Euthanasia is out of control in Canada

“Cheer up, it could be worse, they said! So, I cheered up and sure enough it got worse!” It may be gallows humor, but this old joke came to mind as I think of news here in Canada. Just when you think euthanasia in Canada can’t possibly get any worse, it does.

Canada’s euphemistically named “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) program is rapidly turning into a full-fledged eugenics program that would be admired by any of the world’s past genocidal maniacs.

Stories of disabled people stating that they feel that they have no option other than letting the state put them to death continue to mount up. Even the state-supported media feel safe in letting some of these stories be told because organized opposition to euthanasia and eugenics is so weak and ineffectual. For example, a quadriplegic woman was featured in a CBC story as saying that she has applied for MAID because it was easier to get government support to die than to get government support to live. She applied for the Ontario Disability Support Program and was told over the phone that it would take six to eight months for her application to be approved. She could get MAID, on the other hand, in 90 days.

A 33-year-old mother of three, she has been in a wheelchair since age 17 because of a diving accident. She was supporting herself by her earnings from disability advocacy work, but she has been sick over the past year and finds herself unable to work. Her assessment of the situation: “That tells me that our government is not prioritizing the lives of disabled people and that it is easier to let disabled people go than it is to actually give them the assistance that they need.” 

This is the message that Canadians are sending disabled people through government policy today. Your life is not worth living so we will help you end it.

It can’t get worse than that, can it? Oh yes, in today’s Canada, it can.

The National Post reports that new, updated guidelines for MAID have been drawn up that allow people to choose to donate functioning organs to family members or friends once they are killed. Usually, people are not allowed to designate their organs for specific people when they die. If they wish to donate their organs, the organs go to those at the top of the priority list. But in the case of MAID, the government has decided that an exception should be made to this rule.

The guidelines even stipulate that a person whose death is not imminent and who has chosen MAID can be approached for consent to donate. While stating that such decisions must be “voluntary” and “free of coercion,” the policy cannot change the fact that those who have family members in need of an organ donation inevitably will feel pressured to die so that that person can have the organ needed. There is no way to keep this from happening except to forbid organ donation by those choosing MAID. But this is not an option, apparently. One wonders why.

It is pure speculation to think that the reason the government is so eager to make organ donation a part of the MAID process is that the unstated goal is that, eventually, not just a tiny sliver but rather most of the population will die by MAID. In that scenario, very few organs would be available if they could not be harvested from those who were euthanized. Whether this is a conscious motivation or not, the social pressure on disabled people and the elderly to choose death for the convenience of others is growing in Canada.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World every person is euthanized at the age of 60 and after cremation their remains are recycled. There are no elderly, sick, disabled people cluttering up the landscape. There are no families and—in accord with John Lennon’s dreamy imagination—no religion. One could be forgiven for thinking that Canada’s current prime minister and cabinet may have come across this book and, instead of understanding it as a prophetic warning to the West of how it is possible to utilize technology to sink into barbarism, thought it was a how-to manual for governing a formerly Christian country.