Quote:
According to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Canada saw a sharp increase in government-assisted suicides last year, with an estimated 13,500 taking place in 2022.
The latest numbers are clearly not just a one-year outlier, but part of a booming trend.
Canada created its program, Medical Assistance in Dying, in 2016. The program initially applied only to adults with terminal illnesses, but it has grown drastically in size and scope.
In 2021, Medical Assistance in Dying expanded to include people with chronic illnesses. The program has become a convenient tool to push the poor and sick to kill themselves.
At the end of 2022, lawmakers expanded the program yet again to include people with mental illness. It was set to go into effect in March, but has been delayed until 2024.
Even with that delay, there are other plans to expand the program.
In Canada’s Parliament, a special committee on the topic released a report in February suggesting that Medical Assistance in Dying be extended to terminally ill minors.
Proponents of assisted suicide sell the idea as a policy of compassion and support for individual autonomy. Surely, we don’t want to see people suffer needlessly. Hence, you have a “right to die".
Once such a right is declared, it’s hard to create limiting factors and only a matter of time before that “right” is extended to the young and the healthy.
However, multiple problems come with the West’s adoption of the right-to-die ethos.
Most Western countries now have a socialized or quasi-socialized system of medicine. Government and private corporate involvement creates perverse incentives to push the old and less productive members of society to kill themselves rather than seek treatment to prolong their lives.
Although health policy experts sell assisted suicide, they rarely speak directly in these terms—again, the focus is on the “right to die”—but the motive of cutting costs is a huge one.
And who now controls who lives or dies? Increasingly in Canada, government agencies do.
It’s not hard to imagine that treatment will be doled out not just in a ruthless, technocratic, and utilitarian manner, but in a way that conforms with the ideological transformation of our institutions. If you have a low social credit score, the government may have even more incentive to let you die when you have health problems.
So, woke death panels.
It also must be said that there is something disturbing about the West—long known for its belief in the value of the individual and life itself—committing to ending life prematurely, en masse, in the name of autonomy. Hollywood, influencers, and celebrities glamorize assisted suicide [as if] it is something wonderful to celebrate. The implications of this change in moral framework are conveniently glossed over.
1 Like
And its only a small step from “letting you die when you have health problems” to FORCING you to die whenever they want you to, if they don’t like you.
All it will take is a slight increase in their control.
1 Like