Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Québec approved euthanasia by advanced request (starting October 30, 2024)

Euthanasia by advanced request is euthanasia for incompetent people.
Alex Schadenberg
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Shuyee Lee and Kwabena Oduro reported for CBC news that Québec's Justice Minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette has asked the Crown's Prosecution Office to not lay charges when a doctor or nurse practitioner kill an incompetent patient who made an advanced request for death, based on the euthanasia law.

Justice Minister, Jolin-Barrette asked the Crown Prosecution Office to not lay charges in these deaths because Criminal law is a federal jurisdiction. Even though Canada's federal government has radically promoted euthanasia, they have not approved euthanasia by advanced request.

Many people are not aware that Canada has two euthanasia laws, the federal law and the Québec law. On June 7, 2023; the Québec National Assembly passed Bill 11 which expanded their euthanasia law by:

  • creating an obligation for palliative care homes to offer MAID (in 6 months);
  • offering MAID in cases of serious physical disability* (in 9 months); 
  • offering MAID by advance request* (in a maximum of 24 months).

Québec Justice Minister, Jolin-Barrette decided to institute euthanasia by advanced request on October 30, 2024. 

The controversy related to the first provision of Bill 11, that being the obligation for palliative care homes to offer MAiD erupted in December 2023.

On December 2, 2023 I published an article about the St Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre, that was founded by the Archdiocese of Montréal, being forced to provide euthanasia. On February 6, 2024 I published an article that the Archdiocese of Montréal was suing the Québec government to prevent euthanasia at St Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre.

Quebec already has the highest euthanasia rate in the world.

CBC Radio Canada published a report on March 9, 2024 stating that Québec had a 17% increase in euthanasia deaths in 2023 with 5,686 reported deaths representing 7.3% of all deaths giving Québec the highest euthanasia rate in the world. The Radio Canada report was based on Quebec euthanasia deaths from January 1 - December 31, 2023.

There are many controversial stories including people in Québec being pressured to "seek" death by euthanasia. Some of the recent stories include:

Katrine Desautels reported for the The Canadian Press on August 14, 2024 that Sébastien Verret (44) is seeking a death by (MAiD) euthanasia based on long covid.

Matt Gilmour reported for CTV news Montreal on July 5, 2024 that Tracy Polewczuk, a woman who lives with Spina Bifida, on two separate occasions was urged to request euthanasia by a medical professional without initiating the request.

Rachel Watts reported for CBC News on April 12, 2024 that a quadriplegic man, Normand Meunier (66) "chose" to die by (MAiD) after developing a severe bedsore at a hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Québec. Meunier experienced a tragic spinal chord injury in 2022.

Conservative leadership (UK) candidates who oppose assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The 2024 UK Conservative Party leadership election began on 5 July 2024 when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared his intention to resign as Conservative Party leader following the party's defeat in the July 4, 2024 general election.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Labour) who won the election has been a long-time supporter of assisted suicide.

Kitty Donaldson, the INews Chief Political Commentator wrote on September 5, 2024 that Robert Jenrick, the front-runner in the Conservative leadership campaign, has changed his position on assisted suicide. Donaldson reported:

Jenrick, who emerged as the front-runner after comfortably coming top in the first round of voting among Tory MPs on Wednesday, has been on a political journey. Once seen as a liberal Tory and close friend of Rishi Sunak’s – the two played computer games together – Jenrick both stormed out of Sunak’s government over immigration while also becoming more socially conservative over the last few years. Despite voting for legalising assisted dying in 2015, his about-turn has been informed by Canada’s experience of changing the law, his allies said.
Jenrick is one of many politicians who may philosophically support assisted suicide but based on Canada's experience, is now opposing it. It is unknown whether his position is based on winning the leadership race or is a real change in position.

Donaldson also reported that Conservative leadership candidate James Cleverly remains opposed to assisted suicide.
Fellow leadership contender James Cleverly voted against assisted dying in 2015 and is understood not to have changed his position, but wants to support improving palliative care.
Even though Tom Tugendhat is currently running fourth in the leadership race, he has also voted against assisted suicide in the past.

