Proponents of legalized physician-assisted suicide often couch their arguments in the verbiage of pain and dignity. They say that people with terminal and agonizing conditions should be offered the option of “death with dignity” on their own terms. While there are counterpoints against this policy, free people tend to gravitate toward ideas that feature personal agency and consent. Even if one has moral qualms about a culture that blesses any form of suicide, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for people suffering terribly from incurable illnesses.
One of the most common concerns raised against “death with dignity” laws has always been some version of the slippery slope argument, which is often a logical fallacy. But not always. On this front, prescient warnings along these lines have been repeatedly vindicated by events. Our neighbors to the north are a case study in this terrifying and heartbreaking phenomenon.
Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program started with all the usual appeals to compassion and dignity. It has since expanded rapidly and inexorably to make state-approved suicide as widely available and streamlined as possible. MAID has become one of the top five causes of death in all of Canada, rocketing up the list at a shocking rate. Writer T. Becket Adams recently placed the scope of Canada’s suicide machine into perspective by contrasting it with gun deaths in the United States, a common critique of America from abroad. This is startling:
“In 2023, there were approximately 15,500 MAID suicides. To put things into perspective, 2023’s recorded figure gives us a per capita rate of 37 MAID suicides per 100,000 people. During the same year, the United States reported 17,927 firearm homicides, resulting in a per capita rate of five gun-related murders per 100,000 people. Even if you combine 2023’s firearm homicides with all other gun-related deaths from that year, including suicides (27,300), law enforcement-related shootings (604), accidental shooting deaths (463), and what the CDC calls “undetermined circumstances” (434), that gives us a rate of only 13.7 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people, compared to Canada’s rate of 37 MAID suicides per 100,000. Put another way, a Canadian is nearly three times more likely to die by MAID than an American is to die by a gunshot, whether intentional or not. How’s that for perspective?”
Canada legalized MAID less than a decade ago and is already approaching 100,000 deaths under that regime. One out of every 20 Canadian deaths is now MAID-facilitated. More Canadians have died under MAID than were killed in battle throughout all of World War II. Far more humans are euthanized annually in that country than shelter dogs. Canadians who are not suffering from terminal conditions now routinely avail themselves of life-ending ‘services,’ and a public debate is underway about broadening the death-eligible population to include minors, as some European suicide havens have already done.
Scandals have erupted each time a Canadian blows the whistle on feeling pressured toward suicide by government bureaucrats after requesting medical treatments for various ailments and health challenges, including multiple military veterans. A local news broadcast recently highlighted the story of a man who expressly did not want to die, but applied for MAID because he feared losing his home. The family of a 26-year-old man who was euthanized is also speaking out, noting that he suffered from diabetes, partial blindness, and depression – not terminal conditions. He qualified for MAID anyway, and the government helped him end his life on December 30, over the objections of his distraught loved ones.
Even more horrifyingly, the death conveyor belt in Canada has become so prolific that same-day suicide approvals and facilitations are now occurring regularly, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
“Canada performed thousands of same-day assisted suicides, as it was revealed one elderly woman was killed despite withdrawing her request the day before,” the article conveyed. “More than 200 people in Ontario alone chose to die within 24 hours of their approval in 2023.”
A woman reportedly tried to reverse her decision, but the apparatus of death killed her anyway. Dystopian. Canada’s government-run single-payer healthcare system, dubbed “Medicare for All” by American supporters, is notorious for extremely long wait times for care. Patients languish on wait lists for months at a time. The government rations care to keep costs down, which increasingly pushes people, implicitly or explicitly, into MAID as a cost-saving measure.
When presented with the option of medical treatment far into the future, or same-day death, quite a few Canadians are “choosing” the latter, which is simpler and cheaper for the government’s accounting. Here is Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporting on an example of how the country’s “free” healthcare system can impact real people, which reads like a horror novel:
“For the past eight years, Jolene Van Alstine has suffered from a rare form of parathyroid disease, normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism. It causes extreme bone pain, nausea and vomiting. ‘Every day I get up and I’m sick to my stomach and I throw up and I throw up,’ Van Alstine said. She visited the provincial legislature on Tuesday to plead for help getting surgery to remove her remaining parathyroid gland. Currently there is no Saskatchewan surgeon able to perform the operation. Van Alstine said she must be referred out of province, but she can’t obtain a referral without first being seen by an endocrinologist — and none of them are accepting new patients. Van Alstine said the pain has become so unbearable that she has applied and been approved for MAID on Jan. 7.”
Layers of bureaucracy and government rationing prevented this woman from addressing her treatable medical condition, so she finally gave up and successfully applied for suicide. Medical care was a no. Death was a quick yes. This is sick.
Thankfully, this woman postponed her government-sponsored demise after concerned people of good faith rallied to her cause, including prominent American talk show host Glenn Beck. If this example had slid by in relative obscurity, however, she would be gone.
Whether Canada can reverse this self-imposed death spiral policy remains to be seen, but the example being set north of the border offers a twofold admonition for Americans.
First, when the government controls healthcare, “free” coverage does not remotely guarantee quality or timely care. And when a society loses its reverence for the sanctity of human life, and its government runs the national healthcare service as a giant spreadsheet, horrific utilitarianism can creep in slowly, then suddenly.
Second, despite numerous appalling examples of Canadian MAID abuses swirling in the public domain, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul just signed her own version of this death machine into law last month, which even bears the same acronym as Canada’s. This particular slope is demonstrably extremely slippery. And it can happen here.