{"id":250580,"date":"2016-06-18T10:24:58","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T10:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/canada-passes-assisted-suicide-bill-critics-say-it-will-trap-patients-in-intolerable-suffering\/"},"modified":"2016-06-18T10:24:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T10:24:58","slug":"canada-passes-assisted-suicide-bill-critics-say-it-will-trap-patients-in-intolerable-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/canada-passes-assisted-suicide-bill-critics-say-it-will-trap-patients-in-intolerable-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada passes assisted suicide bill, critics say it will &#039;trap patients in intolerable suffering&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        Canada has adopted a law permitting assisted suicide for terminally ill adults whose death is \u201creasonably foreseeable.&#8221; Some critics say the law prevents those with degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer&#8217;s from seeking medically-assisted death.<\/p>\n<div readability=\"98.514309076043\">\n<p>Caving in to pressure by Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberal government after weeks of rigorous parliamentary debate, senators finally approved the so-called Bill C-14 in a vote of 44 to 28 on Friday. The Canadian Medical Association said it was &#8220;<em>pleased that historic federal legislation on medical aid in dying is now in place.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The law was originally proposed after Canada&#8217;s Supreme Court overturned a ban on doctor-assisted suicide in 2015. The court\u2019s decision extended to adults suffering from intolerable physical or psychological pain and untreatable medical condition.<\/p>\n<div class=\"arcticle__read-more read-more\">\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"read-more__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/339677-canada-assisted-death-law\/\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"read-more__cover\" src=\"https:\/\/img.rt.com\/files\/2016.04\/thumbnail\/57106b49c36188f32d8b45eb.jpg\" alt=\"\u00a9 David Gray \"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>Critics, including politicians, patients and human rights activists, have been up in arms over the new restrictive law, which allows the luxury of assisted dying exclusively to adults suffering from an <em>&#8220;incurable<\/em>&#8221; disease or disability, &#8220;<em>in an advanced stage of irreversible decline.<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>The government&#8217;s bill will trap patients in intolerable suffering and takes away their hard-won charter right to choose assistance in dying,&#8221;<\/em> Josh Paterson, executive director the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, told Canadian Press.<\/p>\n<p>Many fear that the bill, which received royal assent less than two hours after the Senate vote, will fail to protect vulnerable Canadians.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe biggest question is, can this bill as written right now actually protect somebody who is either depressed, having mental illness issues, or is incompetent,\u201d<\/em> executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Alex Schadenberg told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lifesitenews.com\/news\/breaking-canadian-senate-passes-euthanasia-bill\" target=\"_blank\">LifeSiteNews<\/a>. \u201c<em>And the answer is no.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>He said that under Bill C-14, <em>\u201cthe decision of the nurse practitioner or the doctor is only based on whether or not they are \u2018of the opinion\u2019 that you meet the criteria.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThis is, in fact, a very horrific bill as it\u2019s written. It is worse than the Belgian law; it is worse than the Netherlands,<\/em>\u201d Schadenberg added.<\/p>\n<p>Medically-assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Albania, Colombia and Japan, as well as in the American states of Washington, California, Vermont, Montana, Oregon and New Mexico.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Medical assistance in dying is a difficult, complex and deeply personal issue,&#8221;<\/em> Canada&#8217;s Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott acknowledged in a joint statement, adding that the legislation succeeded in striking &#8220;<em>the right balance between personal autonomy for those seeking access to medically assisted dying and protecting the vulnerable.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/347256-canada-euthanasia-assisted-suicide\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada has adopted a law permitting assisted suicide for terminally ill adults whose death is \u201creasonably foreseeable.&#8221; Some critics say the law prevents those with degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer&#8217;s from seeking medically-assisted death. Caving in to pressure by Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberal government after weeks of rigorous parliamentary debate, senators finally approved the so-called Bill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-250580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}