For decades, pro-life activists have warned lawmakers that if they legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, they would be opening Pandora’s box. In no time at all, killing would become the preferred method of solving complex healthcare problems.
Healing people is costly. And comforting those who are sick, destitute, or lonely in a way that respects their human dignity requires that healthcare workers stretch themselves, taking upon themselves some of the suffering of their patients. That’s hard. Killing, on the other hand, is easy. And killing is cheap.
As pro-life activists have long warned, the more the population of the world ages, and requires expensive healthcare, the more tempting killing will become as a “healthcare” solution.
It didn’t take a prophet to predict these outcomes. All it required was a little effort to read the signs of the times. Now, however, we don’t even need to do that: all we need to do is look at what has happened in those nations that already have legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The Atlantic pulls back the Veil
No nation has flung itself so headlong down the slippery slope of killing in healthcare as Canada. A recent feature-length article [1] in The Atlantic, written by Elaina Plott Calabro, pulls back the veil of what is happening in Canada.
To date, over 60,000 Canadians have either been killed by their doctor, or had a doctor assist them in killing themselves, in what is often referred to as Medical Assistance in Death (MAID). And this happened in the space of less than a decade.
It was only in 2016 that the Canadian Supreme Court overturned the law banning assisted suicide and euthanasia and ordered the Canadian parliament to pass a law legalizing these practices. As Calabro puts it:
One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a wait. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.
And the momentum is only speeding up. Even as Canadians are dying with the assistance of doctors in record numbers, the Canadian government is looking to further liberalize the law.
When Parliament first legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia, it was supposed to only be made available for those who were suffering from a terminal illness, in which their death was “reasonably foreseeable.”
Redefining Suffering
Then, a few years later, the law was liberalized so that even those who were not dying, but rather suffering from a severe illness, could ask to be killed. Naturally, this leaves open the question of what counts as a “severe” illness. Without objective standards, couldn’t just about any illness be interpreted as “severe”?
If the numerous horror stories that have emerged in Canada are any indication, that’s precisely what has happened. If patients are willing to go doctor shopping, it seems that they are almost guaranteed to find doctors willing to sign off on their euthanasia or assisted suicide.
Now, despite the plethora of evidence that the law is being widely abused, Canada is looking at legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia in cases where a patient is suffering solely from mental health issues. This would create an extraordinary contradiction at the heart of Canadian law and healthcare: on one side, mental health workers and first responders will do everything in their power to prevent a depressed person from taking his own life, and to save the lives of those who have tried; and on the other, physicians will be injecting depressed patients with fatal poisons, funded with taxpayer dollars.
And yet, the government seems to be treating this next step practically as a fait accompli. While there is some resistance, so far it does not appear strong enough to actually give the ruling Liberal Party pause.
In one of the most insightful (and disturbing) passages I have ever read in a secular magazine, Calabro calls out the fact that Canadian politicians seem to be treating the continual expansion of euthanasia as “inevitable,” as if they are powerless to stop it:
Nine years after the legalization of assisted death, Canada’s leaders seem to regard MAID from a strange, almost anthropological remove: as if the future of euthanasia is no more within their control than the laws of physics; as if continued expansion is not a reality the government is choosing so much as conceding. This is the story of an ideology in motion, of what happens when a nation enshrines a right before reckoning with the totality of its logic. If autonomy in death is sacrosanct, is there anyone who shouldn’t be helped to die?
Inside The Disturbing Culture Normalizing Euthanasia
There has always been something extraordinarily macabre about the push for assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Consider, for example, “Dr. Death” Jack Kevorkian, who famously killed patients at their request, knowing full well that he would likely spend time in prison. In addition to his passion for killing, Kevorkian had a passion for painting. To describe his paintings as “morbid” would be understating things: they consistently depict decapitated bodies, bodies with the skin flayed off, screaming visages, skulls, etc. Kevorkian was fascinated with death. Loved death. And he dealt out death to his “patients” with the cheery, confident nonchalance of a psychopath, completely untroubled by the moral qualms and hangups that would make many others squirm at the mere thought of taking the life of another human being.
Then there’s Kevorkian’s Australian counterpart, Dr. Philip Nitschke, who similarly approaches his pro-death advocacy with a kind of flair that seems bizarrely out of keeping with the grimness of what he is doing. Nitschke has exercised his “talents” to the utmost in devising, and publicizing, new ways of committing suicide. His magnum opus is the so-called “SarcoPod,” a futuristic looking device into which a suicidal patient climbs in, before pushing a button to end his life.
In The Atlantic article, we find evidence of a similarly eerie comfort with the business of killing among Canadian doctors. One physician, who previously worked as a maternity doctor, told the magazine that she calls the cases in which she provides euthanasia “deliveries.” Because, I suppose, “killings” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Another physician responded to a question about the “stress” and “trauma” of his job, by confessing that he actually finds it “energizing.” It is, he said, “the most meaningful work” of his career. “It’s a happy sad, right?” he said. “It’s really sad that you were in so much pain. It is sad that your family is racked with grief. But we’re so happy you got what you wanted.”
Another doctor describes feeling “upbeat” after recently killing a patient, “a little hyped up on adrenaline.”
