Healthcare forces us to make some of the most difficult decisions of our lives. In recent years, the issue of doctor-assisted euthanasia has become one of those.

There was a time when the practice simply wasn’t talked about. It is, however, part of our reality and one that pulls us in a number of moral directions. Add religion to the equation, and things become even more complicated.

Just such a choice has made things difficult for a Catholic hospital in Ontario, where euthanasia is not typically performed. One group is challenging whether the opt-out ability that Canada grants to hospitals is fair to patients who request the procedure.

Dying with Dignity disagrees

Canadian law seeks to find a middle ground on the topic of doctor-assisted suicide, but this is an issue where making everyone happy is a challenge. The activist group Dying with Dignity holds that because the hospital is a publicly-funded healthcare facility, the decision to have the procedure should fall to patients, not hospital administrators.

Part of the reason for their protest involves the uncomfortable situation that can arise when a patient requests medical assistance in dying (MAiD) at a facility like the one in this example. The hospital must transfer the patient to a facility that is willing to perform the procedure. Depending on where the patient is located, that can be quite an ordeal.

While the policy is an attempt at making everyone happy and skirting the sensitive legal matters that arise whenever medicine is the topic, it seems there is room for some refinement.

No information of hospital policy

Making things more difficult is the fact that Canadian privacy laws disallow hospitals from stating publicly whether they are willing to perform euthanasia. The ill and elderly who might want to have the procedure are unable to make an informed decision about where to receive care should their condition worsen.

In situations where patients request the procedure, transfers can sometimes be prolonged and agonizing. In one example of why this is so troublesome for patients, a British Columbian man who requested euthanasia last year at a facility that abstained from the procedure for religious reasons passed away during his transfer to the alternative facility.

The downside of this policy

Horst Saffarek endured a long and arduous battle with lung cancer before making a decision that surprised his entire family. Cancer had spread to his brain, and Saffarek felt that his state was too severe for him to go on. He requested MAiD, citing that he wanted to feel in control of his final moments.

The facility Saffarek entrusted with his care responded appropriately according to the law, and “respectfully and compassionately” according to CBC News. Despite their best intentions, however, Saffarek needed to make a long journey to receive the procedure.

Horst was transferred to a facility an hour-and- a-half away in Nanaimo, B.C. For family and those close to Saffarek, this was the opposite of what the man had requested — a quiet, peaceful end to life.

The MAiD treatment was never administered for Horst. While he did spend his final hours at rest with family nearby, the logistics of changing hospitals and establishing care at the new facility required most of the 24 hours that followed the actual transfer. Saffarek ran out of time.

Navigating a moral dilemma

The Canadian government demonstrates a desire to be respectful of all parties here, but could there be a way to adjust the law without offending religious hospitals? Information is at the centre of the debate.

Dying with dignity holds that all hospitals should be required to practice MAiD if a patient requests it, but a workable compromise could be simply allowing people to know which hospitals will administer the treatment. This would allow people seeking MAiD to avoid situations like Horst’s.

Religiously affiliated hospitals would not be forced to offer the procedure; however patients would have the information they need. As long as citizens could be respectful of those facilities, this solution seems like the simple answer.

For now, the matter is still undecided. Hopefully, Canadians can find a solution that is both open-minded and respectful for all parties.

My mind has been somewhat taken up with the news of the deaths of these poor baby girls in Saskatchewan, left to freeze and die in the cold snow, in -50 degree weather, this week. My heart breaks for them, for their loved ones, including the young father who left them (and again we don’t know all the details) because in spite of the mistakes he made, in taking them out without proper clothes, and leaving them, because he wasn’t aware of all he was doing, he is suffering for the choices he made. It looks as though something precipitated this, which caused a string of ill advised choices, fueled by alcohol and stress. I am not judging either, but just feeling pain for this family and these poor babies.The comfort is that I know Heavenly Father sent his angels to hold these innocents, to bring them home and maybe maybe to take away the suffering from the cold. Maybe the cold didn’t cause them too much physical anguish? I don’t know much of what freezing to death is like, and I don’t want to find out that they suffered excruciating pain, so young as they are. Children, especially the smallest ones need and are to be protected. So many children for many different reasons are not, and I know this hurts the Lord, I don’t question why He doesn’t always interfere, because He is wiser than I am.

What I feel, as a mother (and even just as a human being) is this urgency, to protect and save the suffering babies. Right now, this is the current one in my mind, these little girls who had little protection from the elements.

I am not thinking (as I know some are) that it is just more evidence of problems on the reserves. No, it is a human problem. The choices made by the father he will regret for the rest of his life. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and sorrow he is experiencing, and their mother as well, that because of a fight, she was not there to watch over and keep her girls safe. The tragedy just transcends all blame at that end.

I do think there is some responsibility for a government that does not regulate the sale of alcohol better. Yes, this father (and so many other alcoholics) made his own choice to purchase and consume alcohol, but evidence shows that First Nations people are genetically more prevalent to substance addiction. The government makes too much money, though to not control the purchase of alcohol or the accessibility of it, better. Do they think of the victims of alcoholism? The innocents, who because of this freedom to drink yourself into a stupor, suffer, and sometimes pay, as in this case, with their lives.

See, children have a right to be protected, to be cared for. They cannot care for themselves. If a puppy or a kitten had been left out there, that animal may have had a better chance of survival. But if an adult is at risk, then how much more are a 3 year old and a baby barely over the age of a year unable to look after themselves? Especially in the debilitating cold.

But the government does not want to lose the revenue they gain through the suffering of others. Our governments (provincial and federal) who are supposed to do their best for the citizens make poor decisions that affect the lives and well being of those who do not choose to even participate in that. These little girls were not a part of the decision their father made to drink, nor a part of the decision to sell the alcohol, to create easy access to it’s sale, to make it in the first place. Adults, people who are supposed to have the intelligence to make responsible choices designed to promote the well being and safety of those they have stewardship over, were the ones who made the decision that resulted in the suffering and death of two little girls.

All I know is that a loving Saviour held them in His arms, this I know, brought them home and ended their suffering and kept them safe and I am sure, wept tears because of His great love, not only for them, but for all involved.

I miss seeing that familiar handwriting in the mail and feeling a little lift in my heart, because my grandma was always such a wonderful correspondent. I think I have all her letters, at least I sure hope I do.

I will miss this Christmas, not seeing the familiar box of presents. That may sound mercenary, but really it’s not. It isn’t the presents themselves I will miss, but the gifts wrapped, in her creative, colourful way, with different pieces of ribbon and either wrapping paper or tissue, and our names written in her neat handwriting. That’s what I miss because not a year went by when she didn’t send something, not very big, but always something, and it is the wrapping and the handwriting I will miss.

I think most of all I miss hearing her voice and I hope I never forget the sound of it. For 35 years I heard it and to think, I won’t hear it again in this lifetime.

It amounted to maybe three or four claps because it didn’t take him long to he realise he was the only one. He isn’t a Mormon and not clapping in church was something we took for granted and forgot to tell him.

Maybe we should have a sign outside: Visitors welcome. No clapping.

For as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfil the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come unto man by reason of the fall; and the fall came by reason of transgression; and because man became fallen they were cut off from the presence of the Lord.

The part I contemplated the most was how exactly death fulfils God’s plan. Here’s what I came up with.

1. Death offers an opportunity for the spirits of those who have not accepted the gospel a chance to hear it and accept it
2. It tests our faith. Some of us might question the existence of an afterlife as we get closer to death.
3. It provides a trial for the loved ones of the deceased that may not have been possible in the pre-mortal existence.

Are there others?