well for the disability rights movement.
 
Justme said:
Ahhh so they're wrong because you are the arbiter of what all people with disabilities want?

I notice that you won't own up to what you said earlier about Robert Latimer and are instead attacking my knowledge of people with disabilities. Some of the people I know with disabilities want the option to choose - like my friend, like my Dad and like me. I guess my experience doesn't count for anything because I don't agree with you and didn't read a bunch of stuff that you had just posted and instead focussed on what my concerns were (which I notice again you didn't address)

I didn't read it yet (it's suppertime her in the East) - I had planned on it but given that it is not open season on the hunting of healthy and unsuffering people with disabilities who do not want to make the choice to have an assisted death it's really not germane to the conversation we are having. I mean, really, do you think we'll see Elmer Fudd posters that say we're hunting PWD? If you don't want this to be an option for yourself under any circumstances make that known in your living will - mine will say help me to die humanely and without suffering if I can't be saved - that is my belief and I'm entitled to have it under the Canadian Constitution.

I also notice that you don't address the MP or Susan Rodriguez - I guess they don't count either because they're not in your Venn diagram of what it means to be right and just.

And, yes, I do know that women, people below the poverty line and people with disabilities are underrepresented at the political level but we're not going to get our voices heard by screaming, mud slinging and refusing to engage in the unjust process. Rosa Parkes didn't demand a better bus for blacks but sat on the same bus and changes were made because of that - not easy and not necessarily fair but that is the system we have so it is up to us to figure out how to get our voices heard.

I will bow out of this part of the discussion now - I will never be able to make my point and I don't like how I feel having this debate with you again - I'm mad at myself for lowering myself to mudslinging and the need to whip out my credentials/experience to show you how big they are.
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The CCPD links, one of them, discusses Susan Rodrigues better than I can articulate.
 
@Pinga I just looked-up trigeminal neuralgia - it sounds devastating and so painful. I'm sorry she had that and that you all had to see her suffer. You just never know what path a person has travelled.
 
Pinga said:
I remember daisy Janes nuanced input back in the day.

Kimmio, contrary to your assertions, you do not speak for everyone or understand the variety of lives

Justme, i honour your openness to your vulnerability.

My mother lived with trigeminal neuralgia, also known as the suicide disease. She wanted to die. She talked about parking the car on a train track. She quit eating. Didn't take care of health concerns. In fact, having open conversations with the doctor may have helped resolve the issue earlier. She was pain free for the last 6 months of her life, but I know she would have been gone without the solution. Life was excruciating 24 hrs per day, 7 days per week
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Are you aware that I am not speaking for myself only. I have sited sources of an entire rights movement aligned with the same opinion? Please take that into consideration.

I am sorry about your mom. That sounds like an awful thing to live with. What I am trying to get across is we need to be very careful that assisted suicide is not so liberally applied as to diminish the lives of people with disabilities (even further) because the courts sets benchmarks on what impairments are worth living with or not and further puts in people's minds that people with certain impairments must not have any quality of life to speak of. It really undermines efforts of people with severe disabilities to be seen as equals. Which is an even bigger issue than this. 40 years of fighting for equality and still disproportionately unequal.
 
Kimmio said:
If the "voiceless" don't get to decide who kills them or not because they are deemed worthless and powerless, how are they going to affect change with the political process?
Click to expand...


This has nothing to do with someone else making decisions for voiceless ones. This has to do with competent adults who meet very strict criteria requesting assistance in doing something that they have thought long and hard about.
 
BetteTheRed said:
Far more germane to this discussion is the case of Dr. Donald Low. He died about 15 months ago, apparently, of brain cancer. He would have liked to have died a little earlier, and with a little more dignity, than he did.

He makes his own case, here:


His widow describes her husband's death and his cause, on CBC's White Coat, Black Arts: http://www.cbc.ca/radio_template_2012/audiopop.html?autoPlay=true&clipIds=2625501643
Click to expand...