The position of the next UK Conservative leader is important since the Labour Party won the last election and it's leader, Keir Starmer, is a long time supporter of assisted suicide. 

We expect a bill to legalize assisted suicide will be debate in Britain in 2025.

Monday, September 9, 2024

Sarco Selling Murder-Suicide

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Philip Nitschke with Sarco
Sarah Oliver and Sanchez Manning reported for the Daily Mail on September 7, 2024 that Peter and Christine Scott have decided to not only be the first people to die by assisted suicide with the Sarco pod, but that they intend to die together.

Peter and Christine Scott are part of a death campaign that romanticizes suicide where the "wish to die" is turned into a "love story."

The Sarco suicide pod was designed by suicide promoter Philip Nitschke, formerly known as Australia's Dr Death, to enable suicide by being gassed to death. The person activates the nitrogen gas which causes a suicide death by suffocation.

In July, the media reported that: 

Peter Sticher, a public prosecutor, cautioned that Mr Nitschke would face serious consequences for aiding, abetting, and inducing suicide, particularly if done for selfish reasons.

In a letter obtained by Swiss media, Mr Sticher said: ''There is no reliable information about the method of killing. [It is] completely unclear who has control over which mechanical process during the dying process.''

Since Peter and Christine Scott plan to "die together" the deaths would be defined as a murder-suicide, since one person would activate the nitrogen gas but both would die by suffocation, meaning one death is a self-murder while the other is clear murder.

The Sarco was developed by Nitschke as a way to gain media attention and to promote his websites that sell suicide books, materials and gadgets. 

Nitschke is 'making a killing' on selling suicide.

Bioethicist Peter Singer Devalues Human Life and Supports Euthanasia

Richard Weikart
Professor emeritus, Department of History
California State University, Stanislaus

Peter Singer (left) Richard Weikart (right)
Richard Weikart published the book: Unnatural Death: Medicine's Descent from Healing to Killing (Order from Amazon).

In 2016, after my book The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life appeared, I had a radio debate with Peter Singer, one of the thinkers I discussed in my book. The question for our debate was: “Is human life intrinsically valuable?” Singer argued that no, human life is not intrinsically valuable.

When the radio host asked Singer what would make a human more valuable than some other being, Singer responded that certain capacities that humans have give them value. In this interview, Singer specifically mentioned the ability for humans to make plans for the future, especially the long-range future. In his writings, Singer claims that a person must be “a rational and self-conscious being” in order to have a right to life. Singer overtly argues that humans who do not have the requisite rationality or ability to plan the future are not really “persons” and thus have no right to life. On the basis of this view, he believes it can be morally justifiable to kill infants, even after they are born, and to provide euthanasia to those with dementia.

While many euthanasia proponents insist that they only support voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide, Singer is not so circumspect. His “personhood” theory provides justification for involuntary euthanasia when people no longer have a certain level of rationality or ability to plan the future.

One of the big problems with Singer’s philosophy is that he never provides any reason why rationality, self-consciousness, and the ability to plan the future have any value. In our debate I pressed him on this issue, asking why he chose those particular capacities, and I was stunned that he could not provide an answer. He stated, “I think that’s a discussion we should be having. This discussion needs to be an open one. We need to think about these things and perhaps we’ll eventually reach some kind of consensus on what’s important.” Thus Singer bases his whole conception of what gives value to human (and animal) lives on these traits, but he cannot provide a reason why they have value.

This problem is compounded by the fact that Singer’s own worldview undermines his own view that these traits confer value on (some) humans. Indeed in his many writings Singer argues forcefully that human life has no meaning and purpose, because biological life began “in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall purpose.”[i] According to Singer’s worldview, human life is just a cosmic accident without any real significance.

