Canadian Bioethicist: Euthanasia Should Not Be Considered ‘Special’

This article was published by National Review online on January 18, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Canada has leaped into euthanasia's moral abyss with a smile on its face. Since 2015, killable categories have expanded dramatically, from those whose death is "reasonably foreseeable'' — a category that was already so broad you could drive a hearse through it — to the chronically ill, people with disabilities, the frail elderly, and, starting next year, the mentally ill.

More than 16,000 Canadians were killed by doctors and nurse practitioners last year. It's the fifth-most-common cause of death in the country.

Many commentators point to these and other facts about Canada’s euthanasia regime to argue against legalization. Defenders of euthanasia know this and have mounted counternarratives trying to convince us that so many killings of such a varied numbers of people is an excellent outcome of a humane policy. The latest example is in the Canadian Journal of Bioethics, in an article by bioethicist and philosophy professor Wayne Sumner, in which he argues that euthanasia should be considered a ho-hum question, nothing to worry about.

Sumner shrugs at the dramatic increase in the numbers killed since legalization because euthanasia is just another medical treatment and should not be considered to be extraordinary. Indeed, to Sumner, doctors’ killing patients is really no different than performing hip replacements. Ditto abortion. And since an increase in abortion rates (to him) is a good, and no one objects to more hip replacements, what’s the problem with the statistical increase in deaths by euthanasia? From “What’s So Special About Medically Assisted Dying?”:

If we regard an increasing number of joint replacements or abortions as a success, with supply having risen to meet demand, why should we think that an increasing number of MAiD provisions is a failure, or somehow a problem? If more awareness, more providers, and more support are good things for these other services, why are they a bad thing for MAiD? Why should we think differently about MAiD than we do about other medical procedures? What’s so special about MAiD?

Let me count the ways.

1. Euthanasia isn’t about improving life or treating disease, as a hip replacement is, but causing death of the patient. That makes the act different in kind from true medical treatments.
2. Legalized killing changes culture. Once euthanasia becomes normalized, people become acclimated to the terminations of vulnerable people. For example, a recent poll of Canadians found that 28 percent of respondents approved strongly or moderately of allowing euthanasia for homelessness! Before legalization, I can’t imagine a pollster even asking the question.
3. Legalization leads to the objectification of the killable caste. Hence, in Canada, the conjoining of euthanasia with organ-harvesting. Once that happens, organ donation can easily become a prime factor in a suicidal patient’s asking to die, as it offers society a utilitarian stake in suicidal patients.
4. It can become a means of reducing medical costs. After all, what could be a cheaper “treatment” than a lethal jab?
5. It can supplant the provision of proper medical care. Indeed, in Canada, several patients have been euthanized after they couldn’t access specialized care.
6. If it is not “special,” why the need for guidelines and restrictions? If someone wants to be dead because they find continued life unacceptable, why say no?

Sumner makes the usual argument that killing is no different than refusing life-sustaining medical treatment, since both “shorten” life.

Even before MAiD was legalized, those who were so disposed had available to them a number of ways of managing their exit from the world. If their condition required life-sustaining treatment — whether this took the form of technological support or surgical intervention or continuing medication — they could refuse further treatment and so hasten their death. If it did not require such treatment, they still had the option of seeking death by refusing food and water. Plus, of course, the time-honoured method of death by overdose of pharmaceuticals.

Suicide is supposedly “time-honoured”! See what I mean about euthanasia changing culture?