By Trevin Wax, TGC.
America’s neighbor to the north is several years into an experiment with assisted suicide that has shocked its citizens—including many early supporters—with its ghastly consequences. Once a society embraces killing as care, there’s no limit to where that logic will lead. And we see the darkness spreading. The UK parliament is advancing a euthanasia bill approved by the Commons, now under scrutiny in the House of Lords, which has prompted a government committee review before a final vote. And momentum appears to be building faster than it has in countries that long ago sanctioned the practice.
Nearly a decade has passed since Canada’s parliament legalized euthanasia under the chilling Orwellian acronym MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying). Today, about one in twenty Canadians who die are euthanized.
An in-depth report in The Atlantic by Elaina Plott Calabro, “Canada Is Killing Itself,” painstakingly—and with as much fairness as possible—paints a picture of the culture surrounding assisted suicide, gleaning perspectives from participants, “providers,” and opponents. Reading it made me nauseous. Calabro traces the rapid expansion of euthanasia: at first limited to the sickest patients, who were already at the end of life, now broadened to anyone with serious medical conditions, with proposals to make the practice available to those with mental illness and even to minors.