Singer has continually campaigned against the idea that human life has value, meaning and transcendent significance. Thus the title of one of Singer’s books: Unsanctifying Human Life. In a 2004 interview Singer claimed that there is nothing special about humans, and then stated, “All we are doing is catching up with Darwin. He showed in the nineteenth century that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin’s theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe.”[ii]

Now here’s the contradiction: If both human life and the cosmos in general have no transcendent purpose or meaning, as Singer clearly believes, then how can rationality or self-consciousness or the ability to plan the future have more value than anything else in the cosmos? In Singer’s worldview, they are just as much the product of blind, chance processes as anything else in the cosmos. From my vantage point, it seems that Singer’s choice about what gives humans (and/or other animals) value is arbitrary (though Singer has obviously chosen traits that place himself within the ranks of “persons” who have a right to life).

But that’s not all. How much rationality or self-consciousness or ability to plan the future counts? These are not traits that one either has or doesn’t have. They exist on a continuum. Singer is often very cagey about this problem and doesn’t like to be pinned down about where to draw the line. In one of his earlier books he argued that a one-month-old baby may be killed, because it does not have the requisite rationality to be a “person.” However, more recently he tries to avoid drawing any line.

Where to draw the line is a huge problem, not only for Singer, but also for euthanasia proponents in general. When does a person’s life no longer have value? Different jurisdictions that allow assisted suicide and euthanasia draw the lines in different places. For those promoting euthanasia there doesn’t seem to be any logically consistent place to draw the line, so it becomes completely arbitrary.

A much better approach—and one that is not arbitrary—is to regard all human beings—regardless of their mental capacity—as persons with an inherent right to life. Thus we should value and protect the lives of all our fellow humans.

End Notes:

[i] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 331.


[ii] Peter Singer, interview with Johann Hari, “Peter Singer—On Killing Disabled Animals, Saving Animals, and the Dangers of Superstition,” at www.johannhari.com/2004/07/01/peter-singer-on-killing-disabled-babies-saving-animals-and-the-dangers-of-superstition, accessed November 18, 2009.

Zoom event with Kevin Yuill. Canada and the UK euthanasia debate on Monday September 16.

As the UK debates euthanasia. Canada's euthanasia reality is relevant.

Kevin Yuill
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) is hosting a Zoom event on Monday September 16 at 12 noon (Eastern time) with Kevin Yuill.

Kevin Yuill is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE). Yuill is also the author of the book: Assisted suicide: The Liberal, Humanist case Against Legalization.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing the link to join the meeting.

Yuill is a world leader in opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide and is working with several groups to prevent the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Britain, Scotland, Ireland, etc.

Alex Schadenberg
Yuill and Schadenberg will discuss the debate and proposed legislation to legalize euthanasia in the UK and how Canada's euthanasia reality is relevant to the UK debate.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link)

Some of the articles by Kevin Yuill: (Articles Link).

Canada has the Fastest Growing Euthanasia Program

Dr Paul Saba
By Dr Paul Saba

When Canada legalized assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia in 2016, it was supposed to be for only a “few” terminal illness patients with only days to live. As of December 31, 2023 approximately 60,000 Canadians had their lives ended by physician assisted dying (at the end of 2022 there were 44,958 assisted medical deaths). (Article Link).

Canada is the fastest growth assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia deaths of all countries where it has been legalized. 

Since March of 2021 the law has been further expanded to those with disabilities with decades to live and in 2027 those with only mental illness will be eligible for assisted suicide.

In October 2024 in the province of Quebec there will be advance directives for those with cognitive decline.

As a doctor, I know how dangerous it is when killing patients becomes part of the healthcare system. Physicians are not God. When doctors give a patient a diagnosis, we can be wrong. In fact, errors in diagnosis for severe, life-threatening conditions may be as high as twenty percent. (Research Link).

My patient Robert (pseudonym) came to me with a cough thinking he had a cold. I ordered a chest x-ray. According to the radiologist’s report of the chest film, Robert appeared to have lung cancer. I sat down with Robert and said: “We need to do a scan right away. We need to get you to see a specialist. We need to do a bronchoscopy….

Robert responded: “Dr. Saba, I know you’re against assisted suicide, but you know what? I don’t necessarily agree with you. If I’m going to die, if my time is up….” I replied, “No, no. You have to go through the process because this is only a preliminary diagnosis. Even if it is lung cancer, it is treatable today. There are new treatments. It may not even be lung cancer.” I spoke to the radiologist who performed the lung scan, who said, “We’re not sure what it is. It appears to be lung cancer but it may be a lymphoma, which would be highly treatable.”

