Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jun 14, 2018 / 03:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- By a vote of 129 to 125 with one abstention, Argentina's House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would legalize abortion in the first trimester.
The Argentine Bishops' Conference voiced sorrow over the passage of the bill.
“As Argentinians, this decision pains us,” said a statement from the Executive Committee and the Committee for the Laity and the Family.
However, they added, “the sorrow over forgetting and excluding the innocents must be transformed into strength and hope to continue fighting for the dignity of every human life.”
The bill passed the House of Representatives in a session lasting more than 20 hours.
It will now be sent to the Senate, and then to President Mauricio Macri, who has encouraged “responsible” debate over the topic and said that he personally opposes the legislation but will not veto it if Congress approves it.
The current law in Argentina prohibits abortion, except when the mother’s life or health is determined to be in danger, or in cases of rape.
The bill passed Thursday, however, would allow abortion on demand up to the 14th week of gestation. Minors under 16 could get an abortion without having to inform their parents.
Health care workers under the bill could be eligible for conscience-based objections to participating in an abortion if they make such a request in advance “individually and in writing” to the director of their medical center. Institutions and health care facilities as a whole would not be allowed to conscientiously object to abortion.
Unidad Provida, (Pro-Life Unity), an Argentine NGO that serves as an umbrella group for some 100 pro-life organizations, called the House passage of the bill “lamentable,” but assured that this outcome “does not intimidate us. It strengthens [our resolve].”
Pro-Life Unity praised “the courage of the representatives who rose up in defense of women and unborn children, raising their voices for those whom others want to silence with their systematic elimination.”
Now, the group said, “the Argentine Senate will have the opportunity to correct this dangerous threat to human rights and to honor the will of the nation's people.”
“We will only be able to build a more just Argentina by basing ourselves on unwavering respect for everyone's right to life, especially protecting the most vulnerable,” the pro-life network said.
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In five Catholic churches in the heart of Panama City, visitors can find kiosks that not only provide information about each church but also offer the benefit of a virtual tour guide. / Credit: Churches of Old Panama City
Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favourite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project in Canada. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.” / Courtesy of Amanda Achtman
CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Amid ongoing efforts to expand euthanasia in Canada under the name of “medical aid in dying” (MAID), one Ottawa man says he has been offered euthanasia “multiple times” as he struggles with lifelong disabilities and chronic pain from a disease called cerebellar ataxia.
Roger Foley, 49, shared some of his story in a recent video interview with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project, which was created to “humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” The project seeks to “[restore] our cultural health when it comes to our experiences of death and dying” through speaking engagements and video campaigns.
Roger Foley, a Canadian man with disabilities, says he’s been offered euthanasia “multiple times.”
Listen to him speak out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live. pic.twitter.com/yY8N4NILkS
In the video, the fourth of a series, Foley said he has struggled with subpar medical help in his own home, where he is supposed to be getting quality care. Canada has a nationalized health care system but Foley said that individuals with illnesses are “worked at … not worked with.” He spoke out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live.
In one case, he said, a home worker helped him into his bathtub and then fell asleep in the other room; Foley was left to crawl out of the bathroom on his own. “I reported to the agency, and then he confessed, and the agency, they really didn’t care,” he said.
Asked by Achtman if he has ever been offered euthanasia, Foley said: “Yeah, multiple times.”
“One time, [a doctor] asked me, ‘Do you have any thoughts of self-harm?’ I’m honest with them and tell them I do think about ending my life because of what I’m going through, being prevented from the resources that I need to live safely back at home.”
“From out of nowhere, he just pulls out, ‘Well, if you don’t get self-directing funding, you can always apply for an assisted.’”
Foley said the offers from doctors to help end his life have “completely traumatized me.”
“Now it’s this overlying option where in my situation, when I say I’m suicidal, I’m met with, ‘Well, the hospital has a program to help you with that if you want to end your life.’”
“That didn’t exist before [MAID] was legalized, but now it’s there,” he said. “There is not going to be a second within the rest of my life that I’m not going to have flashbacks to [being offered suicide]. The devaluing of me and all that I am.”
Noting that he’s “not religious,” Foley said: “Saying that it’s just religious persons who oppose euthanasia in society is completely wrong.”
“These people who usually say it, they have an ableist mindset,” he said. “And they look at persons with disabilities and see us as just better off dead and a waste of resources.”
Achtman told CNA there is a need for euthanasia-free health care spaces, not only for protecting the integrity of Catholic institutions but also because many patients — including nonreligious patients like Foley — want to be treated in facilities that do not raise euthanasia with patients.
“Having euthanasia suggested, in a sense, already kills the person. It deflates a person’s sense of confidence that doctors and nurses are going to truly fight for them,” Achtman told CNA. “When euthanasia is suggested ostensibly as one ‘treatment’ option among others, there are all-too-frequently no other real options provided.
She continued: “This is why I always say that a request for euthanasia is not so much an expression of a desire to die as it is an expression of disappointment. Responding to such disappointment with real interventions that are adequate to the person is demanding, but that’s what people deserve. It is wrong to concede or capitulate to a person’s suicidal ideation — instead, every person deserves suicide prevention rather than suicide assistance.”
Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favorite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.”. Courtesy of Amanda Achtman
Canada has become one of the most permissive countries in the world when it comes to euthanasia. The country first began allowing doctors to help kill terminally ill patients nearing death in 2016; the law was then expanded in 2021 to include patients whose death is not imminent.
In February the country paused a proposal to allow mentally ill individuals access to MAID, with the proposal set to be reconsidered in 2027. Earlier this year, Canadian health researchers alleged that MAID will “save” the Canadian health care system between $34.7 and $136.8 million per year.
A couple in British Columbia is currently suing the provincial government, as well as a Catholic health care provider, after their daughter was denied euthanasia while suffering from a terminal illness. The suit demands that the government remove the religious exemption from the Catholic hospital that protects them from having to offer MAID.
A judge in March, meanwhile, ruled that a woman with autism could be granted her request to die by MAID, overruling efforts by the woman’s father to halt the deadly procedure.
Asked what gives him hope, Foley told Achtman that he aspires one day to “be able to break through [the health care system] and get access to the resources that I need and to live at home with workers who want to work with me and I want to work with them and that we can work as a team.”
“I have a passion to live,” he said. “I don’t want to give up my life.”
ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 4, 2023 / 18:20 pm (CNA).
Eduardo Verástegui, filmmaker and aspiring presidential candidate in Mexico, published a “manifesto” against gender ideology, pledging to … […]
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