The Contagion of Euthanasia and the Corruption of Compassion

In Canada, “natural death” must be “reasonably foreseeable” before a doctor may euthanize a patient. In spite of such statutory language, in A.B. v. Canada, a case decided this June, the Court judged that the anticipated natural death need not be “imminent”; it need not even be “connected to a particular terminal disease or condition.” Rather, Justice Paul Perell concluded, “what is a ‘reasonably foreseeable death’ is a person’s specific medical question to be made without necessarily making, but not precluding, a prognosis of the remaining lifespan.” Physician-assisted suicide may go forward as long as a medical professional considers “all of a particular person’s medical circumstances.” One wonders in what sort of case death would not be reasonably foreseeable, under this loose standard.

The foundation for this decision was an earlier Canadian Supreme Court case, Carter v. Canada. It overturned the law that criminalized both the assisting of another’s suicide and the consenting to one’s own death, on the grounds that the law “unjustifiably infringed” upon the rights and freedoms of “competent adult persons.”

The slippage is part of a common pattern. A strong element in contemporary secularism sees human life as the personal property of its person. When suffering renders life burdensome to self or others, it can and may be disposed of; this is, for such secularists, the “compassionate” thing to do. But—as Canadians and others have by now found, again and again—the contagion of assisted suicide, once the command “Thou shalt not kill” is set aside, quickly spreads elsewhere.

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