Robert is an intelligent, well-informed man, an engineer, who thought he had a cold, then was told he might have cancer. He could have resigned himself to a medically assisted death before he even knew what we were dealing with, since Canada’s law allows a person to not undergo all investigations necessary to confirm the diagnosis. He could have given up hope while the situation was still filled with hope. The power to move people to give up is one of the dangerous and misleading aspects of medically assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia However, I was able to get his attention and persuade him that the situation was hopeful and that he should get more tests and undergo treatment. In the end, he called me in the summer of 2019 to thank me because there was no further evidence of disease which is still the case today. He had finally been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a condition that is highly curable with proper medical treatment.

A Canadian study found that 13% of patients with a diagnosis of “lung cancer” who died by assisted suicide did not have a biopsy-proven diagnosis of lung cancer. Moreover, only a third of those diagnosed with advanced lung cancer underwent systemic treatments despite the availability of known effective treatments. (Research Link).

This is what happens when the door is opened to assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia. Robert could have been another assisted dying fatality. I am a doctor, who believes medicine must be grounded in solid science, in what research and experience teach us about how the body works and heals.

However, hope is one of the most powerful forces for good medical care. When I say hope is a powerful force for health, I mean that hope counsels us to patience, to seeing processes through, and to regarding every step as part of the great gift of being made for life. Assisted dying destroys that hope and leads people to giving up on life.

Dr. Paul Saba is a family physician who practices in Montreal. He is co-founder of Physicians for Social Justice (Link) and is the author of the book “Made to Live.”
+1 514-886-3447
pauljsaba@gmail.com

Dr. Paul Saba is willing to present oral arguments and respond to questions if requested.

Friday, September 6, 2024

Excusing homicide and assisted suicide leads to subterfuge of ill motives.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Previous article: Retired doctor plead guilty to manslaughter in New York assisted suicide death (Article Link).
Stephen Miller (85) plead guilty to manslaughter in the death of a 59 year-old woman who died in November 2023 at the Super 8 hotel in Kingston New York. Miller is a retired doctor and assisted suicide activist from Arizona.

An article published by Mid Hudson News reported the response from District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji who stated:
Miller has taken accountability for his conduct in Ulster County. “His actions led to the death of another person in this community at her most desperate time.”

Nneji said the state legislature has not passed an assisted suicide law, “and as DA I cannot close my eyes to that fact regardless of any mitigating considerations lest we open a pandora’s box for subterfuge and ill motives to excuse homicides as assisted suicide.”

it is “best to direct or assist the person to the resources that are available through medical, psychiatric, and family interventions.”
Nneji then directed citizens who may be experiencing distress or suicidal ideation to contact the Ulster County Department of Mental Health at 845-340-4110, review resources in the county, or by calling 988 for the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

If New York  had legalized assisted suicide the questions would not necessarily have been whether or not this was a homicide of a person experiencing a desperate time but rather was Miller qualified to do assisted suicide in New York? Legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia threatens people's lives when they need help not assistance to die.

Assisted suicide, the non-medical model.

This article was published by National Review online on September 5, 2024

By Wesley J Smith

Certain strains of the euthanasia-advocacy movement believe doctors don’t need to be involved when someone wants to die. For example, the fanatics of Final Exit Network have taught people how to kill themselves, with a couple convicted of assisting via helium.

More infamously, Dr. Philip Nitschke of Australia, who has traveled the world teaching suicide courses, once told NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez that he thought “troubled teens” should have access to “suicide pills,” which, he opined, should be sold in supermarkets. He even conjured a suicide pod by which people can make themselves dead using nitrogen.

The idea of a nonmedical model for assisted suicide was just pushed again by bioethics professor Eric Mathison. From the assisted-suicide-boosting Thaddeus Mason Pope’s Medical Futility blog (an excellent resource on these issues, reported by Pope objectively):
Eric Mathison proposes a non-medical model of assisted dying.

