Dear Editor,
Mark Hume's article cheering on the anonymous family "forced" to kill their parents is a not-so-subtle endorsement of the current challenge to our laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia. The article is titled "A.B.C.'s family's secret: how they helped their parents die." My question is, what were the family's other "secrets"? How much did they inherit, who got the house, or were the killings done as payback for long past wrongs? Elder abuse is a terrible problem in this country and the scenario I describe is not uncommon.
Hume's article also ignores that older people are already being killed in our health care facilities via dehydration, starvation, and/or morphine overdose. For one instance, see this article in the Winnipeg Free Press, "Alleged deprivation of senior probed: Denied food, water in hospital." ( http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/alleged-deprivation-of-senior-probed-132297303.html ) My own mother had a similar experience in an extended care facility in Nova Scotia. A mild stroke led to her forced starvation and dehydration. It didn't matter that she was conscious and trying to speak, or that she had indicated she wanted water.
As evidenced by the overreaching doctors described in the above article and my mother's experience, some doctors cannot be trusted with the power they already have. Legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia will give them even more power to effect patient death. The idea that legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia will somehow increase patient choice and autonomy is a society gone mad.
To read my mother's story, please click here: http://www.choiceillusion.org/p/mild-stroke-led-to-mothers-forced.html
Thank you,
Kate Kelly, B.A., B.Ed
