Assisted dying advocates are losing their "compassion"

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I never believe that the euthanasia lobby is compassionate. I believe that the euthanasia lobby tries to use compassion to sell death.

Ashley Frawley

Ashley Frawley, a sociologist and a columnist, responded in Unherd, on March 31, 2024 to an article by Matthew Parris that was published in the Times on March 29, 2024 entitled: “We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying.” Frawley explains:

Parris attempts to deal with what he feels is the strongest argument held by opponents of assisted dying — that the terminally ill would be pressured to hasten the ends of their lives. He greets this possibility with open arms: “I believe this will indeed come to pass. And I would welcome it.” You see, there are simply too many old and infirm and it should be their social duty to ask themselves, “How much is all this costing relatives and the health service?”

Frawley continues:

For decades, campaigners for assisted dying have hidden behind calls for compassion, dignity and autonomy. Only sometimes did they let the odd quip about certain lives being “unaffordable” slip out. Usually, advocates shy away from a macabre calculus between life and the bottom line. But for Parris, slashing this taboo is progressive: “It will become common practice to pose the question without embarrassment, and to weigh the answer up.”

Frawley then explains that people with disabilities and people living in poverty are already dying by euthanasia in Canada. She writes:

People are requesting MAiD not because they want to die but because they can no longer afford to live. And incredibly, a growing portion of Canadians have no qualms offering MAiD to those whose only “affliction” is poverty. Academics suggest withholding MAiD from victims of injustice only causes “further harm”, since those injustices probably aren’t going away any time soon.

At first I thought that Parris just wasn’t considering the fact that legislation inevitably expands in these ways. Initially stringent safeguards inevitably fall on grounds of discrimination, pushing more and more groups into its purview. Urging the terminally ill to hasten their demise lest they be a “burden” on their families and society is bad enough.

But Parris doesn’t seem to mind the idea that it would eventually expand and come to be “seen as the normal road for many to take, and considered socially responsible — and even, finally, urged upon people”. He doesn’t qualify this last “people” with “terminally ill”. This is precisely what’s happening in Canada. It is not an example we should wish to follow.

Recently I spoke in England, Scotland, The Isle of Man and Jersey about Canada's experience with euthanasia. Politicians, in these jurisdictions were already lobbied by the euthanasia lobby to give the talking point that what is happening in Canada will not happen there. Frawley explains that though Parris is suggesting that what is happening in Canada will happen in the British Isles, he supports euthanasia.

Frawley then concludes her article by stating:

I am glad for arguments like Parris’s that lay bare what the debate about assisted dying is really about. It’s not about compassion and it’s not about autonomy. It’s about hastening the demise not just of the terminally ill, but of the subject that was born with all the hopes of the future in front of it.

The comments by Matthew Parris are eerily accurate. It reveals how the euthanasia debate has changed from arguing that killing will only be an option for terminally ill people who are suffering to acknowledging that euthanasia will expand to wider populations, including poor people. And as Parris acknowledges, the death lobby wants even more death.