The current, dominant model of MAID requires patients to get approval from healthcare providers before getting access to assisted suicide and euthanasia. This is problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, there’s a theoretical problem — namely, it’s paternalistic because it requires a healthcare professional to be convinced that the patient is suffering intolerably. And second, there’s a practical problem because there aren’t enough healthcare professionals who provide the service.

In response to these problems, Mathison believes that (1) the only requirement that a patient needs to meet is that they are making an autonomous choice, and (2) that non-medical personnel should be able to assist in their deaths.
That’s only logical. Killing/suicide isn’t a medical act. So why should it be restricted to doctors and nurse practitioners?

Some might think I’m being alarmist. Kooks propose all kinds of things. It will never actually happen!

Sorry, it’s already come to pass. Germany’s highest court declared a fundamental right to commit suicide, to be assisted in suicide by any willing accomplice, and to assist a suicide — without regard to why someone wants to die, meaning no health reasons required. From the decision (my emphasis):
The right to a self-determined death is not limited to situations defined by external causes like serious or incurable illnesses, nor does it only apply in certain stages of life or illness. Rather, this right is guaranteed in all stages of a person’s existence. . . . The individual’s decision to end their own life, based on how they personally define quality of life and a meaningful existence, eludes any evaluation on the basis of general values, religious dogmas, societal norms for dealing with life and death, or consideration of objective rationality. It is thus not incumbent upon the individual to further explain or justify their decision; rather their decision must, in principle, be respected by state and society as an act of self-determination.
The court wasn’t done. The right to suicide also includes a right to assist suicide:
The right to take one’s own life also encompasses the freedom to seek and, if offered, utilize assistance provided by third parties for this purpose. . . . Therefore, the constitutional guarantee of the right to suicide corresponds to equally far-reaching constitutional protection extended to the acts carried out by persons rendering suicide assistance.
Death on demand, for any reason, at any time, by anyone — with the possible exception of children — and assisted by whomever for any reason. This is the ultimate destination of the euthanasia movement, whether by design or simple logical consequence.

If we keep boosting the propriety of some suicides, we will eventually reap what we sow.

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

More than 100 died by assisted suicide in New Jersey in 2023.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The New Jersey 2023 assisted suicide report states that there were 101 reported assisted suicide deaths in 2023 up from 91 in 2022. Assisted suicide started in New Jersey on April 12, 2019.

According to the report:

  • 101 people were known to have died by assisted suicide, 
  • 13 people received the lethal poison but died a natural death, 
  • 3 people received the lethal poison but had not died and 
  • 2 people received the lethal poison and died but the cause of death is unknown.

When the cause of death is unknown, it usually means that no report was submitted. Therefore it may have been an assisted suicide death, but no report was filed.

The assisted suicide lobby is pressuring the New Jersey government to waive the 15-day waiting period and remove the residency requirement. The waiting period protects people from dying at a low point in their life while the residency requirement prevents the state from becoming a suicide tourist destination.

Similar to other jurisdictions, the most common reason for approving death by assisted suicide is cancer (62%). In New Jersey only 3% of the deaths were for "other reasons." The New Jersey report does not indicate what conditions constituted "other reasons" but in some states "other reasons" included diabetes or eating disorders.

Nine different experimental lethal poison cocktails were used in 2022. In 2023, 4 different lethal poison cocktails were used with 96 of 101 people dying by the lethal poison cocktail: “Morphine, Diazepam, Phenobarbital, Amitriptyline, Digoxin, Zofran and Reglan”.

The New Jersey report does not include information about complications, length of relationship with the physician, time between first request and ingestion of the lethal dose, time between ingestion of the lethal dose and unconsciousness or time between ingestion of the lethal dose and death.

The report implies that the deaths were voluntary (self-administered), but the information in the report does not address that subject.

Retired doctor plead guilty to manslaughter in New York assisted suicide death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller (85) plead guilty to manslaughter in the death of Doreen Brodhead (59) who died in November 2023 at the Super 8 hotel in Kingston New York. Philip Pontuso reported for the Hudson Valley Times Union on September 4 that:
Stephen Miller, 85, entered his plea before Ulster County Judge Bryan Rounds on Tuesday, with his wife looking on. Under the terms of his plea deal, he was sentenced to five years’ probation, which he will serve at home in Tuscon, Ariz. His attorney said Miller is infirm and does not want to die in prison.

