{"id":952,"date":"2013-11-02T18:00:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T22:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vivredignite.org\/?p=952"},"modified":"2014-03-26T13:12:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T17:12:16","slug":"the-dangers-of-bill-52-for-people-living-with-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/the-dangers-of-bill-52-for-people-living-with-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"The dangers of Bill 52 for people living with disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill 52, a law concerning end of life care, represents an enormous risk for vulnerable groups such as our elderly and\u00a0people with disabilities.\u00a0If it is adopted, this bill\u00a0could indeed apply to people with disabilities.\u00a0Despite its title and what is reported by the media\u00a0the eligibility criteria\u00a0don't\u00a0mention\u00a0end-of-life. The Bills' article 26 aims to define\u00a0who could access medical aid in dying. This article\u00a0specifies that a person could be euthanised if he meets the following criteria :<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Must be fit and\u00a0have reached the age of majority;<\/li>\n
  2. Must be suffering from a serious, incurable\u00a0illness;<\/li>\n
  3. His abilities must be in a state of advanced and irreversible deterioration;<\/li>\n
  4. Must be experiencing physical and psychological sufferings that the person judges unbearable;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    From these criteria, a person living with multiple sclerosis could ask for medical aid in dying. A newly blind person could ask for it as well\u00a0 (such as the case which\u00a0occurred in October in the Netherlands). Who else could have access?\u00a0\u00a0A paraplegic, a person with chronic depression, etc. In fact, almost anybody living with a disability, who is going\u00a0through life problems, is at risk.<\/p>\n

    However, the majority of problems that are encountered by people with disabilities are largely due to a lack of access to services :\u00a0no lodging, transport, hobbies, jobs,\u00a0no (or poor) health services, and the list goes on. As long as we don't have access to these services, we cannot make a \"choice\". It is not a choice if there is no alternative.<\/p>\n

    We've been promised rigourous guidelines, but the Bill is vague.\u00a0It speaks of\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0medical aid in dying\u00a0\u00bb,\u00a0but the term is not defined anywhere.\u00a0It speaks of\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0end-of-life \u00bb,\u00a0again without\u00a0definition. There are no guidelines because it is impossible to establish proper guidelines.\u00a0Bill 52 is closely modeled on the Belgian law. However,\u00a0in Belgium, they started off with promises of very strict criteria. Ten years later, they are now talking of allowing euthanasia for children and people with dementia. Bill 52 has not yet been adopted and already the\u00a0Coll\u00e8ge des M\u00e9decins du Qu\u00e9bec\u00a0and the\u00a0Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse have affirmed\u00a0that we\u00a0must extend the law to include\u00a0minors and people who are unfit. What's more,\u00a0in Belgium,\u00a0the number of people who die of euthanasia doubles almost every four years.\u00a0In 2012,\u00a01%\u00a0of deaths\u00a0in Belgium were deaths by euthanasia.<\/p>\n

    We cannot remain neutral. We must fight so the government offers us the services that we need and not death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Bill 52, a law concerning end of life care, represents an enormous risk for vulnerable groups such as our elderly and\u00a0people with disabilities.\u00a0If it is adopted, this bill\u00a0could indeed apply …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivredignite.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}