Will assisted suicide of children come to the US?

This article was published by OneNewsNow on November 26, 2018.

It starts with eliminating suffering.

Wesley J. Smith

As Canada considers legalizing child euthanasia, one ethicist warns it would be a mistake to think the practice will never make its way into the United States.

In every country that has legalized euthanasia upon request, save for one, doctors are now killing children. Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, tells OneNewsNow proponents of assisted suicide initially say it will only be for the terminally ill, but it nevertheless spreads to others, including children.

"Once the determination is made that one legitimate way to eliminate suffering is to eliminate the sufferer, and when you transform killing into a mere medical treatment, then there's no way you can limit it to adults," Smith asserts.

• Sick Kids Hospital (Toronto) will euthanize children with or without parental consent.

In Canada, where assisted suicide was legalized by court edict, officials are now considering the termination of children, and if the child is mature enough, to do so without parental consent or notification. Smith says that is the obvious direction this is going.

"It's a very bizarre situation where around these certain very controversial issues parents who might have what is considered, by the powers that be, a heterodox moral view are increasingly being kind of pushed out of the equation as to what is done with their own children," he reports.

Assisted suicide is legal in six states and Washington, DC. And while proponents say child euthanasia will never happen in America, Smith points out that Canada is America's closest cultural cousin.