Miller was arrested earlier this year on second-degree manslaughter and assault charges under a provision of New York law that permits manslaughter to be charged for aiding another person’s suicide. According to court documents, on Nov. 8 last year, Miller picked up Doreen Brodhead at her Kingston apartment and purchased a nitrogen gas tank at a nearby gas distributor. They then drove to the Super 8 motel in town, where the pair enacted a plan to end Brodhead’s life.
Marlene Lenthang reported for NBC news on February 6, 2024 that Stephen P. Miller, of Tucson, Arizona, a retired doctor and advisory board member with the group Choice and Dignity, was arrested and charged with manslaughter and assisting a suicide in New York. Lenthang reported that:
The investigation started shortly before noon on Nov. 9, when police responded to a report about an unconscious and unresponsive person at a Super 8 on Washington Avenue in the city of Kingston, about 100 miles north of New York City, Kingston police said in a statement Friday.

First responders found a person who initially appeared to have died by suicide alone in the motel room, police said.

But further investigation led to evidence that a second person had been present who “contributed to or assisted in the suicide,” the statement said.

An investigation by police and the Ulster County district attorney’s office led to an arrest warrant’s being issued for Miller citing second-degree manslaughter under the state penal code regarding a person who "intentionally causes or aids another person" to die by suicide.
Miller has received a light sentence for manslaughter by assisting the suicide of Doreen Broadhead. I am aware that Miller is 85-years-old but he took the law and a life, in his own hands. Miller is an assisted suicide lobby activist.

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

West Virginia ballot initiative would constitutionally prohibit euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Washington Stand published an article by Sarah Holliday on September 2, 2024 that reports on the West Virginia Ballot Amendment 1 which, if passed, would prohibit euthanasia and assisted suicide in the state constitution.

Holliday reports:
Amendment 1 has recently been added to the state’s November ballot with the intention of providing “protection against medically assisted suicide.” Ultimately, “the amendment just places what’s already illegal in West Virginia into the state constitution for more security going forward,” said Pat McGeehan (R), a West Virginia state delegate, on Tuesday’s episode of “Washington Watch.” If this amendment is passed, West Virginia would become the first state to amend their constitution to prohibit assisted suicide.
Holliday reports what Amendment 1 states:
“No person, physician, or health care provider in the State of West Virginia shall participate in the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of a person. Nothing in this section prohibits the administration or prescription of medication for the purpose of alleviating pain or discomfort while the patient’s condition follows its natural course; nor does anything in this section prohibit the withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment, as requested by the patient or the patient’s decision-maker, in accordance with State law. Further, nothing in this section prevents the State from providing capital punishment.”
Pat McGeehan
Holliday interviews Pat McGeehan (R) who initiated Amendment 1. Holliday writes:
Even though assisted suicide is “implicitly illegal in West Virginia,” McGeehan stated, “we want to send a message against this sort of nihilistic euthanasia movement sweeping the Western world.” And to fight against it properly, “You need to have it in the state constitution, because laws are not simply prescriptive, they’re also pedagogical. They teach people.” It’s McGeehan’s goal for West Virginia to become “the gold standard” in this push against euthanasia.

McGeehan referred to Canada’s MAID program as “just a fancy way of saying they’re killing their own citizens in Canada,” and he noted that it’s “horrific” that the practice is the “fifth leading cause of death” in the country. But Canada is far from the only proponent of euthanasia. In the U.S., “[T]en states have legalized euthanasia in one form or another.” Some states, such as Oregon and Vermont, have actually “opened up their euthanasia programs to not just their state residents, but to non-residents,” McGeehan explained. This, he added, has led to a “sort of euthanasia tourism,” which has “essentially grown into a whole marketplace for non-residents coming in to kill themselves.”
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports Amendment 1 and we urge Americans to support this initiative financially and otherwise to enable West Virginia to successfully pass Amendment 1.

