Assisted Suicide Promoters Want It to Be Normalized

This article was published by National Review online on August 22, 2024.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Doctors killed more than 15,000 people in Canada in 2023. I think that’s a terrible toll that should concern even supporters of euthanasia. But in California, some assisted-suicide boosters are upset that a similar number of Californians didn’t end their own lives by assisted suicide. In other words, they see Canada’s gob-smacking statistic as aspirational.

And now, assisted-suicide activists, such as board member of End of Life Choices California Adrian Byram, want to catch up. From “Few Californians Choose Medical Aid in Dying. Here’s What We Can Learn from Canada“:

California and Canada have about the same number of people — 39 million in California, 35 million in Canada. Both jurisdictions legalized medical aid in dying in 2016. Both have similar medical systems — many older people are entitled to mostly free medical care, physicians are free to choose their patients and the services they provide. Yet in 2022, 13,241 Canadians took advantage of medical aid in dying, while only 853 Californians did so. Why the big difference?

Byram was so disturbed by the difference that he commissioned a study:

We found two factors that may explain the 15-fold disparity between California and Canada.

First, only 25 percent of Californians aged 60 and over even know that medical aid in dying is their legal right, compared to 67 percent of all older Canadians.

Second, and possibly contributing to the first, is a major difference in the way Californian and Canadian health care institutions inform the public about medical aid in dying.

Correct. In Canada, doctors suggest being killed to their patients. Imagine what that would feel like! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Not so in California:

It appears the institutions are reluctant to mention medical aid in dying, even though they are willing to describe other services like hospice that are available only to people equally close to death.

There is evidence that physicians are also reluctant to mention medical aid in dying when discussing options with a terminally ill patient for fear of upsetting the patient.

Well, assisted suicide isn’t really health care. But I digress.

The answer to too few suicides? Doctors and hospitals should publicize the agenda:

Are thousands of Californians each year missing out on a legal right to control their suffering or at least to make a fully informed choice? To better inform Californians, we must encourage our state health department and our health care institutions to have information readily available on their websites about how to access medical aid in dying. Likewise, we need providers to respect patient autonomy by ensuring we are fully informed about all the legally approved end-of-life choices, including medical aid in dying.

This column proves the lie that assisted suicide is really thought of by its boosters as merely a “rare” option. Activists want assisted suicide normalized well beyond the terminally ill so that we become euthanasia enthusiasts — as in Canada, where euthanasia is the fifth-leading cause of death, and rising. Indeed, almost every state that legalized assisted suicide has already liberalized their laws.

That’s the debate we should be having, not the phony-baloney nonsense of assisted suicide as just a teensy change in medical ethics.