Saturday, November 19, 2016

Two Winnipeg hospitals will not offer euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Concordia Hospital Winnipeg
CBC News Manitoba reported yesterday that two Winnipeg hospitals will not be offering assisted death, Laura Glowacki reported on November 18 that Concordia and St Boniface Hospitals have informed the public that they will not offer assisted death to their patients. According to the CBC News report:
A spokesperson for St. Boniface Hospital said while the institution is not participating in MAID, it will work with patients to facilitate a transfer. 
Concordia Hospital said it will treat patients requesting MAID with "compassion" and connect them with the provincial medical assistance in dying clinical team. 
The WRHA told CBC it has accommodations for patients who live at or are being treated in a faith-based facility to receive MAID at another facility. 
"This ensures people from across the province can access the service, while respecting our commitment to the faith-based facilities," said a WHRA spokesperson. 
In Canada there are two legal forms of medically assisted death: the first involves a health practitioner injecting a drug, called voluntary euthanasia. In the second, a health practitioner provides or prescribes a drug that is self-administered to cause death, known as medically assisted suicide.
In other words, both institutions will not offer euthanasia or assisted suicide on their premises but they will not stop their patients from having their death arranged through another facility. Conscience rights for health care professionals and institutions protects people who oppose medical killing from being pressured into death by lethal injection.

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