Last week, Bruce Clemenger, president of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), sat down with Karen Stiller, a senior editor of Faith Today, to talk about euthanasia.
Last week, Bruce Clemenger, president of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), sat down with Karen Stiller, a senior editor of Faith Today, to talk about euthanasia.
We had an invisible audience, those who had signed up and listened in on the EFC’s first foray into the world of webinars.
We had been talking about webinars for a while — thinking they would be an effective way to both offer and receive wisdom, insight and action points on some of the crucial issues facing Canada today.
The issue of euthanasia and assisted suicide was the final push for us to complete a crash course on webinars, sit down in front of two microphones and our laptops (being careful not to spill our giant glasses of water of course) and have a conversation we thought was important.
Just over two months ago, the Supreme Court of Canada in a unanimous ruling, struck down Canada’s laws surrounding euthanasia and assisted suicide. The Court ruled that the law that made it illegal for anyone to help people end their own lives should be amended to allow doctors to help in specific situations.
The court has given federal and provincial governments 12 months to craft legislation to respond to that ruling. If the government doesn’t write a new law, the court’s exemption for physicians will become the new status-quo in Canada.
Euthanasia and sanctity of life issues are some of the most pressing challenges facing Canadians and parliamentarians today.
The EFC has long been a voice for the sanctity of life, and a voice against euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada. And Faith Today is a magazine where we try to translate some of these issues into features and news pieces that serve and inform our readers along the way. The webinar brought those worlds together. It is posted now for anyone to listen to. We will have more coming down the pipe.
Listen here.
Watch for the May/June issue of Faith Today as we explore the ethics of euthanasia and Canada’s “seismic shift” with ethicist and columnist Margaret Somerville. Subscribe today!