Mr. Speaker, first let me make clear that I rise to address Bill C-407 on my own behalf as a representative of my constituents and not of my party. The Conservative Party will hold a completely free vote on this bill, as it does on all other matters of moral contention. We believe that members of Parliament should vote in a manner consistent with their consciences and/or the views of their constituents on matters such as this.
Bill C-407 seeks to amend the Criminal Code to permit active euthanasia, that is to say, the deliberate and lawful taking of innocent human life. I will start by addressing what I regard as the profound philosophical error at the heart of this bill and will then summarize some of the dangerous unintended consequences which would result from its adoption.
In a word, this legalization of euthanasia would change our social understanding of the human person as a subject with infinite and inherent value into a disposable object which can be eliminated at will. This bill is premised on a radical misunderstanding of the dignity of the human person. It is, in effect, an attack on the inalienable dignity of the human person, which is the foundational premise of liberal democracy and, indeed, of any culture which merits to be considered a civilization.
Properly conceived, human dignity is not a subjective sense of one's self worth, nor is it a reflection of one's worth in the eyes of society or the state. Dignity is not an ephemeral quality which ebbs or flows based on one's mood or social consensus or anyone's will. Rather, any coherent understanding of human rights, including the right to self-government, which is the predicate of democracy, is grounded in the inviolable dignity of the human person.
In other words, human dignity, which is the basis of our civilizational belief in the sanctity of human life, is ontological, that is to say, an essential and inseparable characteristic of human personhood, of human existence. To legalize or seek to legitimize the deliberate taking of innocent human life as this bill seeks to do is to commit the gravest offence possible against the human person. In short, it would turn a society such as ours, grounded as it is in this objective existential understanding of human dignity, on its head.
Obviously this truth of the human person is most clearly understood in theistic terms, that is to say that the human person is created in the image and likeness of God, an understanding most notably and beautifully summarized in the preamble of the foundational document of liberal democracy, the Declaration of Independence, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”, among which is the right to life.
However, this is by by no means a sectarian doctrine limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Rather, it is a truth universally understood throughout history by just societies, including our own. Let me cite some of the wide-ranging expressions of this truth that man cannot surrender his own life, nor can one take the life of another innocent human person.
From the 5th century BC until now, western physicians have sworn in the Hippocratic Oath, first, to do no harm and that:
I will not give a drug that is deadly to anyone if asked [for it], nor will I suggest the way--
Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of liberal democracy stated presciently:
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only [legitimate] object of good government.
The 1948 Declaration of Geneva of the World Medical Association states, “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from its beginning”.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone's right to life shall be protected by law and no one shall be deprived of his life intentionally.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in its 1992 decision in the Rodriguez case, stated, “Suicide remains an act which is fundamentally contrary to human nature”.
The Select Committee on Medical Ethics of the House of Lords concluded after an exhaustive study of euthanasia that society's prohibition against intentional killing is the cornerstone of law and social relationships, that it protects each one of us equally.
The United States Supreme Court concluded in a case similar to the Rodriguez case “We are confronted with a consistent and almost universal tradition that has long rejected the asserted right, and continues explicitly to reject it today, even for terminally ill, mentally capable adults”.
In our own Parliament the Special Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide concluded in 1995, “In a pluralistic society, respect for life is a societal value that transcends individual, religious or diverse cultural values”.
We can see the consequences of rejecting this universal understanding of the sanctity of human life in modern history. I am reminded of the words used by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov where one of his characters says that without God, anything becomes possible. To paraphrase that, without the sanctity of human life as an inviolable social principle, anything is possible.
That was nowhere more evident than in Nazi Germany in the earlier part of the last century. In the 1930s beginning on the grounds of compassionate treatment of the mentally ill and the severely infirm, euthanasia was unleashed in that country. Passive euthanasia became active euthanasia and active euthanasia became an entire cult of eugenics. We know what kind of horror and human tragedy that resulted in.
We can see the same slippery slope at work in Holland today. Three separate studies have concluded that an estimated 1,000 cases of active euthanasia occur a year without the consent of the patient. According to one study, Dutch doctors have gone from killing the terminally ill who asked for it, to killing the chronically ill who asked for it, to killing the depressed who had no physical illness but who asked for it, to killing newborn babies because they have birth defects even though by definition they cannot ask for it. The slippery slope is a reality in Holland today.
I would like to quote from a very thoughtful study that was conducted by a special committee in the state of New York regarding euthanasia. It spent several years examining the issue and concluded that the state of New York should not legitimize or legalize euthanasia. That study concluded the following:
Undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. Many individuals who contemplate suicide--including those who are terminally ill--suffer from treatable mental disorders, most commonly depression....If assisted suicide is legalized, many requests based on mental illness are likely to be granted, even though they do not reflect a competent, settled decision to die.
Requests for assisted suicide are also highly correlated with unrelieved pain and other discomfort associated with physical illness. Despite significant advances in palliative care, the pain and discomfort that accompany many physical illnesses are often grossly undertreated in current clinical practice. If assisted suicide is legalized, physicians are likely to grant requests for assisted suicide from patients in pain before all available options to relieve the patient's pain have thoroughly been explored.
The study further said:
If physician-assisted suicide is legalized, many individuals are likely to seek the option because their suffering and fears have not been adequately addressed.
The practices will pose the greatest risks to those who are poor, elderly, isolated, members of a minority group, or who lack access to good medical care.
This will result in the devaluation of the lives of the disabled. This is one reason that most Canadian disability groups are strongly opposed to this legislation.
I believe that compassion properly understood means literally in the root of the word “to suffer with”. To kill is not compassionate. I invite all members of the House to seriously consider the Rubicon that the sponsor of this bill invites us to cross. Once one crosses that Rubicon, one cannot cross back. If we say in our society that innocent human life does not have absolute value, then we will embark on a social experiment the consequences of which I am frightened to contemplate.
Let us take a stand for true compassion. Let us give the resources necessary to provide proper palliative care to those suffering terminal illnesses. Let us not say that killing constitutes compassion. Let us stand true to the value of compassion which defines our country.