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| Gordon Friesen |
It has been repeatedly and fallaciously claimed that medical 'assistance in dying' is (and always shall be) an exercise of patient autonomy; that it poses no threat to incapable patients.
However, the legalization of medical homicide, in the alleged context of choice, has also sparked the rapid advancement of other variations, where autonomy is either limited, or impossible, and whose justification depends, not upon choice, but upon the objective judgment of medical circumstances.
This point is most emphatically illustrated by present Canadian consideration(1) of the Dutch ‘Groningen Protocol’,(2) which practice originally included the infanticide of babies up to 12 months, and is now being considered to include children up to 12 yrs (3). Clearly, no one might pretend that such deaths reflect autonomous choice.
Normalized infanticide, of course is extremely problematic on its own. For decisions which doctors (and parents) might previously have worried over, long and hard, will now become routine. Crucial enabling concepts which echo the worst phase of twentieth century eugenics, that is, concepts such as ‘incompatibility with life’,(4) will become increasingly elastic.
From a situation analogous to the historically extreme (and exceedingly rare) destruction of clearly inedible food, prospective parents will inevitably pass to the capricious practice of modern shoppers at the supermarket, disdainfully rejecting any fruit with the slightest blemish.
However our present interest with legal infanticide most closely concerns its relation to the evolution of medical homicide more generally.
Unsurprisingly, our adversaries simply deny any connection. According to the mendacious sophistry thus employed: infanticide cannot be an extension of MAID, because MAID is legally defined to require an informed consent, of which infants are incapable!
However (as we must reply) infanticide by doctor is clearly a form and extension of medical homicide (of which MAID was only the first permitted instance). And this fact both underscores, once again, the importance of employing proper language; and irrefutably demonstrates the expansion of medical homicide beyond the capacity border.
But there is more. For just as the assumed legitimacy of poisoning capable patients suggests a similar legitimacy for the incapable, so also, this allegedly objective justification of medical homicide turns back upon itself: to increase the pressure upon non-compliant, capable patients, to more readily accept their proffered fate.
For once the principle is openly proclaimed --that imperfect life does not deserve to live-- how can people be expected to accept imperfection in others, or in themselves?
In other words: to protect the incapable is also to protect ourselves.
Gordon Friesen, May 19, 2026
(1) Schadenberg, Alex, Is Euthanasia of Newborns with Disabilities next?, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, January 16, 2026 https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2026/01/is-euthanasia-of-newborns-with.html
(2) Verhagen, Eduard, M.D., J.D., and Sauer, Pieter J.J. , M.D., Ph.D., The Groningen Protocol — Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns, N Engl J Med 2005;352:959-962, March 10, 2005 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp058026
(3) Schadenberg, Alex, The Netherlands plans to extend euthanasia to children, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, April 14, 2023 https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-netherlands-to-extend-euthanasia-to.html
(4) Zhuang, Zara, ‘Stop saying fetuses with disabilities are incompatible with life, The Irish Times, Nov 25 2014, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/stop-saying-fetuses-with-disabilities-are-incompatible-with-life-1.2014538
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