🚀 go-pugleaf

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 15:06:11 -0700 (MST)
From: Gregor Wolbring <gwolbrin@acs.ucalgary.ca>
To: letters@theherald.southam.ca
Subject: Latimer

Letter to the Editor
The Calgary Herald

Dear Editor:


Re: 3rd. December 1997. Experts shrug off criticism of ruling (Calgary Herald)

I would like to comment on the following "Despite dire warnings from
disabled groups about the consequences of the Robert Latimer decision,
expert says it will have little effect on the way the legal system handles
future cases." 'It's going to be a cold day in hell before we have the next
constitutional exemption claim for mercy killing' said Prof. Alan Young of
Osgoode Hall law school in Toronto. That's because most of these cases are
proceeded upon as manslaughter cases which don't have the inflexible harsh
sentencing regime'".

We never indicated that there might be a floodgate of constitutional
exemptions for murder. We believe that we will see an increase in so called
'mercy killing' cases.  The justification for 'mercy killing' will be pain
relief.  This argument has been strengthened by the fact that the judge said
pain relief, and not disability, was the issue in the case.  

We see and will see more of the practice that 'mercy killers' are just
charged wth manslaughter. The fact that the law of the land has often been
circumvented by the laying of lesser charges, such as manslaughter, when
murder has clearly committed against disabled persons is outrageous and
should be abhorrent to those who love democracy.  We will see more parents
murdering their disabled child for the 'good' of their disabled child. We
will see more people murdering other people in the name of pain relief. We
will see an increased demand for changing the law to allow a category of
'compassionate homicide'. This is the immediate fallout from the Latimer case. 

Increasingly, disability is associated with low quality of life and a life
not worth living.  This way of looking at disability is at the core of the
sympathy for Latimer as well as at the increased demand for technology which
can predict and prevent persons with disabilities being born.  We are going
down the slippery slope from supporting as a society self-determined
assisted suicide to involuntary euthanasia.  Under these circumstances, I, a
citizen with a disability, can't expect to be treated as a Canadian citizen
without disability.  Despite Charter guarantees of our equal protection of
the law we are treated as second class, if not lower, citizens with no
rights of equality before and under the law and in society.  

That is today's reality after the sentencing of Latimer.

Sincerely
Dr. Gregor Wolbring
Member
Human Rights Committee
Council of Canadians with Disabilities
University of Calgary
phone 2205448