Coercing Doctors into 'Mercy' Killings

Vincent J. Curtis

17 May 2019


The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to order that doctor-assisted suicide become the law of the land demonstrated that second-rate minds sat on the bench.  The really obvious metaphysical failing in the decision was to say that an unqualified evil was a limited good.

Having said that an evil was a good, there is no principled reason to contain the decision to the bounds it placed upon the new good.  For example, why should it only be a doctor that kills the patient, and not a nurse?  Why not a close relative, like a spouse, do the mercy killing?  Or a contract killer, just so long as the death is painless?  After all, the patient gets killed mercifully, right?

There is now an attempt to coerce doctors of conscience into at least refering patients who ask to be killed.  What we have here is a case of the legal profession ordering the medical profession to do its killing for it.  The lawyers can judge that a life may be snuffed out, but they shrink from snuffing it out themselves.  Public executioner was once a volunteer’s job, but in assisted suicide the legal profession is trying to compel someone to be the executioner or to participate in some way against their conscience.

Funny, but the legal profession does not compel its own members to take any old client or any old case, especially one that bothered their conscience.  The lawyer can decline for any number of reasons.  But doctors are going to be compelled to participate in cases they don’t want to for reasons of moral conscience.

Too bad the Supreme Court lacked moral sense.
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