The callous cruelty of euthanasia in Canada.

This article was published by National Review online on June 1, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

The New York Times Magazine has a very long article out today highlighting cases of nonterminally ill people being killed by doctors in Canada. It is too long to comment on the whole thing. (Please take the time to read it.) But one story described was so starkly abandoning, I have to bring it to your attention.

The story describes a woman named Paula, who seems to have been deeply depressed and experiencing chronic pain that could not be diagnosed. She had been abused by her father. She had attempted suicide more than once. After her mother died of cancer, she hit the skids, and she was on the verge of homelessness. Her life went into what would eventually become a literal death spiral. From, “Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?”:

Paula stopped seeing her therapists and her social workers. She stopped seeing a family doctor because she couldn’t find one. She stopped taking mood stabilizers. She didn’t have a cellphone or a computer, and she spent hours a day just talking on an old black landline phone to people back in Perth. Still, Paula said, she was managing things — she was holding it together — until the concussion.

She was beaten up by two women with whom she had been feuding at the housing complex, suffering a concussion, which caused her life to spiral even further. She wanted euthanasia. Tests showed no brain damage. But she was miserable and wanted to die. She went on a crusade to find a doctor — any doctor — who would approve her being killed by lethal injection under Canada’s “Track 2” euthanasia protocol for the nonterminally ill.

She finally found a death doctor who was willing to kill her, despite knowing that many of her problems were social:

Fundamentally, he [the death doctor] didn’t think the best way to protect poor and marginalized patients was to force them to stay alive, because in some counterfactual version of events, in which the world was a better and more just place, they might have chosen differently. That wasn’t how anything in medicine worked; a doctor always treated the patient as she was. How could it be otherwise? If only those who were rich or well connected were recognized to have autonomy and allowed to choose? . . .

He had read the report from Paula’s neurologist, which said that Paula did not have permanent brain damage and was not eligible for MAID. But he thought the specialist, who was not a MAID provider herself, misunderstood the eligibility criteria. There was nothing in the law that said that Paula’s neurological condition had to be tied to actual, physical damage to the brain. Paula’s pain was real either way. She felt it the same either way.

On the day of the homicide, Paula says she is “terrified.” Of course! She is about to be killed! A “pastor” arrives to “counsel” her. She pushes the killing! This made me regurgitate my lunch:

Then the minister walked in. Paula had spent days calling religious leaders and asking if they would come sit with her while she died. Some said they would not but that they would pray for her. Others wouldn’t even do that. But then, finally, someone agreed to come. She introduced herself as the Rev. Takouhi Demirdjian-Petro, from the United Church of Canada, and she was tall and sturdy, in a pink clerical blouse. She looked down at Paula and took stock of the tearful situation. “You’re in the hands of the everlasting love of God,” she said firmly.

Paula started to cry harder, until she was nearly convulsing. “God have mercy on my soul.”

“God is with you,” the minister said. “And he is guiding you.”

“What if I get lost?” Paula asked. “My mind doesn’t have a very good GPS. I’m scared of getting lost.”

“You won’t. I promise you, honey.” The minister told Paula that she had a vision of Paula’s mother waiting for her, like a mother might wait for her daughter at the airport. “And I’m not B.S.ing you. So just let go of this empty, empty world.”

The death doctor arrives:

For days, Paula had worried that, at the final moment, she would waver, as she did when she tried to take her life before: pick up the pills, put them down, pick them up again; wade into the river, swim back, over and over. She imagined that when Wonnacott reached for the syringe, she would flinch. But Paula was calm and still as the drugs went in. “I don’t feel anything,” she whispered.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “This is horrible. I’m just so sorry.” Paula coughed as if she might vomit. Deep, guttural hacks. After a few moments, her body relaxed. A wet tissue fell from her hands. Her skin slowly turned a pale white.

Soon, Paula is dead.

Paula is not an anomaly. I just interviewed a Canadian man named Roger Foley for my Humanize podcast. The episode will be posted in a week. He is in a hospital with a progressively disabling condition for which doctors, he says, have repeatedly pushed euthanasia on him for several years — as they concomitantly deny him the kind of care that would make his life easier to bear. I’ll link to that interview here when it’s posted.

I also included Alex Schadenberg, the founder of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, in the interview. He described how hospital “MAiD teams” visit patients who might qualify to be killed, offering their death services. Can. You. Imagine?

Euthanasia is awful “medicine” and even worse public policy. It exposes the most vulnerable among us to abandonment and death. It pretends to be kind. It claims to be compassionate. But in the end, it justifies the most callous cruelty.