Dr. Low was an incredible individual. There is no reason why he couldn't decide when it was time to bow out of his fight. I am so glad that we are moving in this direction and am confident that the law will appropriate safeguards in place and if there are not it will be adjusted. And given that very few doctors surveyed by the Canadian Medical Association said that they would participate, it is doubtful that it will be widespread. But then there aren't that many doctors interested in palliative care medicine either. And the right people seem to be involved in crafting the proposed legislation. (Note that no one is making a decision that someone's life is not worth living other than the person who no longer wants to continue suffering)
https://www.cma.ca/En/Pages/end-of-...ke-lead-role-in-crafting-new-regulations.aspx
 
Seeler said:
This has nothing to do with someone else making decisions for voiceless ones. This has to do with competent adults who meet very strict criteria requesting assistance in doing something that they have thought long and hard about.
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What makes you certain it will only be people who have "thought long and hard about it"?
 
Seeler said:
This has nothing to do with someone else making decisions for voiceless ones. This has to do with competent adults who meet very strict criteria requesting assistance in doing something that they have thought long and hard about.
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I hope so. I am also concerned about which impairments that individuals have thought long and hard about will go down in the books as worthy reasons for dying while there are others with the same impairments fighting for equality in life - doesn't that concern make any sense to anyone? Voicelessness is often, pertaining to people with disabilities, assumed to be the case by those who are able bodied - as people with disabilities are put into oppressed positions - in fact that's a huge factor in the struggle for rights.
 
Justme said:
Ahhh so they're wrong because you are the arbiter of what all people with disabilities want?

I notice that you won't own up to what you said earlier about Robert Latimer and are instead attacking my knowledge of people with disabilities. Some of the people I know with disabilities want the option to choose - like my friend, like my Dad and like me. I guess my experience doesn't count for anything because I don't agree with you and didn't read a bunch of stuff that you had just posted and instead focussed on what my concerns were (which I notice again you didn't address)

I didn't read it yet (it's suppertime her in the East) - I had planned on it but given that it is not open season on the hunting of healthy and unsuffering people with disabilities who do not want to make the choice to have an assisted death it's really not germane to the conversation we are having. I mean, really, do you think we'll see Elmer Fudd posters that say we're hunting PWD? If you don't want this to be an option for yourself under any circumstances make that known in your living will - mine will say help me to die humanely and without suffering if I can't be saved - that is my belief and I'm entitled to have it under the Canadian Constitution.

I also notice that you don't address the MP or Susan Rodriguez - I guess they don't count either because they're not in your Venn diagram of what it means to be right and just.

And, yes, I do know that women, people below the poverty line and people with disabilities are underrepresented at the political level but we're not going to get our voices heard by screaming, mud slinging and refusing to engage in the unjust process. Rosa Parkes didn't demand a better bus for blacks but sat on the same bus and changes were made because of that - not easy and not necessarily fair but that is the system we have so it is up to us to figure out how to get our voices heard.

I will bow out of this part of the discussion now - I will never be able to make my point and I don't like how I feel having this debate with you again - I'm mad at myself for lowering myself to mudslinging and the need to whip out my credentials/experience to show you how big they are.
Click to expand...
Rosa sat at the back of the bus and in that action demanded equal rights. I worked in government contracted services and was the "token" person with a visible disability (although numerous people developed mental illness and went on stress leave at this place - highest turnover I've ever witnessed). And I see the merits of changing the system from the inside out as best we can - really believed in that - didn't work out for me. But not in adapting to the system if the system is unjust. That wasn't the same to me as sitting at the back of the bus.
 
" In Canada, Sue Rodriguez comes immediately to mind. Some academic researchers have examined the views of people with disabilities on LAS. American researchers Gill and Voss (2005) discovered that while research participants with disabilities were fairly evenly divided in their support for and against LAS for people with terminal illness, the majority opposed LAS for people with disabilities."

And what was struck down today supported the idea that people with terminal illnesses who feel that they no longer want to suffer can make a decision affecting their own life. CCPD does not share that few but given their own writings this is not reflective of the majority of people with disabilities who are split on the idea.
http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/humanrig...nadians-with-disabilities-we-are-not-dead-yet
 
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