Preston Manning and Physician Assisted Suicide

I have a respect for Preston Manning. He speaks with passion about which he believes. He appears to be a honourable man who has clear values and has been able to stay true to those values. I just think he is wrong about most of what he believes. This week he did an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail in which he said:

                "The highest duty of the state is to affirm and preserve human life rather than sanction the                  taking of it. From this perspective, the recent decision of the Supreme Court facilitating  

                 physician-assisted suicide is both regrettable and open to challenge." (Globe and Mail)

Mr. Manning is an educated man. He must have know when he wrote the above that either he was deluding himself or he was ignoring history.

The state has never demonstrated any interest in affirming or preserving human life. Unless that life belonged to the rich or powerful elite. The Magna Carta - the document signed in 1215 that is so often touted as being the start of western democracy is at best a document that entrenches the rights of feudal lords to maintain control over their possessions, their estates and their serfs (Magna Carta). For the last 890 years not much has changed in the western world. The state for almost all of that time has consistently undervalued most of human life. One only needs to look at the countless wars over the centuries- many of which were fought to support (or defend against the need for) expansion of commercial interest, or to be reminded of the slavery that was inflicted upon generations and generations of Africans or to recognize the cultural and physical genocide practiced upon the Nations that existed in North America before the coming of the Europeans to become convinced that the state, as opposed to preserving life has in the past blatantly disregarded the life of anyone who was powerless.

In more recent times our state has gone out of its way to ignore the value of human life. The Canadian Government has for example allowed various waters to be polluted so that people living around that water became permanently disabled and then refused to do anything about it ( The Canadian Encyclopaedia), underfunded a school system so that the children cannot get an education (Vancouver Sun), has done little to prevent up to 600,000 children in Canada either going to bed or getting up hungry (TVO), and the list could go on and on. In fact there is little proof that the Government of Canada values life, unless of course it suits its purpose.

Mr. Manning suggests in his editorial piece that people need to reach out to their elected representatives to make clear to the MPs that they do not want a law that allows for physician assisted suicide.  That is their right. But before they do, please get the facts right. They are asking the Canadian Government to do something that it presently does not do. If, for the first time in a long time, the Canadian Government is going make a decision about protecting the sanctity of human life - I have a long list of things that need to get done. Mr.. Manning  - give me a call.