What started as an allegedly rare and ‘kindly’ way to ease the suffering of the terminally ill has ballooned into a government program offering death as an escape from loneliness, depression, or even poverty and homelessness.
The prospect of the new year is always a mix of hope and caution; but as 2023 peers over the horizon, it throws dark and ever deepening shadows over the landscape of human rights in Canada. This coming March, Canada will expand its already shockingly broad MAiD, or Medical Assistance in Dying, law, to make death-on-demand available to Canadians—including so-called ‘mature minors’—suffering from mental illness.
The Canadian experiment with death-on-demand began in 2016. Rupa Subramanya, in a chilling post at Bari Weiss’ The Free Press, recounts how physicians warned from the beginning that the experiment was a reckless one. Dr. Ellen Warner, a professor at the University of Toronto’s medical school, objected to MAiD because “there was no way we would be able to avoid this slippery slope.”
