MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Canada has seen a significant cultural shift since euthanasia was legalized, marked by unsolicited offers of assisted death, lives being ended prematurely, and what some critics call its “glamorization” as an act of personal autonomy, says an advocate for the prevention of euthanasia.

The shift in public perception of assisted death is largely attributed to the expansion of euthanasia in Canada since its legalization in 2016, as well as growing acceptance of physical or emotional suffering as sufficient grounds to consider a life less bearable or no longer worth living, Amanda Achtman said in a recent interview with Jan Jekielek, host of The Epoch Times program “American Thought Leaders.”

A PJ Media post alleges that there is an Evangelical Fellowship of Canada “brochure” from 2024, still circulating, that is in opposition to that nation’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program.

That sounds right on its face, but there’s more.

In her final testimony at a coroner’s inquest into the death of her husband, Sylvie Brosseau wept at length on Thursday as she recounted the horrors Normand Meunier suffered at the St-Jérôme Hospital before he chose to end his life with medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Meunier, who was quadriplegic at the time of his death on March 29, 2024, developed gaping, irreversible bed sores on his buttocks — over 20 centimetres in width — after languishing four days on a bare stretcher in a harried emergency room. Brosseau reiterated that the hospital failed to provide until it was too late the mattress her husband absolutely needed for his festering bed sores.

The ‘assisted dying’ bill will make it as easy as possible for disabled, ethnic-minority and poor people to kill themselves.

Presumably, the UK government had hoped it could quietly slip out the impact assessments for the assisted-dying bill without anyone noticing. Two reports were published on the Friday just before the bank-holiday weekend, and just after the results of the Runcorn by-election and other local elections. Clearly, no one was supposed to read them.

Last month, investigators “found a layer of human ashes and bone remains several centimeters thick, measuring approximately 460 square meters” at “depths of 80 centimeters to 1.50 meters”  just outside Hartheim Castle near the Austrian city of Linz. The crushed and incinerated bodies were victims of the Third Reich’s T-4 euthanasia program, which ended the lives of between 70,000 and 20,000 people that the Nazis deemed “life unworthy of life.”

Hartheim Castle, which is now a memorial site, was one of the eight centers where Nazi doctors murdered people with disabilities, mental illnesses, and other people categorized as “useless eaters.” Between May 1940 and November 1944, around 30,000 people were murdered in gas chambers, burned in a specially constructed crematorium, and dumped in a tributary of the Danube, or, we now know, on the castle grounds. The victims also included Dutch Jews as well as prisoners from Spain, Poland, and France.

April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year.

She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada’s increasingly liberal laws.

A United Nations committee reviewing Canada’s treatment of disabled people is calling on Ottawa to repeal medical assistance in dying for anyone without a terminal illness, a procedure referred to as the “Track 2” option for MAID.

The new report from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also recommends Canada create a federal MAID watchdog to investigate complaints, and that the country invest heavily in addressing the systemic failures that lead disabled people to apply for assisted death in the first place.

An assisted dying clinic in Switzerland has helped a British woman to end her life without informing her family, despite reportedly claiming to have changed its practices after a similar incident in 2023.

Anne Canning, 51, from Wales, travelled to the Pegasos clinic near the Swiss city of Basel in January to end her life.

She chose to do so after the death of her son plunged her into depression, according to her sister Delia, who told ITV News that Anne had no terminal illness and had assured her family she was travelling to Switzerland for a holiday.

A sharp rise in cases of euthanasia to end psychological suffering in the Netherlands has prompted a debate about the practice among young people.

Almost 10,000 patients died by euthanasia in the Netherlands last year. Compared with 2023, there was a 60 per cent increase in cases involving psychological suffering and a 10 per cent rise in deaths overall.

In the United Kingdom, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s trainwreck assisted suicide committee is making daily headlines as the pro-euthanasia majority votes down safeguard after safeguard. Safeguards have been rejected for those with disabilities; for those with suicidal ideation; for the homeless; even for those who may not be able to fully give consent (a safeguard mandating that the victim must have capacity “beyond a reasonable doubt” was rejected 15-8).

Euthanasia activists promised that the path to a lethal injection would be narrow with high guardrails and intermittent checkpoints. Leadbeater’s committee is creating a virtually unpoliced four-lane highway with no speed limit.

Few recent pieces of British legislation have proved as controversial as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater. Despite assisted suicide being decisively rejected by parliament multiple times in past years (including by 330-118 votes in 2015), Leadbeater has pushed on with her bill in the face of mounting opposition.

The bill was published only days before its second reading and one of its supposedly “robust” safeguards was a requirement for sign-off from a High Court judge for each individual case. For many MPs, who were denied the chance to take more time over this life-and-death issue, this so-called ‘safeguard’ was central to its appeal, and they saw judicial oversight as a vital check.

When a Canadian child was rushed to the hospital after nearly drowning, his parents say doctors threatened to take the child off life support and suggested harvesting his organs.

“We had 14 days to prepare his funeral and say goodbye to him,” Nicolas Tétrault, the boy’s father and a former Montreal politician, told The Federalist in English, his second language. “They were promoting to harvest the organs and give them away.”

Are med school admission standards favouring ghouls?