The slippery slope of assisted suicide

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 27th of May.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up: euthanasia laws.

New York State may soon legalize assisted suicide under the Medical Aid in Dying Act. The state assembly passed it last week; the state Senate could vote by next month.

At least 10 countries already permit some form of euthanasia. Others, like Scotland, are moving that way as well.

Joining us now to talk about it is Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

REICHARD: Alex, good morning.

ALEX SCHADENBERG: Good morning, Mary. These are difficult issues to talk about, they're important to discuss.

REICHARD: Well, indeed. Let's start with New York. It's joined a growing list of states promoting so-called death with dignity laws. Proponents say that there are protections to prevent abuse. So what troubles you about the bill?

SCHADENBERG: Well, first of all, what troubles me about the bill is the basic issue of what assisted suicide is. So what the law does is it gives doctors the right in law to be involved with causing a patient's death. And they may say this is about requests and that sort of thing, but it's not the same thing as, you know, a self killing, a suicide. When somebody else is directly involved with saying that, yes, I agree, your life is not worth living. And then prescribing a hideous poison to cause your death. It's really a bad idea, especially for people who are going through a very difficult time in their life.

REICHARD: How likely do you think this New York bill is to pass into law?

SCHADENBERG: Well, I don't really know. That's a hard thing to say. There's a strong group actually of Democrats in New York who are opposed to assisted suicide, which is very good. Nonetheless, I think that what what has to happen is people have to contact the members of the Senate, et cetera, and tell them, and they shouldn't just sugarcoat this, because everyone wants to think this is about medical treatment issues, but it's not about medical treatment issues when someone is killing you. It's about, is it ever a good idea to allow a doctor to kill you?

REICHARD: What do you say to the arguments, I know you've heard this, people dying of cancer with intractable, unrelenting pain, howling with pain, for example. Proponents of assisted suicide say that it is an act of compassion to let someone die if they want to. How do you answer that?

SCHADENBERG: Well, first of all, it's not about letting them die, it's about causing their death. Secondly, these are the talking points of the other side, obviously, because none of us as human beings want to be in intractable pain and suffering.. But for the vast majority of these cases, it's got nothing to do with that. It has to do with people who are approaching a difficult health condition who have decided that for many reasons, usually these are socially related reasons, like they don't want to be a burden on others or they're saying, I really have no one in my life, know, their spouse has passed away or they're in a situation where they really are feeling their life has lost meaning or purpose or value and they have a doctor saying, this is an option to you and you're thinking it's a way out. I look at these as deaths of despair because we're abandoning people to the proper care they need in order to live instead of die. We can take care of the pain and symptoms. We don't have to kill you. But the point of it is, is once killing you becomes an option that often then becomes the solution people seek.

REICHARD: Let's talk about Canada and you're from Canada, correct?

SCHADENBERG: Yes.

REICHARD: Well, your organization recently called for a comprehensive review of the medical aid in dying law in Canada. Why is that?

SCHADENBERG: Well, what's happened to Canada is we legalize something based on it being for terminally ill people, et cetera, similar to what the New York law would say. And then what happened is, is that we've massively expanded our law. So now we have a situation where you have people who are living in poverty, people with disabilities having a hard time getting medical treatment, people who are experiencing homelessness or having homelessness issues, poverty questions that way too, know, medical treatment issues are all leading to euthanasia. So it started out as being sold as a situation for people who were terminally ill, dying and suffering exactly as this question you posed me dealing with how it's being sold in New York. And now it's become wide open. really we are how would you say the canary in the coal mine, Canada on why you should never do this.

REICHARD: Let's talk about Scotland now. Have you kept up with what the latest is there?

SCHADENBERG: Yeah, I've been in Scotland a few times speaking in the last year and so I understand the Scottish bill quite well. Yes. And it would be more similar, the Scottish bill is more similar to what they're proposing in New York. Once again, what happens with the euthanasia lobby, you need to know ahead of time, they really do try and pass a bill that looks sort of controlled, it looks sort of tight. That's the goal of them because their goal is to legalize. Once they legalize, then they amend the legislation. If you look at Oregon, if you look at Washington state, if you look at Canada, all these laws started out looking tight in order to say, it's not going to be like the Netherlands or Belgium or other places where there's been a lot of abuse of the law. We're not going to do that. And then after they legalize it, they expand the law and they say, well, it's, it's based on equality is what they said in Canada. You can't deny it to people with disabilities. You can't deny it to people who aren't terminally ill. We have it in Canada for people who aren't terminally ill. We've now legalized it for people with mental illness alone, and that's going to come into place in March of 2027. And they say, it was discriminatory to deny to people who were going through mental illness issues because they weren't going through a physical issue. This is the kind of thing you get. Now they're debating euthanasia for children. So if you look at the Scottish law and the Scottish bill, it has certain “safeguards” built into it. But of course they're trying to sell the legislation to the legislators in order to pass it and make it law.

REICHARD: So you're describing the camel's nose in the tent phenomena that has been happening. What are some other unintended or ignored consequences when governments accept euthanasia as an option?

SCHADENBERG: Yes. Well, it does actually change healthcare. So I'll give you an example. I'm here in British Columbia and a couple of years ago, the Delta Hospice Society, which was an organization that had a 10 bed hospice, they refused to be involved with euthanasia. They said, no, we're not going to do that. So the British Columbia government said, but you're receiving money from the government. Therefore you must be involved with euthanasia and they refused. So the government defunded them and expropriated their hospice from them. So they were just shut down.

No one ever predicted we would be at where we're at today in Canada. And yet that's exactly where we're at. And I could tell you many more stories, but we only have so much time.

REICHARD: That's right, and I can appreciate that. Let's talk more about the root of the problem. You touched on it before as to why people are choosing euthanasia in the first place. We know there's some cultural issues at play, people being isolated. How did we get to this point?

SCHADENBERG: There's a lot of people who are going through difficult health conditions and they're going through these situations without family or friends who are helping them through this, you see. And as a human being, that's very difficult. So we understand that this is the bottom line, that there are a lot of people who are asking to be killed, not because they actually want to die, not actually because they want to be killed, it's because they're in emotional turmoil, they're going through a difficult time and they're doing so in a lonely, alone way. There's also a normal human reality, because we're all humans and it's normal that when you're going through a difficult health condition, you might start questioning, why am I alive? That's normal. This has never been different in our human experience. The difference is once you offer euthanasia, then it becomes a reality.

People aren't aware of where things have gone and they should be concerned. And the only way you can create a concern situation is by spreading the stories of what's happening to all these other people and making them aware.

REICHARD: Alex Schadenberg is executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Alex, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

SCHADENBERG: Thank you so much, Mary.

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