Tea at Trianon: Canada: Euthanasia for the Mentally Ill

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 20, 2023

Canada: Euthanasia for the Mentally Ill

From the BBC:

As Canada prepares to expand its euthanasia law to include those with mental illness, some Canadians - including many of the country's doctors - question whether the country's assisted death programme has already moved too far, too fast. Dr Madeline Li can recall the first patient she helped die, about one month after Canada first legalised euthanasia in 2016. "I remember just how surreal it was," she said. A psychiatrist at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, she recalled checking on her patient that day, asking if she had the right music and final meal, and if she was sure she wanted to go ahead. The patient, in her mid-60s and suffering from ovarian cancer, said she was. Five minutes later, the woman was dead.
"It was like stepping off a cliff, that first one," Dr Li said. "Then time passes and it normalises." She has since overseen hundreds of medically assisted dying cases. Dr Li stressed repeatedly that a physician's personal opinions should not influence how they assess a patient for assisted death. But she has significant concerns about the expansion of Canada's euthanasia and assisted dying programme beyond the terminally ill. She is not alone.
Since 2016, Canada's medical assistance in dying programme - known by its acronym 'Maid' - has been available for adults with terminal illness. In 2021, the law was changed to include those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even if that condition was non-life threatening. This year, it is expected to change again to include some Canadians with mental illness.
That planned expansion has ignited controversy over the assisted death programme as a whole and raised concerns that it may be too easy for the vulnerable to die in Canada. Those fears have been stoked by a recent string of reports suggesting that for some, death has been used as a stopgap for a broken social safety net.
"Making death too ready a solution disadvantages the most vulnerable people, and actually lets society off the hook," Dr Li said. "I don't think death should be society's solution for its own failures." (Read more.)