The Physician's Alliance Against Euthanasia has declared its “dismay” as Canada moves to expand euthanasia for “virtually everyone who is sick and suffering in Canada”.

Bill C-7, the 19 October statement said, will make Canada “the world leader in administering death”.

If the legislation is passed, a patient whose death is seen as “reasonably foreseeable” could be diagnosed, evaluated and euthanised within 24 hours, the statement says.

The declaration also denounced “the reckless removal of safeguards previously deemed essential”, such as “removing the 10-day reflection period”, which the Alliance believes “will place desperately vulnerable patients directly in harm’s way” and “lead to an increase in coerced or tragically unconsidered deaths”.

“This is not the medicine that we have devoted our lives to practising”, the Alliance concluded. “We watch in utter dismay and horror at how the nature of our medical profession has been so quickly destroyed by the creation of misguided laws…

“Canadians deserve better.”

SPUC comment

A SPUC Spokesperson said: “It is heartening to see hundreds of Canadian physicians standing up against the dangerous C-7 Bill, a piece of legislation that strikes at the very heart of good practice, which is to save lives, not end them.

“The speed in which the expansion of sweeping euthanasia laws around the world are being considered and introduced is indeed alarming.

“The Physicians’ Alliance Against Euthanasia is right to highlight this bill that, as the statement itself says, ‘will contribute to the destruction of much more than our medical profession, but fundamentally, of a Canadian society that genuinely values and cares for its most vulnerable members’.”

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