By Jon Brown, Christian Post.
A woman in her 70s who felt she no longer offered value to her family because she lost her cooking ability was reportedly approved for euthanasia in Canada, prompting doctors in Toronto to raise the alarm at the ease with which Canadians can undergo physician-assisted suicide.
Madeline Li and Gary Rodin, who are professors of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, mentioned the unidentified woman in a Monday op-ed for The New York Times, offering her as an example of the expanding consequences of Canada legalizing “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) in 2016.
Claiming that physician-assisted suicide can offer necessary palliative care and that one of them has even administered the lethal drugs to patients, Li and Rodin warned that “Canada’s system for assisted death is no longer an option of last resort,” and that increasing numbers are seeking it to remedy normal unhappiness.
“Too many people are receiving the procedure without the opportunity for careful reflection about it with a health provider. In some cases, patients are being approved who should not be. Reports have emerged of people seeking assisted death in the context of poverty or loneliness, raising concerns that they may feel they have no other options,” they wrote.
They added that some patients with ultimately terminal illnesses are “rushing into” euthanasia and “shortening what can be a meaningful period” in their lives.
The psychiatrists highlighted the case of a woman in her 70s who was the matriarch of her family and began to fall into despair when she was no longer able to cook Sunday dinners for them. Though her family ultimately was able to convince her that her worth was not found in her cooking, the doctors noted that she had been approved to end her own life with the help of a physician.
“She sought and received approval for assisted dying after she lost the ability to cook. She felt she had lost her value to her family. Through counseling, she came to understand that her family valued who she was, not what she did for them. She decided not to go through with ending her life, at least for now. That Christmas, her family gathered and she sat proudly at the table, while others did the cooking and serving,” they wrote.