Then, there’s the bizarre details of how those who are availing themselves of assisted suicide and euthanasia are normalizing the practice. As they plan for their own deaths, the article recounts,
Patients meticulously orchestrate their final moments, planning celebrations around them: weekend house parties before a Sunday-night euthanasia in the garden; a Catholic priest to deliver last rites; extended-family renditions of “Auld Lang Syne” at the bedside. For $10.99, you can design your MAID experience with the help of the Be Ceremonial app; suggested rituals include a story altar, a forgiveness ceremony, and the collecting of tears from witnesses. On the Disrupting Death podcast, hosted by an educator and a social worker in Ontario, guests share ideas on subjects such as normalizing the MAID process for children facing the death of an adult in their life—a pajama party at a funeral home; painting a coffin in a schoolyard.
Where does it Stop?
So, what about the question asked by Calabro that I quoted above: “If autonomy in death is sacrosanct, is there anyone who shouldn’t be helped to die?”
Calabro provides something of an answer to her own question later in the article. “When autonomy is entrenched as the guiding principle, exclusions and safeguards eventually begin to seem arbitrary and even cruel,” she writes. “This is the tension inherent in the euthanasia debate, the reason why the practice, once set in motion, becomes exceedingly difficult to restrain.”
Indeed, she points out, “It doesn’t feel quite right to say that Canada slid down a slippery slope, because keeping off the slope never seems to have been the priority.” Instead, “Legislative will has generally been fixed in the direction of more.”
Even the original “stringent” conditions under which MAID was legalized were troublingly vague. What does it mean for someone’s death to be “reasonably foreseeable,” asks Calabro. “Two months? Two years? Canada’s Department of Justice suggested only ‘a period of time that is not too remote.’” This left many doctors scratching their heads, and provided a giant loophole for the more, shall we say “enthusiastic” practitioners of euthanasia and assisted suicide to shoehorn just about anybody into the law.
And then, as it turned out, not all of the deaths turned out to be so “dignified.” Calabro recounts how some of the earlier patients fit the ideal image portrayed by pro-euthanasia campaigners: wealthy, seriously ill (usually only weeks away from death), and educated. They had thought long and hard about what they wanted to do, and they made their choice.
Disturbing Decisions
But as requests for MAID started to pour in, things quickly got murky. One physician, Sandy Buchman, recalls a patient who was “all alone,” and who “gave final consent from a mattress on the floor of a rental apartment.” “It was horrible,” Buchman. “You can see how challenging, how awful, things can be.”
Another physician recalls her discomfort when a patient in his 30s, who had been diagnosed with cancer, requested assisted suicide. However, the patient had a good chance of recovery, with treatment. But he refused the treatment and insisted instead on assisted suicide. When the physician, Dr. Li, reached out to colleagues for advice, she was disturbed by their responses. “[W]hat was very clear to me from the replies I got,” she said, “is that many people have no ethical or clinical qualms about this—that it’s all about a patient’s autonomy, and if a patient wants this, it’s not up to us to judge. We should provide.”
Calabro adds, chillingly, “And so she did.” That is, Dr. Li killed a 30-year-old patient who had a high chance of recovery, simply because he asked for it. And while she said she “regretted her decision almost as soon as the man’s heart stopped beating,” that has not stopped her from overseeing hundreds of MAID deaths.
Now that Canada is looking at legalizing MAID for cases of mental illnesses, the question of just how far the language of “autonomy” can be stretched has an intense urgency. Without a question, some seriously depressed patients will request MAID (in fact, there is evidence that some already have, and have been euthanatized under the broad “severe illness” category). However, when they request death, are they truly autonomous? Can they truly offer consent?
A Culture at a Crossroads
Among the many people who attempt suicide, but who survive, are many who subsequently express profound gratitude that they did not succeed in killing themselves. Many go on to live rich, fulfilling lives. Legalizing MAID for people like this will leave them defenseless in their very worst moments.
The nature of mental illness is that it often makes it impossible for a patient to have hope, or to foresee that things could be better in the future. Depression, by its very nature, convinces the patient that things will always be this bad, and that they cannot possibly endure the pain any longer.
By legalizing MAID for them, the Canadian government would essentially be saying: “Yes, things will not get better. We agree with you. It would be better if you just killed yourself. And we will not only help you do it, but we will pay for it.”
This is a diabolic inversion of the business of healthcare. And it must be stopped.
Although The Atlantic article is not opposed to MAID as such, I am grateful to Calabro for raising extremely urgent questions that far too many people are blithely ignoring.
However, many Canadians may well learn, once it is too late, that placing MAID as a centrepiece of end-of-life care, means than a great deal of pressure will be placed upon them, in their most difficult moments, to simply put an end to things, either for themselves or for their loved ones. Once the “easier,” “cheaper” way is permitted, it tends to exert a kind of gravitational pull. Which is why every civilized nation has consistently banned suicide and poured resources into protecting those at risk of killing themselves.
And it’s why the Catholic Church has consistently and insistently taught that assisted suicide and euthanasia are a grave violation of the moral law. Not because the Church is opposed to personal autonomy (A focus in modern society that misses the point. No matter the perceived benefits, the intentional killing of an innocent life is always wrong.). But rather, because she stands as the last defender of the dignity of every human person, believing that human beings are intrinsically valuable—born or preborn, sick or healthy.