Patient autonomy meets the ‘Groningen Protocol’ (euthanasia of newborns)

Killing of the incapable increases lethal pressure on capable patients.

Gordon Friesen

By 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

Repealing the Final Rule Would Be Tragedy For Opposition To Euthanasia.

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

As I’ve mentioned, the Final Rule, a 2024 update to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, is one of the best tools that the anti euthanasia movement has had in decades. The Final Rule strengthens Section 504 and the Americans With Disabilities Act in several ways, including new prohibitions against medical personnel pushing disabled people towards death. These provisions are new bulwarks against assisted suicide, coerced DNRs, futile care statutes and the infanticide of disabled babies; such as in the 1982 Baby Doe case. Everything groups opposing euthanasia need to avoid a Canada-like situation is in those regulations.

The Final Rule not only addresses futile care statutes, assisted suicide and infanticide, it also contains numerous other beneficial provisions. For instance, the Final Rule contains new protections for disabled parents, internet access, accessible medical equipment and better community services for disabled people at risk of being institutionalized. Hence, the Final Rule will help protect disabled Americans from the scarcity that is pushing disabled Canadians towards euthanasia.

But in 2025, 17 states filed the Texas vs. Becerra lawsuit, now called Texas vs. Kennedy. The original lawsuit sought to repeal the entire Final Rule, as well as Section 504 itself. (The challenge to Section 504 itself was dropped after backlash.)

In addition to multiple disability protections that I think EPC blog readers from across the political spectrum can agree on, one clause of the Final Rule defined gender dysphoria as a disability. This was one of the reasons that the 17 states filed suit against the Final Rule.

But the gender dysphoria issue is currently a moot point. Regardless of whether one believes that gender dysphoria ought to be defined as an impairment, the President’s executive order on gender issues means that this government will not enforce that part of the Rule. So, eight of the original 17 states dropped out of the lawsuit.

But 9 states still want to eliminate the rest of the Final Rule. Texas, Florida, Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, Kansas, Montana and South Dakota want the government to avoid “burdening” states with the Rule’s requirement that states institute new supports for disabled people at risk of being institutionalized. So, on January 23rd, 2026, those states filed an updated version of their lawsuit. This iteration of the lawsuit makes no mention of gender dysphoria or repealing Section 504 itself, but it still seeks to have the entire Final Rule set aside.

I am also very worried that even if the lawsuit is dropped, HHS and the Department of Justice will rescind the entire Final Rule anyway.

This would be a shame, because the Final Rule is a critical tool for achieving opposition to euthanasia.

Groups opposing euthanasia have always fought the infanticide of disabled babies, which we know happens periodically in hospitals across the US and abroad because doctors make prejudiced judgments about the value of the babies’ lives. (Such as the UK Alfie Evans case.) Section 84.56 specifically addresses this problem. To quote from the text of the Final Rule:

“Comments: Several commenters asked the Department to clarify the application of § 84.56 to newborn infants.

Response: As indicated within the NPRM, the Department considers section 504, including § 84.56, to apply to newborn infants. This includes the prohibitions against the denial of medical treatment under § 84.56(b)(1) and (2), and the prohibitions on the discriminatory provision of medical treatment under § 84.56(b)(3).

Comment: One commenter objected based on its understanding that the Department's proposed rule would not apply to decisions to withhold treatment from infants with disabilities in which the disabling condition is related to the condition to be treated, noting that § 84.56(b)(2) addresses treatment for a separately diagnosable condition or symptom and not for the underlying disability. The comment concerned infants with disability conditions such as meningomyelocele, hydrocephaly, microcephaly, or other anatomical anomalies. The comment noted that failure to treat these conditions represents discrimination against a child with a disability.

Response: The Department believes that this comment misconstrues the section 504 rule. The Department intends that this rule will generally apply to the provision of medical treatment for infants, including those seeking treatment for separately diagnosable symptoms or conditions related to their underlying disability, when medical treatment is provided to other similarly situated children. For example, an infant with microcephaly may experience seizures. This would constitute a separately diagnosable symptom or condition for which treatment would be subject to the protections of § 84.56(b)(2) despite the fact that the seizures are a symptom of the infant's microcephaly. As the Department's NPRM made clear, with respect to separately diagnosable conditions, the rule will not require that the condition be entirely unrelated to the underlying disability. “Nor does it matter for these purposes whether the condition for which the individual is seeking treatment is in some sense causally related to the underlying disability if the decision to refuse treatment would not be made as to similarly situated individuals without the disability.” 88 FR 63405. In addition, § 84.56(b)(1) prohibits denying or limiting medical treatment to a qualified individual with a disability based on bias or stereotypes about that patient's disability, judgments that the individual will be a burden on others due to their disability, or a belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than the life of a person without a disability or that life with a disability is not worth living. Under such circumstances, the discrimination described by the commenter would also be covered under § 84.56(b)(1) even if the condition for which the patient sought treatment was not a separately diagnosable symptom or condition from their underlying disability.”

