Assisted Suicide

In the past several months, assisted suicide fanatics are growing impatient and are pushing harder than ever to euthanize even those who are not asking to die. What is driving this euthanasia explosion and capitulation to the Culture of Death?

When nations (The Netherlands—1984) and states (Oregon—1994) first allowed assisted suicide, it was only for the terminally ill. As other nations and states have joined the culture of death, we slid down the slippery slope to offer assisted suicide for other reasons, including an unhappy life and being tired of living.

Now, we want to euthanize “defective” children, the mentally incompetent, those with Alzheimer’s, and others deemed less worthy of life.

Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: When did it start?

The Netherlands was the first country to normalize the practice of assisted suicide in 1984. Since then, several European nations have followed suit, including Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, and Spain.

Oregon was the first American state to legalize assisted suicide in 1994. Today 10 states and the District of Columbia have legalized physician-assisted suicide and a bill to do the same is being debated in Massachusetts.

The Canadian Experience: A Warning to the United States

Many of the recent developments have been in Canada.

The Netherlands and Belgium already permit people diagnosed with dementia to sign an advance directive ordering themselves killed when they become incapacitated. This has even resulted in one case in which such a patient was euthanized despite resisting — and the government responded by changing the law to enable death-doctors to drug and euthanize such patients without permission.

Now Canada — which last year greatly loosened the criteria for euthanasia — may be on the verge of taking the same path. A bill has been filed in the Senate that would permit patients to order themselves killed without final consent if they become mentally incapacitated.

Before considering some examples from Canada, we need to understand why the Canadian path from no legal assisted suicide to the current state is relevant to the United States.

 Canada’s Path to the Euthanasia Explosion

Here I want to overview what has happened in Canada as there are some lessons we need to pay attention to.

In 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5-4 against assisted suicide. For years, thereafter, attempts at legalization in Canada failed.

Then, in less than 2 years, Canada went from a nation in which assisted suicide was a federal crime to a nation enacting one of the most radical euthanasia legalization regimes in the world.

Quebec, probably Canada’s most politically liberal province, birthed the nation’s path to euthanasia. In 2014, its parliament enacted “Bill 52,” which created a legal right to “receive end-of-life care — defined under the euphemistic term “medical aid in dying.”

Although they did not include although assisted suicide in the definition, there was a method to this anomaly. Federal law controlled the crime of assisted suicide. But like U.S. states, the provinces each regulate the practice of medicine within their borders.

By requiring direct action by a doctor to end life, the province sought to redefine mercy killing into just another medical procedure, allowing the provincial definition to control rather than that found in the federal criminal statute.

On February 6, 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court ended democratic deliberation over the issue by unanimously conjuring a broad constitutional right to “termination of life” for anyone with an “irremediable medical condition, “who wants to die. The Court did not merely legalize euthanasia, but ruled that for those with a “grievous illness or disability,” it is a protected right.

The court intentionally did not limit this to the terminally ill. Rather, the Court took the radical leap of allowing euthanasia for virtually anyone with a serious medically diagnosed condition.

Twenty-two years previously, the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled that there was no right to assisted suicide. Now there is a right to active euthanasia. It doesn’t matter that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms didn’t change during that time. It only matters that the opinion of the judges did.

This same trajectory could also apply to the United States. Think Roe v. Wade; think Obergefell.

And the country bought the argument, as polls showed that most Canadians didn’t have a problem with such a culture-changing policy being imposed by unelected judges.

Soon, the political leadership and medical associations enthusiastically jumped in to create the legal and ethical criteria to govern doctor-administered death.

Specifically, C-14 contains a clause implying that a terminal illness is required before someone can receive euthanasia: In reality, although these criteria appear somewhat more restrictive than those dictated by the Supreme Court, C-14’s protections are mostly a mirage.

First, the question of suffering remains completely subjective and left solely in the patient’s discretion who wants to die.

The term “reasonably foreseeable” would clearly allow patients not actually in a presently terminal condition—of the kind that qualifies a patient for hospice care, for example—to receive euthanasia under the law.

