Describing a Senate proposal that would allow mentally ill people to access medical assistance in dying (MAiD) and allow people to make “advance requests” in case they develop dementia, as a “Frankenstein bill,” Cloverdale-Langley City Conservative MP Tamara Jansen told a House of Commons debate on Tuesday that the amendments must not pass.
“I was shocked by what sort of a Frankenstein bill they (Senators) sent back to us,” Jansen said.
“We need to stop it in its tracks.”
Among the amendments by the senators was a move to alter a clause that prohibits people suffering from mental illness from accessing MaiD, setting an 18-month limit on the mental health exclusion.
READ ALSO: Feds agree people with mental illness should have access to MAID — in 2 years
“Medical assistance in dying was supposed to be an option for those at the end of their lives,” Jansen said during the Tuesday, Feb. 23 House of Commons debate.
“This bill and these amendments would blow that door wide open.”
A law that is supposed to be meant for people with “irremediable” conditions will be applied to people who might recover from mental illness, she argued.
“Doctors are pleading with us – telling us that they are 100 per cent certain, that if we accept this amendment, we will kill people who would have gotten better.”
“There is no other country on the planet that allows death administered by a doctor to someone who is not imminently about to die, if they have not first been given treatment,” Jansen said.
Another Senate amendment would allow people who fear being diagnosed with dementia or other cognitive-impairing conditions to make advance requests for an assisted death, but that has been rejected by the Trudeau government.
READ ALSO: Cloverdale-Langley City MP Tamara Jansen backs bill to allow doctors to refuse MAID
A week earlier, Jansen, backed a fellow Conservative MP’s proposal for a MAiD-related ‘physician conscience rights protection bill.’
Kelly Block, Conservative MP for Carlton Trail-Eagle Creek, said the law “would ensure that medical professionals who choose to not take part in, or refer a patient for, euthanasia or medical assistance in dying would never be forced by violence, threats, coercion or loss of employment to violate the sovereign rights we all enjoy by virtue of our citizenship in this nation.”
Jansen described the bill as “very timely” given the passing of numerous amendments to Bill C7 by the Senate that week, “which seek to expand euthanasia well past what the bill originally intended.”
“We ignore conscience rights to our peril,” Jansen warned.
Is there more to the story? Email: dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
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