So, if you are fighting infanticide, the Final Rule is your best friend. 

Opposition to euthanasia has also always fought futile care laws, like those that exist in Texas and California, which allow hospital ethics committees to override patients’ and families’ desires for life-saving care that ableist physicians consider “futile.” For instance, the anti-futility provisions in the Final Rule were inspired by the case of Michael Hickson, who was denied treatment for COVID-19 because he was a quadriplegic. The Final Rule forbids such authoritarianism. It is the anti euthanasia movement’s best shot at eliminating futile care laws once and for all.

An excerpt about the Final Rule’s prohibition on medical futility reads as follows:

“The Department proposed §  84.56(b)(1)(iii) to prohibit recipients from denying or limiting medical treatment based on the provider's belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than a person without a disability, or that life with a disability is not worth living.

Comments: The Department received a broad array of comments from disability organizations, civil rights organizations, and other stakeholders supporting this approach. We received stories from people with disabilities describing their own experiences or those of friends regarding the denial of life-sustaining treatment and the difficulties involved in accessing it after such denials. We also received similar stories from providers. For example, one provider association described a 25-year-old patient with a developmental disability who had been referred to an inpatient hospice unit after becoming poorly responsive with brain imaging demonstrating a shunt and severe abnormalities. After the provider learned from a family member of a recent sudden change in the patient's behavior, the patient received a second opinion, leading to the shunt being surgically revised, the patient's condition improving, and her enjoying her life for many more years. In the words of this commenter, the patient's “referral to hospice without sufficient exploration of other treatment options was inappropriate and may have been driven by a mistaken clinical assumption regarding her baseline quality of life.”

Response: The Department will retain the provision as proposed. We respond to specific questions regarding the application of this requirement throughout this section.”

Hence, this section of the Final Rule forbids the futile care impositions that groups opposing euthanasia have fought for decades.

Moreover, we know that disabled Canadians are agreeing to be killed by “MAiD” because they aren’t getting the supports they need: not having wheelchairs, pain control, food, housing, jobs, etc. These conditions also contribute to high rates of suicide among US citizens with disabilities. Hence, the Final Rule helps prevent disabled Americans from experiencing Canada-like tragedies.

And, given that the Final Rule prohibits federal funding recipients from “from denying or limiting medical treatment based on the provider's belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than a person without a disability, or that life with a disability is not worth living,” it precludes turning disabled people’s suicides into a “medical procedure.” Think of the efforts we will have to expend against assisted suicide in the future: wouldn’t you like to use the Final Rule to fight those bills?

I urge other euthanasia opponents to do what they can to defend the Final Rule. Time is of the essence, because many of the regulations in the Final Rule are supposed to take effect this month and federal officials have already eliminated or delayed some of them. For instance, officials have rescinded new provisions requiring adequate staffing in nursing homes. New rules about internet access and home and community based services have also been paused. Therefore, the aforementioned anti-death provisions could soon be paused or eliminated as well.

So, if you are someone in Washington DC who interacts with officials at HHS or the Department of Justice, make the importance of the Final Rule part of your conversations. If you live in one of the states that is bringing the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, write to your attorney general and ask them to drop it.

The Final Rule furthers compassion and dignity for disabled persons. It is also one of the USA’s most urgent anti-euthanasia issues in decades.

Author Note:

For information about how to contact your attorney general to ask them to drop the lawsuit, see this link.

To write to the US Department of Justice, go to this link.

To write to the Department of Health and Hunan Services, use this link.
For a quick explanation of what Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is, see this Drunk History video about the history of the law. 

Meghan is a disability instructor and a member of the EPC-USA board.

Canada, The Godless Nation Filled With Serial Killers for Doctors.

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on March 2, 2026

By Kelsi Sheren

Jonathan Reggler, a retired Vancouver Island family physician and active MAiD “provider” (Dr who poisons people to death), recently offered a moment of radical honesty in The Atlantic. Reflecting on his discomfort with Track 2 MAiD cases—those involving people who are not terminally ill—he explained how he resolves his moral unease and ill point out that this is how a killers talks.

“Once you accept that life is not sacred and [not] something that can only be taken by God, a being I don’t believe in — then … some of us have to go forward and say, ‘We’ll do it’.”

This is not a throwaway line, that’s an omission. A Godless Dr, and Godless man. It is a philosophical confession and it quietly exposes the real engine driving Canada’s MAiD expansion—not compassion, not autonomy, but a specific worldview that has decided human life has no inherent worth beyond utility, comfort, or consent.

