鱿鱼视频app

On Jan. 30, Couture received a copy of a press release from Marguerite Blais, the Quebec minister responsible for seniors, who kicked off Suicide Prevention Week by expressing alarm over the high rates of suicide among the elderly and criticizing the belief that suicide is a normal response to growing older.聽Couture said Blais has made as eloquent a plea as any she has heard that suicide is never a normal or acceptable response to age or illness.

鈥淗ow could a medicalized suicide be acceptable?鈥� Couture asked. 鈥淭here鱿鱼视频app something missing. I don鈥檛 get it.鈥�

Ottawa Hospital palliative care chief Dr. Jose Pereira told the committee legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide 鈥減laces people at risk.鈥� He cited Oregon, where one in six people who received assisted suicide were found to have untreated depression.

鈥淢y brother-in-law committed suicide last year, and it was a very difficult time for our family,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd looking back, we feel it was a depression that wasn鈥檛 treated.鈥�

Pereira, who has worked in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is allowed, said he observed the rules change over time.聽At first assisted suicide was only supposed to apply to those who were terminally ill, at the end of life and suffering.聽Yet within two years, there was a campaign to allow assisted suicide for those 鈥渋n long-term care facilities and nursing homes, for people who were elderly and felt that they didn鈥檛 want to live any more.鈥�

Joan Lusignan, who is in her eighties, told the committee its work has her worried.

鈥淲hat will our children and future generations think of a government that on one hand spends large sums of our money and effort to help prevent the escalating rate of suicides among young people in Quebec, but at the same time allows other people to help them commit suicide? The problem of suicide doesn鈥檛 just affect one person, it haunts the whole family for generations,鈥� she said.

Couture is worried by how political the process has become.聽She noted how the MNAs tend to zero in on the five or six hard cases of individuals whose stories seem to recur over and over at the hearings.

鈥淭hey really get stuck on the individual stories, the exceptions,鈥� Couture said.聽鈥淲e don鈥檛 build a law on exceptions like that. We can鈥檛 afford to do that.鈥�

Most of the MNAs鈥� questions, especially for those who identified themselves as religious, raised the hard cases of those suffering from terminal illness who clearly want death. They asked why these people think they can impose their religious views on others who disagree.

Couture said that line of questioning is typical.

There have been 300 or so testimonies presented to the committee so far.聽鱿鱼视频app 80 per cent have been made by individuals.聽The rest have been made on behalf of groups. Couture estimates they have been about two to one against legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide, though reports have said the presentations are about 50/50.

The committee has also said it is not numbers it is interested in so much as the 鈥渜uality鈥� or the emotional appeal of the presentation, especially from individual citizens, Couture said.聽Yet emotionally touching stories of those who pitched in as a family to take care of dying parents and spouses 鈥渄on鈥檛 seem to touch them,鈥� she said.

The process has been set up to test the tolerance level for assisted suicide in those exceptional cases, said Couture, but she warned the province better 鈥渢hink twice鈥� about introducing a new bureaucracy that might require two doctors signing聽off to kill patients when 鈥渙ne million people like me don鈥檛 have a family doctor.鈥�

The province did not expect the level of response, she said.聽If politicians go ahead and 鈥渟muggle鈥� in euthanasia and assisted suicide under a euphemism like 鈥渕edical aid in dying鈥� she believes Quebeckers will find it unacceptable and rise up.