 

Euthanasia: Canada's doctors can kill you.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An article by Nicholas Tomaino that was published by WSJ.com on September 2, 2024 titled: Welcome to Canada, the Doctor Will Kill You Now exposes how Canada legalized euthanasia (MAiD). Tomaino writes:
Canada has undergone a crash course in what the country calls “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID. The experiment began in 2015, when the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in Carter v. Canada that “laws prohibiting physician-assisted dying interfere with the liberty and security” of people with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions. Parliament codified the decision the following year.

Lawmakers thought they were imposing limits. “We do not wish to promote premature death as a solution to all medical suffering,” then-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said. The plaintiff’s lead lawyer in Carter argued that “in almost every case,” doctors will want to “help their patients live, not die.” “We know physicians will be reluctant gatekeepers.”

Yet Krauthammer was right. The Superior Court of Quebec soon ruled that MAID was unconstitutional because it required that an applicant’s death from “a grievous and irremediable medical condition” be “reasonably foreseeable.” Parliament amended its “discriminatory” regime in 2021, opening wider the door to facilitated death. The new law dropped safeguards, such as the minimum 10-day assessment period between request and provision. It also proposed mental illness as an eligible condition, the implementation of which the government has delayed until 2027. The message for everyone else remains the same: If you want to die, you needn’t wait.
Tomaino is explaining how Canada legalized euthanasia and makes reference to comments by Charles Krauthammer. The short version is, Canada's Supreme Court, in 2015, struck down Canada's laws that protected people from euthanasia and assisted suicide. Parliament legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in June 2016 using the term MAiD, Medical Assistance in Dying. In 2019 a Quebec court decision (Truchon) decided that Canada's law was too restrictive because it limited killing to terminally ill people. Parliament then expanded Canada's law in March 2021 by (among other things) removing the terminal illness requirement in the law.

Alexander Raikin
Tomaino continues:
The consequence, Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Alexander Raikin notes in a new study, is that what was meant to be exceptional has become routine. Using two government data sets, he estimates the program is at least the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, claiming a reported 13,241 lives in 2022, up from 1,018 in 2016.

Mr. Raikin notes the government believed doctors wouldn’t merely rubber-stamp applications. Yet in 2022 more than 81% of petitions resulted in death, including for “vision/hearing loss” and “diabetes.” He documents that the percentage of denied written requests has been falling for years, from 8% in 2019 to 3.5% in 2022, even as the number of applications has increased. The upshot has been that 44,958 people have been put to death between 2016-22. One estimate, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2020, predicted that “approximately 2,000 euthanasia” cases could be expected annually. The MAID toll that year was 7,611. Thus “either in absolute numbers or when weighed as a percentage of deaths,” Canada has the “fastest-growing assisted-dying program” in the world.
Roger Foley
Tomaino comments on Roger Foley, a man who has been told by hospital staff that he should die by MAiD
Roger Foley, who suffers from a degenerative neurological disorder, cerebellar ataxia, has witnessed MAID since its infancy. In 2009, as Mr. Foley’s condition worsened, he resigned from his job at the Royal Bank of Canada. After several years in home care, in which he claims he was mistreated, he was placed in a mental-health ward.

“I became extremely suicidal,” Mr. Foley, 48, says in a Zoom interview from his bed in the hospital, where he’s lived since 2016. After he shared those thoughts with staff, he says they began to float the idea of euthanasia. That alarmed him, so he began to record conversations secretly. He later shared them with Canadian journalists.

In one, a hospital ethicist threatens Mr. Foley with denial of insurance coverage and says it would cost him “north of $1,500 a day” to stay in the hospital. When Mr. Foley protested, the ethicist retorted: “Roger, this is not my show. My piece of this was to talk to you about if you had interest in assisted dying.”

He didn’t. “I have a passion to live,” Mr. Foley says. He wants to volunteer and write songs. Many people like to “use the term ‘end suffering,’ ” he says. In practice, that means “Don’t help the sufferer, end the sufferer.”
Canadians were told that euthanasia would only be available as a last resort but in reality it has been normalized and is killing many more people than anyone anticipated.