If life is not sacred, then nothing is off the table. The above quote show’s the world who this “Dr” really is.

That belief that God doesn’t exist and he can take life just as God can not stop at the elderly. It does not stop at the disabled. It does not stop at the depressed and it will not stop at children.

Do you remember when MAiD was sold to Canadians as an act of mercy for the terminally ill. Those already dying, those in unbearable physical pain, those with no alternatives. That frame has collapsed with stunning speed. Lies, all from the start.

Track 2 MAiD now includes people whose sole underlying condition is disability, chronic illness, or mental suffering. The safeguards keep loosening. The language keeps softening. What was once “unthinkable” has become “complicated,” then “nuanced,” then “necessary.”

This is how ethical lines move. Not with alarms, but with reassurances and continued lies that if you say out loud long enough people somehow believe to be true.

Jonathan Reggler did say what most MAiD killers who say out loud: the only way this system works is if you reject the idea that life has intrinsic value. Thats fairly easy when your a Godless human.

You do not need to be religious to understand why that matters.

The concept of the sacred is not about God—it is about limits. It is the line that says: even when something is inconvenient, costly, painful, or inefficient, we do not destroy it. Once that line is erased, the only remaining question is who decides and by what criteria. Right now the “who” is the liberal government and the criteria is slipping into “who ever feels like dying.”

Today, that decision rests with panels, protocols, and physicians who believe they are doing good while redefining death as care. These are the power hungry, killers of Canada. The “Dr’s” who believe killing is the right thing to do no matter what the alternative. These are the people who get paid by YOUR TAXES to kill people instead of help them. These are the people who wake up every single day of there life wondering how much further they can move the goal post and how many more they can kill before the globe catches onto the fact that Health Canada employees serial killers, not Dr’s.

The wild fact that Canada even discusses kid’s as a an option for euthanasia is one thing, but now defensively, beautiful little souls who cannot defend themselves is a different ballgame. Canada is already discussing “mature minors.” The Netherlands and Belgium already permit euthanasia for children, including infants, under certain conditions. These people are just as sick, but they stay fairly quite about it. Canadian Dr’s on the other hand brag about their kill count. The argument is always the same—unbearable suffering, poor quality of life, compassion and mercy. Angels of death is what they really are. They can look in the mirror and tell themselves whatever they want, their serial killers in white coats.

Notice what is missing: consent. A baby cannot ask to die. So someone else must decide their life is no longer worth living.

If life is not sacred, this is not a moral leap—it is a procedural one. This is no longer a slippery slope anymore, although I’ve always believed it’s been a cliff, this is simply looking at patter recognition. Every expansion of MAiD was once dismissed as fear mongering by the pro death cults. Every warning was called alarmist, or even named as misinformation and every boundary has fallen exactly as predicted.

Not because ALL doctors are evil, although Canada employs some of the worst our world has to offer—but because systems that abandon first principles do not self-limit.

Jonathan Reggler quote matters because it confirms the diagnosis: Canada has replaced the protection of the vulnerable with a cost-efficient, ideologically tidy exit ramp.

If life is not sacred, why stop anywhere? Why stop at age? Why stop at diagnosis? Why stop at consent?

And if the answer is “trust us,” Canadians should be very very afraid—because history is brutally consistent about what happens when the state decides which lives are worth continuing.

This is not healthcare reform.

It is a civilizational choice and we are making it with our eyes open now, well at least some of us are. This is a line I’ve personally seen crossed before and is why I am so painfully vocal about it. I’m a combat veteran. I’ve watched institutions talk about human beings the way accountants talk about numbers—assets, liabilities, acceptable losses. That language always comes before the harm, never after it.

War teaches you something uncomfortable: once a system decides a life is expendable for a greater good, the circle of who counts starts shrinking fast. First it’s the enemy. Then it’s the inconvenient. Then it’s the weak. The justification always sounds reasonable when you’re far from the consequences.

What alarms me about MAiD in Canada isn’t compassion for suffering—it’s the quiet confidence with which professionals now speak about ending life once its “value” drops below an acceptable threshold. I’ve seen where that logic leads when it’s backed by authority and paperwork.

You don’t need faith to know this is dangerous. You just need memory.

When institutions redefine human value, violence doesn’t always arrive with guns. Sometimes it arrives with consent forms, softened language, and budgets that quietly benefit from fewer people needing care.

When the state, the system, and the balance sheet all win by deciding a life is no longer worth the cost, that isn’t mercy.

That’s eugenics.

Is Euthanasia of Newborns with Disabilities next?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Anna Farrow wrote an article that was published by the Western Standard on January 3, 2026 titled: Canada's Chilling Next Step - MAiD for babies.

