The poison has jumped across the Atlantic from Netherlands and Belgium: Quebec has legalized active euthanasia.

I have discussed the contents of new law at length previously and I don’t want to repeat myself.  However, the bill did undergo some changes since I wrote about it, and there are certain sections of the new law that need to be emphasized, so here goes:

The euphemism for homicide in the law is “aid in dying,” which in turn, is defined as part of “end of life care.

Receiving “end of life care”–including euthanasia–is now a positive right. From the law (my emphasis):

RIGHTS WITH RESPECT TO END-OF-LIFE CARE: 4. Every person whose condition requires it has the right to receive end-of-life care subject to the specific requirements established by this Act.

Such care is provided to the person in a facility maintained by an institution, in a palliative care hospice or at home.

This isn’t just the right to ask and receive suicide assistance from a willing doctor, with no guarantee you will get it–as in Oregon. It is the positive right to be subjected to lethal-injection euthanasia or terminal sedation at the hand of the doctor you asked or someone his supervisor finds to kill you.

This means every institution that cares for the seriously ill, elderly, and injured must offer euthanasia:

7. Every institution must offer end-of-life care and ensure that it is provided to the persons requiring it in continuity and complementarity with any other care that is or has been provided to them.

Those eligible for euthanasia must:

(2) be of full age and capable of giving consent to care;
(3) be at the end of life;
(4) suffer from a serious and incurable illness;
(5) be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and (6) experience constant and unbearable physical or psychological suffering which cannot be relieved in a manner the patient deems tolerable.

Loose terms that will easily be subject to interpretation. I don’t believe for a second that these “limitations” mean anything much at all, except perhaps at first. So, within a few years, expect Quebec horrors similar to those I have repeatedly discussed from the Netherlands and Belgium.

Doctors and nurses must be complicit. That is they must inform their supervisors if they refuse to provide aid in dying. That supervisor or executive must then find a doctor willing to kill. I suspect many Hippocratic believing doctors will soon hear the words, “You’re fired!” or have some other limitations imposed on his or her practice.

And get this! Doctors, nurses, and pharmacist organizations are required to establish how-to-kill-your patients classes!

33. The council of physicians, dentists and pharmacists established for an institution must, in collaboration with the council of nurses of the institution, adopt clinical protocols for continuous palliative sedation and medical aid in dying. The protocols must comply with the clinical standards developed by the professional orders concerned.

Imagine you are a doctor, nurse, dentist (?!), pharmacist–even a hospice or nursing home administrator: You went into medicine to be a healer. You are now told that also have to be part of a bureaucratic killing system. And if you object? Prepare for professional ostracism, possible loss of position and/or license, and you can kiss any promotion goodbye.

Quebec’s reverse two-and-a-half somersaults, tuck dive into the doctor-administered death abyss is a glaring symptom of a deadly parasitic social affliction that is sucking the true meaning of compassion, professionalism, and righteousness clean out of our culture.

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Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC
Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC