I may have been confused. I do know that to receive parole that one has to admit to their guilt.
Yes, but I beleive (unless I'm confused too!) that the 'guilt' they speak of is only in the technical sense. Latimer has never denied that he did the deed, but he'll be damned (and so would I, in his position) if he had to get up and admit that what he did was wrong, in a moral sense.
The parole board is insisting that Latimer accept their view that it was wrong to kill his daughter. Robert Latimer believes it wasn't wrong. The issue here is that Latimer, a father, killed his daughter, as opposed to a doctor. Robert could have easily found a doctor to assist in the suicide with little consequence. The motivation appears to be out of love, but he seriously broke the law when he put that child in a car with exhaust fumes. It seems like an appropirate solution, but is actually a stupid one considering its violation of numerous checks and balances. Like the one where you can't put people in cars with exhaust fumes running into them. As a consequence he will sit in minimum security until he finally changes his mind.
Easily found a doctor? Euthanasia is not legal in Canada, and getting a doctor to perform such a procedure, rather than doing it yourself, is just as illegal. If anything, I think that Latimer showed moral conviction by doing it himself, in the most humane way he could manage, rather than getting adoctor to risk his livelyhood and freedom for his daughter's cause.
I don't support him:
1) Why is he the arbiter of the very state of whether his daughter lives or not?
If you had to pick anyone on earth to fill that position, who would it be? She certainly didn't have the capacity to....
2) Daughter is incapable of seeing father's reasoning
Or much else for that matter. In the meantime, she suffers agony not knowing why...
3) Sets precedent -- people with severe disabilities have lives "not worth living".
Personally, I feel that this reason (so oft quoted by activists here) misses the point entirely. People with disabilities can live long and fruitful lives, no doubt, people in constant pain without an end in sight, whether disabled or not, that point is debateable. The only reason that her disability is an issue at all (besides the fact that it contributed to her pain), is that she didn't have the capacity to choose.
Imagine that instead of having cerebral palsy, she was in a terrible accident. She suffered greatly, continued to suffer, and, on top of that, lost all motor control, giving her absolutely no way to communicate her wishes or desires to her family or her doctor. Her father knows that she is suffering every day, and that she feels that pain quite acutely, and that there is virtually no chance of her recovering, even enough for her to be able to communicate what she wants. Would you have any more sympathy for him if he chose the same course of action in this case?
