Bill C-407 Debate Transcripts

The transcripts from the debate on Bill C-407 yesterday are out.

It's certainly worth taking the time to read through them.

Ms. Francine Lalonde's blatant disregard for the inherent dignity of human life is quite frightening actually. How can something as basic as the value of human life, clearly revealed by nature, be ignored?

She speaks of voluntary suicide for those people who view their life as unbearable. Don't we all have days or even weeks where we feel that way? Human suffering seems to have lost any meaning in our contemporary society.

What is frightening is that she speaks of euthanasia as "for the common good." What a striking reminder of the utilitarian attitude which permeates our culture of death.

Thanks be to God for Mr. Jason Kenney from Clagary. He is a Catholic MP who is actually Catholic. Now isn't that a treat?!

Mr. Kenney spoke a great deal of Truth which I'm sure flew over the heads of many of his fellow parlimentarians. I hope someone in the House was listening to him though! Here are some of Mr. Kenney's words to reflect upon.

In a word, this legalization of euthanasia would change our social understanding of the human person as a subject with infinite and inherent value into a disposable object which can be eliminated at will. This bill is premised on a radical misunderstanding of the dignity of the human person. It is, in effect, an attack on the inalienable dignity of the human person, which is the foundational premise of liberal democracy and, indeed, of any culture which merits to be considered a civilization.

Properly conceived, human dignity is not a subjective sense of one's self worth, nor is it a reflection of one's worth in the eyes of society or the state. Dignity is not an ephemeral quality which ebbs or flows based on one's mood or social consensus or anyone's will. Rather, any coherent understanding of human rights, including the right to self-government, which is the predicate of democracy, is grounded in the inviolable dignity of the human person.

In other words, human dignity, which is the basis of our civilizational belief in the sanctity of human life, is ontological, that is to say, an essential and inseparable characteristic of human personhood, of human existence. To legalize or seek to legitimize the deliberate taking of innocent human life as this bill seeks to do is to commit the gravest offence possible against the human person. In short, it would turn a society such as ours, grounded as it is in the objective existential understanding of human dignity, on its head.

Obviously this truth of the human person is most clearly understood in theistic terms, that is to say that the human person is created in the image and likeness of God, an understanding most notably and beautifully summarized in the preamble of the foundational document of liberal democracy, the Declaration of Independence, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”, among which is the right to life.

However, this is by by no means a sectarian doctrine limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Rather, it is a truth universally understood throughout history by just societies, including our own.

Thank-you Mr. Kenney. I hope there were many open minds, hearts, and ears on Parliament Hill yesterday.