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Delta Hospice is the one being unethical and inhumane

Editor: Re: MPs support Delta Hospice in feud with Fraser Health, Jan. 23 I am in disbelief that Cloverdale-Langley City MP Tamara Jansen and several of her colleagues wrote to B.C.

Editor:

Re: MPs support Delta Hospice in feud with Fraser Health, Jan. 23

I am in disbelief that Cloverdale-Langley City MP Tamara Jansen and several of her colleagues wrote to B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix stating that the health region should not cancel funding for the Irene Thomas Hospice in Ladner even though the society is not providing MAiD, medically assisted deaths that have been legal in Canada since 2016. 

The MPs are blaming the Fraser Health Authority for the possibility of putting 10 palliative care beds in jeopardy. No, this is not accurate. It is Delta Hospice that is putting those beds in jeopardy.

The MPs state, "Refusing to offer a dying patient access to an available palliative care bed is unethical and inhumane." It is not the FHA, but rather Delta Hospice itself, that is refusing to offer care that under law should be made available to our community that is unethical and inhumane.

By not doing so it is Delta Hospice that will not be allowing a dying patient access whether they choose MAiD or not.

If FHA allows Delta Hospice to get away with this, what would stop other provincially- and federally-funded societies from doing the same based on whatever their beliefs dictate? Will those of us who choose MAiD as a way to die with dignity in our own community have to travel to another province to do so?

MP Jansen stated "she is disappointed the government is threatening the hospice unless staff members are willing to betray personal beliefs..."  As we all have personal beliefs, the idea that we can flout the law because of them is inexcusable and especially distasteful if flouted by a tax-funded facility and supported by elected officials.

Antoinette Shapiro