This could be said of other ultimately fatal conditions, such as the HIV patient suffering from continuing infections or the diabetic who requires amputations.

Beyond that modest hedge, with the enactment of C-14, Canada adopted one of the world’s most radical euthanasia laws. For example, all other countries and U.S. states restrict the application of assisted suicide or euthanasia to physicians. But in Canada, that deadly task can be performed by non-MD certified physician’s assistants.

Euthanasia Explosion Developments in Canada

Following are some examples of how the liberal euthanasia law is playing out in Canada.

Unable to See Neurosurgeon, Disabled Canadian Women Contemplates Euthanasia

A Canadian woman with a serious neuromuscular condition has been unable to obtain an appointment to see a neurosurgeon for four years

She checked to see if she could be treated in the U.S. Yes, but at the cost of $100,000. She has asked the BC Provincial Government to pay for it. After all, free health care and all that. So far, she has not heard anything.

In desperation, she is now contemplating a lethal jab: With nowhere to turn and little hope, a struggling Ashcraft has been contemplating MAiD. “I don’t want my family to watch me suffer like that for years on end,” she said. “Death still kind of scares me, but what fears me more is that I’m starting to lose my fear of death,” she added.

The Euthanasia Explosion Goes to Church

I was recently taken aback to read that medical assistance-in-dying (MAID) was performed in a church in Manitoba. MAID, more properly referred to as physician-[[Assisted Suicide]] or voluntary euthanasia, is the act of deliberately causing the patient’s death upon their considered request. Since it was legalized in 2016, the frequency of death by MAID has grown rapidly as Canadian society becomes more aware of and accustomed to the procedure. Eligibility for MAID continues to expand; adults with disabilities are eligible to have their lives ended, even if they are not dying, and we may soon see death being offered to those struggling with mental illness and to children.

To read of MAID being performed in a church, though, seems to elevate it to a whole new level of acceptance and celebration. Family and friends were present to give their love and goodbyes. They sang a hymn together and the grandchildren sang for their grandmother one last time. Death was faced and embraced. They called it a “crossing over” ceremony, a hopeful term portent with anticipation of continued existence beyond this life.

In some ways, this all sounds very Christian, and it raises important questions for Christians who are contemplating death. If church is the place where we worship our Maker, might it not also be a good place to choose to meet our Maker? Can faithful Christians “baptize” MAID to make it an act of religious worship in the house of God? At the very least, can we accept that MAID might be permissible for some Christians, a matter of indifference and personal choice? We cannot. Beneath a veneer of compassion and respect, and despite the sincere intentions of those involved, MAID constitutes a profound violation of human dignity and value and an affront to the high status granted to us by our Creator. It’s easy to forget this when our culture seems to wholeheartedly embrace MAID as moral progress. So must we remind ourselves of the true nature and depth of human value.

Euthanasia Approved for 31-Year-Old-Woman With Chemical Sensitivities Based on Abject Poverty

On April 30th, Favaro reported on a case of a 31-year-old Ontario woman who has been approved for (MAiD) euthanasia for chemical sensitivities. Favaro reports that Denise (not her real name) is diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS), which triggers rashes, difficulty breathing, and blinding headaches called hemiplegic migraines that cause her temporary paralysis. Favaro reports: The chemicals that make her sick are cigarette smoke, laundry chemicals, and air fresheners. She is at risk of anaphylactic shock and so has always EpiPens in case she has a life-threatening allergic attack.

Denise is also a wheelchair user after a spinal cord injury six years ago and has other chronic illnesses. In March 2021, the Canadian government passed Bill C-7, which permitted (MAiD) euthanasia for people who were not terminally ill but living with chronic conditions. This has resulted in approvals to lethally inject (MAiD) people with treatable chronic conditions and it is exposing the reality that people with chronic conditions are often living in abject poverty and poor living conditions.

Euthanasia Is a Runaway Train in Canada. It’s Time to Hit the Brakes.

