Parliament will soon vote on Bill C-384, Bloq Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde’s private member’s bill to legalize assisted suicide. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Canada’s national newspapers are finally paying attention to the issue. Today, The Globe and Mail ran an excellent op-ed piece in favour of assisted suicide by Arthur Shafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. “When it comes to end-of-life care, Canadians should be able to choose from among a full range of options, including first-rate palliative care and physician-assisted suicide,” he writes. “With proper safeguards in place to ensure openness and accountability, there’s no reason to deny people the help they want and need.”
Earlier this week, The National Post ran an op-ed by Steven Fletcher, a Conservative MP who became a C4 quadriplegic after a collision between a car and a moose in 1996. He calls the bill “a provocative starting point for a discussion about potential choices at the end of life.” And while he won’t vote for it because he believes it’s flawed, neither will he vote against it, saying he “cannot vote against empowering Canadians to make deeply personal decisions for themselves.” So he’ll abstain.
Although I obviously wish he’d vote for C-384, I applaud him for giving the issue serious thought, voting his conscience — instead of his politics — and explaining his decision. Would that our other politicians would do the same.