Compassionate Community Care, an organization founded by Euthanasia Prevention Coalition director Alex Schadenberg, has launched a new 'calling service' to offer regular phone or Zoom check-ins to lonely and vulnerable seniors.
(LifeSiteNews) -- Concerned Canadians have launched a service to reach out to lonely and vulnerable seniors who are at risk of being targeted for euthanasia under the nation's "Medical Assistance in Dying" program.
Compassionate Community Care, an organization founded by Euthanasia Prevention Coalition director Alex Schadenberg, has launched a new "calling service" to offer regular phone or Zoom check-ins to lonely and vulnerable seniors.
"It's important to recognize that when you give a senior an opportunity to know that there is someone there who cares, someone there who will regularly be there to speak with them, it's enough for them to not chose euthanasia," Program Coordinator Suzanne Lozinski told LifeSiteNews.
The Canada-wide program aims to connect lonely and isolated seniors to a group of volunteers who will check in and speak with them weekly.
The program is funded in part by the Government of Ontario's New Horizons Program. While the program receives government funding, it remains fully committed to upholding the sanctity of life and does not support the practice of MAID.
Lozinski explained that many seniors are choosing to prematurely end their lives through MAID, not because of unbearable pain or terminal illness, but from a sense of loneliness or lack of purpose.
Lozinski believes that if given an opportunity to connect with someone and experience the care and genuine concern that someone has for them, nine out of 10 of the time, the person will not choose MAID.
"Did they truly desire death over life?" she questioned. "Or is it a matter of that loneliness, that sense of isolation, that feeling of 'I don't have anybody in my life. Nobody cares.' And I hear that quite a bit," Lozinski said, explaining that if one is able to "change that by connecting with them, making contact once a week, it has a tremendous difference in their outlook towards MAID."
Lozinski warned that MAID has become a "buzzword" for seniors who frequent hospitals as doctors repeatedly push euthanasia on them.
"There's a de-conditioning among seniors because whether they're in a retirement home, a long-term care nursing home, they're at their doctor's office, there's a conditioning now to believe that this is a viable option if they so choose," she explained.
The program, launched in September, has since received an endorsement from the Archdiocese of Toronto's auxiliary Bishop Robert Kasun, who celebrated the initiative as an "example of our Catholic care ministries for the betterment of the life of our senior citizens."
For more information on how to become a volunteer or how to sign up you or your loved ones up for the program to receive calls, click here.
