MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

When exactly are you allowed to deliberately block blood flow to the brain?

Are you familiar with something called the “partial resurrection” procedure? That’s how MedPage Today referred to it in a recent article. You might suppose it is some kind of transhumanist scheme to bring the dead back to life, but it is an emerging technique used by transplantation surgeons upon organ donors.

Before knowing anything about this procedure, the first thing one notices is the hubris of the terminology – as if it were within the purview of scientists, even surgeons, to deliver some sort of “resurrection”.

Our society automatically transforms any desire into law, even a depressed person’s death wish yet we have outlawed the death penalty.

Her name was Shanti De Corte. She was 23. This Belgian girl was euthanized, surrounded by her family, after legally obtaining euthanasia. Six years earlier, Shanti was at Brussels International Airport. She was to fly to Rome after graduation. She was in the departure lounge when Islamic terrorists blew themselves up. Shanti was a few meters away from them. She was taken away alive from the airport that morning, but she would never really get out of that nightmare.

What do you do when you discover your son has made an appointment for his death?

On September 7, Margaret Marsilla called Joshua Tepper, the doctor who planned to kill her son.

Marsilla is 46, and she lives outside Toronto with her husband and daughter, a nursing student. She had known that her 23-year-old son, Kiano Vafaeian, was depressed—he was diabetic and had lost his vision in one eye, and he didn’t have a job or girlfriend or much of a future—and Marsilla asked her daughter to log onto Kiano’s account. (Kiano had given his sister access so she could help him with his email.) He never shared anything with his mother—what he was thinking, where he was going—and Marsilla was scared.

That was when Marsilla learned that Kiano had applied and, in late July, been approved for “medical assistance in dying,” aka MAiD, aka assisted suicide.

Tom Mortier can now rest assured that though he was unable to stop his mother’s euthanasia, he has vindicated her right to life in the face of a system that failed her.

On October 4th, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of Mortier in his claim that Belgium had failed to protect his mother’s life by allowing her to be euthanised, ADF International said in a press release. 

Since the government expanded the eligibility for assisted death last year to include those with disabilities, critics have been saying there should be more checks and balances.

CALGARY, Alberta — The first time Cheryl Romaire tried to end her life under Canada’s assisted suicide law, her application was rejected. But after a loosening of the law, she received approval to end her life — and she now intends to do just that.

“It felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest,” Ms. Romaire said recently, as one of her cats and a dog competed for her attention at her apartment in Calgary, Alberta.

For a profession that purports to believe in a principle of “do no harm,” the modern medical community seems to perpetually undermine legitimate healthcare. Physicians under the sway of Hegelian ethics — whatever solves a problem on a practical level must be moral, as no action on its own is right or wrong — propose harmful (or lethal) remedies to accomplish a desired end.

Canada is widely seen as one of the world’s most progressive nations in the world, “leading the way” (depending on where you stand) on a variety of social issues. But in recent months, Canada has been garnering some less than savoury international attention because of the dark side of one of its recent progressive accomplishments, namely the assisted suicide regime that has been created since the Supreme Court struck down prohibitions on assisted suicide in 2015. The tragic situation that has developed in Canada offers a warning to other countries considering going down a similar path, both to be cautious about opening the assisted suicide floodgates and about empowering judges to decide whether such things should be allowed.

More Canadians are ending their lives with a medically-assisted death, says the third federal annual report on medical assistance in dying (MAID). Data shows that 10,064 people died in 2021 with medical aid, an increase of 32 per cent over 2020.

The report says that 3.3 per cent of all deaths in Canada in 2021 were assisted deaths. On a provincial level, the rate was higher in provinces such as Quebec, at 4.7 per cent, and British Columbia, at 4.8 per cent.

Is euthanasia the ‘unspoken solution to the problem of an aging population promised ‘free’ and unlimited health care?’

…Euthanasia activists and the media have been incredibly successful in glorifying euthanasia. Something that was until recently criminal has suddenly become accepted as a default moral position.

One advocate says, “If you can’t practise medicine because you can’t do an effective (euthanasia) referral, then you shouldn’t be in medicine.” Another believes it’s a doctor’s duty to do whatever is legal and that the practitioner’s independent thoughts about what is best for the patient have no place in health care.

Can you think of any societies in our recent history where this sort of thinking went awry?