By next year, Canada may have journeyed — in only seven years — from a total prohibition on euthanasia to euthanasia at an adult’s deathbed to euthanasia for mental and physical illness at any moment of an adult’s life. The speed with which we have traveled on an issue of tectonic societal significance, and the territory we have covered, should raise questions about the wisdom of our approach. Advocates say it is progress. I worry it is a runaway train.

The Euthanasia Explosion Elsewhere

Vermont Legalizes Assisted Suicide by Zoom

Remember when we were told that [[Assisted Suicide]] would only be engaged in as part of an intimate and long-term physician/patient relationship?

Of course, the laws never required that. And now, Vermont has legalized Assisted Suicide by Zoom or Skype. The new law also eliminates the previous requirement that the doctor have examined the patient. In other words, the poison-prescribing doctor would seem to never have to actually meet the patient in person.

Disability Rights Group Opposes Expanding California’s Assisted Suicide Law to Permit Euthanasia for People with Disabilities.

The lawsuit seeks to pressure California into eliminating the state’s most essential safeguard and, in doing do, sanction a dangerous practice not allowed in any of the state’s where Assisted Suicide is legal. Today, District Judge Vince Chhabria heard arguments in the case, which the State of California has moved to dismiss.

This long, violent history of discrimination is the result of common, largely unspoken biases in society and in the medical profession that assume (without evidence) that the quality of life and inherent worth of people with disabilities is beneath that of their non-disabled peers. Countless studies have consistently revealed the disturbing revelation that health care providers hold negative views of people with disabilities that too frequently translates in failures to equitably protect, serve, or support disabled people.

Belgium Euthanasia Deaths Are on the Rise, especially for the Mentally Ill

The number of deaths from euthanasia in Belgium increased by several hundred from 2020 to 2021, with the number of people euthanized for mental illness more than doubling. This doesn’t include the deaths which went unreported, meaning the true number is almost certainly higher.

‘Healthy’ American Sisters Die at Swiss Suicide Clinic

Repeat after me: Assisted-suicide legalization eventually leads to death on demand.

Oh, you doubt me? That is already the law in Germany thanks to a court ruling creating a constitutional right to a “self determined death,” with help from anyone, at any time, and for any reason.

Now a suicide clinic in Switzerland has committed a joint [[Assisted Suicide]] of apparently healthy sisters from Arizona who flew there secretly to be made dead.

Doctors in Spain Are Euthanizing Patients to Harvest Their Organs

In my first anti-euthanasia column, written for Newsweek in 1993 I warned that if [[Assisted Suicide]]/euthanasia became legal and normalized, it would lead to “organ harvesting thrown in as a plum to society.” Needless to say, I was called a fear monger, alarmist, and hysteric — and those were the polite hate mailers.

I was also right. Belgium and the Netherlands allow the conjoining of euthanasia and organ donation –including of the mentally ill. So does Canada, our closest cultural cousins, although not yet of the mentally ill. But I am sure that is coming once they too can be given the lethal jab in about a year. In Ontario, the organ-donation organization will even contact the person to be killed to ask, in effect, whether they can have the person’s liver.

Now Spain has joined the euthanize-and-harvest club

Related Reading:

Canada Will Soon Offer Doctor-Assisted Death to the Mentally Ill. Who Should Be Eligible?

 

Euthanasia for Mental Illness. Killing People Without a Certain Prognosis.

 

Euthanasia for Mental Illness. Killing People Without a Certain Prognosis.

 

Biden Administration’s Plan to Destroy Medical Conscience Is Un-American

 

Oregon Will Stop Enforcing a Residency Requirement in State’s Death With Dignity Act

 

10% of Newborn Babies Who Die in Belgium Are Killed in Euthanasia

 

The Euthanasia Explosion—Final Thoughts

Euthanasia, as we use the term today, is a strategy straight from hell. Humans have no right to determine the time of their deaths. Only God has that right. Euthanasia, like abortion, is murder.

We must do everything in our power to oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia.

¹¹ Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. ¹² If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? (Proverbs 24:11–12 ESV)