Screw Them All.

The Liberals could have done it.  The Conservatives could have done it.  The New Democrats could have embarrassed the government into doing it or at least tried and tried.  They didn't, none of them.

How many of us and our loved ones had to needlessly endure agonizing deaths? How many had to watch their moms or dads waste away?  How many of the terminally ill had to go through months of debilitating and humiliating conditions and treatments as painful as the disease, deprived of any semblance of dignity before they drew their last breath?  By how many days, weeks or months did we drag out their agony?

Those deaths and all that underlying suffering are on the heads of every Liberal, Conservative and New Democrat member of Parliament and on their damned parties to boot.  Every one of those horrible deaths was the butcher's bill for their cowardice.

They refused to repeal a rotten law rooted in religious superstition.  They were afraid to stand up to the abuse that would be spewed out by some pompous bishop or sanctimonious pastor or rabbi or imam.  They were afraid it might somehow cost them in the polls.  The dead don't vote, do they.

This is a proud day for British Columbia for it was here that a Supreme Court judge ignored the SCC decision in Rodriguez to strike down the criminal prohibition on physician assisted suicide. Then today the Supreme Court rectified its own misjudgment in Rodriguez and unanimously upheld the trial verdict.

This is a horrible but important lesson that our Parliamentarians serve their personal interests even at the expense of the country and our people.  Cowards, rank cowards - Trudeau, Mulcair, Harper and all their minions.

Screw the Catholic clergy and every other religious denomination that will rise up in righteous indignation over this long awaited judgment.  Screw them all. Like our political caste they need to understand one thing - there can be no freedom of religion without freedom from religion.

If you think your god really gives a shit if you die a slow, protracted and agonizing death in the name of your religious superstition of choice, then be my guest.  Just keep it down, will ya?

As If You Need Another Reason to Despise the Harper Government

One of the most odious and blatantly theocratic affronts perpetrated by the Harper regime is its fierce opposition to physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

Team Harper is now before the B.C. Court of Appeal seeking to overturn a decision in June that struck down the government prohibition on doctor-assisted suicide.

The Harper regime's arguments are the standard, vacuous pap:  this is a decision that only government can take and allowing assisted suicide would put vulnerable people at risk of being coerced or even forced to end their lives.

Bollocks.

Oregon has a decade of experience with physician-assisted suicide under the state's Death With Dignity Act.   Oregon's system incorporates multiple safeguards to prevent the very abuses that lurk within Harper's dark fantasies.   The Oregon experience was scrutinized by Eastern Michigan University prof J.M. Dieterle.

Dr. Dieterle found no evidence whatsoever of either involuntary or non-voluntary euthenasia occuring in Oregon.   Nothing, nada, zip.

The important point to bear in mind is that the terminally ill who go through Oregon's elaborate process merely receive a prescription for a life-ending drug.  They are under no obligation to fill the prescription nor are they required, if it is filled, to take the drug.

What flows from this is that many of the terminally ill never fill the prescription and, of those who do, many never take the drug.   They find, instead, they are able to meet death without it.  In essence, having the prescription or having the drug at hand merely eases the anxiety of facing death knowing that, should their ordeal become truly unbearable, they can be relieved of it.   That is what Harper wants to deny the terminally ill - the right to die without fear and the right to a humane death without unbearable suffering.  That is what Harper cannot abide.

BC Court Won't Allow Harper to "Sacrifice" Gloria Taylor

The Harper regime has lost its first attempt to thwart Gloria Taylor's right to die.

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge two months ago struck down the ban on physician assisted suicide, granting Ms. Taylor an exemption from the law while giving Parliament time to deal with the offending law.

Harper, of course, religiously bound not to allow someone to die painlessly when they otherwise could face a prolonged, excruciating death, raced off to the B.C. Court of Appeal - which is where he ran headlong into Madam Justice Prowse.    The judge said the federal government's interests in assuring an agonizing death for Ms. Taylor were outweighed by the irreparable harm she would incur and said she wasn't to be sacrificed for the government's idea of the "greater good."