Canada’s disturbing assisted suicide experiment is going to get much worse
Jack Elbaum
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With each passing day, I become more convinced that the “slippery slope” is not so much a logical fallacy as it is a political tactic.
Take Canada’s euphemistically-named “Medical Assistance in Dying” program, for example. Reuters reported on Sunday about a 47-year-old woman who, next year, will be permitted to take her own life with the full support of the state — because she is anorexic.
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Lisa Pauli “has wrestled with the eating disorder anorexia for decades; she says she has had a warped relationship with her body since age 8.” Reuters reports: “‘Every day is hell,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired. I’m done. I’ve tried everything. I feel like I’ve lived my life.’”
What started as a movement to help alleviate the suffering of those literally on the brink of death has now expanded in ways that are incredibly disturbing. It started in 2016 when Canada began to allow assisted suicide for those with terminal illnesses; the criteria grew in 2021 to include those who had incurable, although not terminal, conditions; and next year, it will expand again to allow anybody with a mental illness to take their own life with the help of the government. See where this is going?
It is almost certainly only going to get worse. MAID is already the sixth leading cause of death in Canada, representing 3.3% of all deaths in 2021. But polls show 50% of Canadians believe it should be expanded to those with disabilities, and 41% of young people want MAID to be made available to anyone in poverty. Last year, the Quebec College of Physicians even said it believes babies up to the age of 1 should be killed if they have “severe malformations” and “grave and severe syndromes.”
This would be a cause for great concern on its own. But it is compounded by the reporting done by people such as Alexander Raikin, whose alarming piece exposed just how the MAID program takes advantage of those in poverty. Other reporting revealed that Canadian doctors are bringing up assisted suicide before their patients do.
There seems to be an eagerness to those promoting MAID. Raikin spoke with a doctor who performed more than 300 assisted suicides and said she believes “that the act of offering the option of an assisted death is one of the most therapeutic things we do.” A three-minute commercial titled “All is Beauty,” — which started with a caption reading “the most beautiful exit” — glorified assisted suicide. It later turned out that the woman featured in it, who was euthanized just a few days later, did not actually want to die but felt like she had no other choice.
Compound all this with an ever-expanding list of those who will now be eligible for assisted suicide and the only possible outcome is disaster.
Ross Douthat asks a simple, yet profound question about this in the New York Times: “What if a society remains liberal but ceases to be civilized?” It is a question that is particularly relevant to Canada because it has justified MAID on the principle of absolute autonomy of the self. As such, with each expansion of the program, it ostensibly becomes more liberal. However, at some point, it crosses the line into eugenics (getting rid of the “undesirables”) and barbarism. It allows society to abdicate its responsibility to those who are vulnerable and is used by its most fierce advocates as a type of religious experience where they receive existential fulfillment through carrying it out.
Canada is in dangerous territory with what can only be called its death experiment. When we remove the word “ordered” from the phrase “ordered liberty,” there is no bottom to the pit we inevitably fall down.
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Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.