Forcing hospitals to provide MAID is wrong

LETTERS

Re: “Should public institutions be able to opt out from MAID?”, May 17 Letter to the Editor.

Dr. Amies of Dying With Dignity Canada (DwDC) wants to force Catholic healthcare facilities (Covenant Health Care) to poison people.

In the typical deceptive language intended to hide the truth about what “MAID” really is, Dr. Amies declares that St. Michael’s Health Centre and St. Therese Villa, both operated by Covenant Health in Lethbridge, should be forced to provide MAID. MAID, which is euthanasia and assisted suicide, stands for “medical assistance in dying.” It consists of procedures in which the intent is to kill persons by poisoning. As of May 17, 130 people in Alberta have been exterminated by poisoning in Alberta hospitals, care homes, and at home, either directly by a doctor or nurse, or having been prescribed the pills to commit suicide. That is 11 people per month.

What Dr. Amies fails to understand is that poisoning people isn’t medicine. It’s a perversion of medical care, and nothing the government says can change that. If the government legislated that the Earth is flat, the Earth would still be round. Similarly, if the government legislates that poisoning someone (or helping someone to poison himself ) is medicine, as it has with Bill C-14, it still remains poisoning. Government doesn’t have the competence to declare that poisoning is medical care, just as it doesn’t have the competence to declare that the Earth is flat.

The real issue here is that the Catholic Church is right and the government is wrong. It is morally wrong to administer “MAID”; therefore, it is tyrannical to force any hospital — not just Catholic hospitals, but all hospitals — to provide it.

In Alberta, however, it is the Catholic health facilities which will continue to be the “safe places” for the sick, elderly and dying. They will continue to be so, despite irrational outcries from Dr. Amies and DwDC. Ultimately, as one speaker said at the recent Canadian Catholic Bioethics Conference in Toronto: “Given the gravity of the threat posed by legal euthanasia, it is essential that we [Canadians of good will] work for its reversal in the law.”

Maureen Remus

Coaldale