MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

A recent independent study by British researchers of Dutch euthanasia data has found that people with autism and intellectual disabilities have been legally euthanized in the Netherlands, even though they had no physical disease or ailment.

Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002 and the use of the practice has steadily expanded in the last two decades.

According to the Dutch government’s euthanasia review committee, 60,000 people were killed by their doctors between 2012 and 2021. The committee publicly released documents related to more than 900 of those cases to demonstrate how the law was working.

‘Some people say, ‘Well, we can have a little bit of this.’ That’s what they argued in Canada too,’ a Canadian expert warns American euthanasia advocates.

As backers of assisted suicide push to expand legalization in the United States, new numbers from Canada’s government show euthanasia is now the fifth-leading cause of death in the country.

A stunning 4 percent of the country’s deaths last year were due to assisted suicide. More than 13,000 patients died by it in 2022 — a 31 percent spike from the previous year. The country’s deaths by euthanasia now number nearly 45,000 since legalization in 2016, almost as many as have died from Covid in Canada.

A new report finds that 13,241 people died under the country’s MAiD programme

Last year 4.1% of all deaths in Canada were due to MAiD (medical assistance in dying), according to the country’s health ministry. This amounts to a total of 13,241 people who died under Canada’s MAiD programme in 2022, marking a 31% rise on the previous year.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally toured one of the awful tent cities in Vancouver, Canada. At the corner of Main Street and Hastings Avenue, homeless drug addicts spread their few possessions out on blankets and cover the pavement for blocks on end. It is only a short distance from the restaurants and attractions of this fairly affluent city and is easy to stray into.

Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling “eugenics.”

The country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star. 

h/t WV

Considering the Nazi-tinged history of euthanasia, there is something dark and ominous about a headline reading “Christine’s ‘Don’t Euthanize Me’ Tattoo.” Christine Nagel, who got her first tattoo at age 81, doesn’t even approve of tattoos – but the Calgarian had an important reason for getting this one. It is on her upper arm, and the ink letters spell out crystal clear instructions: “Don’t euthanize me.”

In today’s Canada, Nagel finds it necessary.

The parents of a woman who died after doctors refused to allow her to travel abroad for treatment have overturned a court order so she can be named.

Sudiksha Thirumalesh was 19 when she died a few days ago at an NHS hospital.

At the end of last month, a High Court judge ruled that despite being conscious and speaking to her parents and doctors, Thirumalesh lacked sufficient mental capacity to challenge the medics’ view as to whether life-sustaining treatment should be withdrawn.

I am acquainted with the forlorn hope of clinical trials.

The Hippocratic oath explicitly prohibits doctor participation in euthanasia/assisted suicide. But doctors don’t take the great oath anymore, precisely because (in part) it conflicts with modern sensibilities that doctors can be ethical takers of human life.

A 2021 law has increased pressure on the state’s hospice programs to provide assistance in dying.

Despite attempts by California’s disability rights groups, religious groups, and pro-life health care workers to provide patient protections from the power of the burgeoning assisted suicide industry in the state, there was a 63 percent increase in the number of assisted suicide deaths last year, and a 47 percent increase in the number of prescriptions for lethal drugs prescribed by physicians.

In 1936 some of Canada’s most prominent citizens convened to hear how their country faced “extinction” unless they were willing to sterilize the “feeble-minded,” the “indigent” and the “degenerate.”

A progressive passion.