Farrow explains how the disturbing concept of euthanasia of newborns was introduced into Canada's euthanasia debate:

Most Canadians disagree strongly with the concept of euthanasia for babies. We know this because every time the topic comes up, the public’s response is one of instant horror. So why does it keep coming up?

The issue first surfaced in 2022 when Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians (CMQ) appeared before Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). The committee was examining plans to expand MAiD beyond terminal illness to cover cases of mental illness as well as to accommodate advanced requests and mature minors. But Roy’s advocacy went even farther. He also suggested MAiD could be considered for “babies from birth to one year of age” who are born with severe deformities or disabilities.

Farrow continues:

The public response was immediate shock. On CBC Radio, Liberal Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough snapped, “There is no world where I would accept that.” The reaction was sufficiently negative that even pro-life activists assumed it was a dead-end issue.

This past September, however, several international media stories on Canada’s MAiD program have re-ignited the baby MAiD debate. A long feature in the magazine The Atlantic headlined “Canada is Killing Itself” compared Roy’s baby euthanasia proposal to the policies of Nazi Germany — an argument that caused instant outrage among pro-MAiD lobby groups. Then the British newspaper Daily Mail asked the CMQ for an update on its stance and was told the organization now believes “medical assistance in dying may be an appropriate treatment for babies suffering from extreme pain” and that “parents should have the opportunity to obtain this care for their infant.”

Farrow writes about the fact that the most recent Canadian euthanasia data indicates that in 2024 there were 16,499 euthanasia deaths with 76,475 recorded deaths from legalization until December 31, 2024.

Considering that we are now in January 2026, There has likely been at least 94,000 euthanasia deaths since legalization.

Farrow explains that, in the Netherlands, the Groningen protocol has been in place for many years, a protocol which permits euthanasia of newborns with disabilities.

Canada continues to debate euthanasia for mental illness alone.

In 2021, when Canada expanded its euthanasia law by passing Bill C-7, that legislation permitted euthanasia for mental illness alone, meaning that mental illness was the only criteria for approval. The issue of euthanasia for mental illness remains very contentious, which is why the previous Liberal government delayed the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone until March 2027.

Currently Canada is debating a private members bill (Bill C-218) that is sponsored by Tamara Jansen (MP) Bill C-218 would reverse the section of the law that will permit euthanasia for mental illness alone starting in March 2027.

Bill C-218 debate (Article Link).

As for euthanasia of children, the parliamentary euthanasia committee released a report in February 2023 calling on the extension of euthanasia in Canada to mature minors.

I responded to the February 15, 2023 (AMAD) report by stating:

The report by the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) was tabled in the House of Commons on February 15, 2023 calling for a drastic expansion of euthanasia (MAiD) in Canada. Among the recommendations, the report recommended that euthanasia be expanded to include children "mature minors."

Recommendation 19 in the report stated:

That the Government of Canada establish a requirement that, where appropriate, the parents or guardians of a mature minor be consulted in the course of the assessment process for MAID, but that the will of a minor who is found to have the requisite decision-making capacity ultimately take priority.

This means that parents or guardians may or may not be consulted, in the euthanasia death of a child that is deemed to have decision-making capacity.

To understand Recommendation 19 better we need to go back to the draft policy developed by the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto on euthanasia for "mature minors" that was published as a report in the Journal of Medical Ethics in September 2018.

• Article: Sick Kids Hospital Toronto will euthanize children with or without parental consent (Link).

Sick Children's hospital draft policy applied the same "ethics" for mature minors to make medical decisions as for making a decision to be killed.

Euthanasia for mature minors is one issue but euthanasia of newborns with disabilities can only be described as eugenics.

Sadly, once killing by euthanasia becomes a legal option the law will continue to expand. There is only one ethical line in the sand, that being, it is illegal to kill. Once killing is OK the only remaining questions are: who can do the killing and for what reasons.

Previous articles about this topic:

• Canada's euthanasia lobby is pushing for child euthanasia (Link). 
• Australian Human Rights Commission pushes Assisted Suicide for Children. (Link).
• The euthanasia lobby is pushing for child and infant euthanasia (Link).
• Canadian children may be euthanized with or without parental consent (Link).

The Netherlands already allows infant euthanasia.

This article was published by National Review online on August 25, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

An article in the Daily Mail sounds the alarm that permitting infant euthanasia — i.e., infanticide — is under serious consideration in Canada:

Canada‘s assisted suicide laws have continued rapidly expanding in recent years, with a group of doctors now pushing for disabled newborn babies to be euthanized. . . . As assisted deaths have become a major part of Canada’s health care system, the Quebec College of Physicians suggested legalizing euthanasia for infants born severely ill.

Canada has jumped so enthusiastically into the euthanasia abyss that I have little doubt that infanticide will eventually be allowed there. It’s only logical. If killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, why limit the killing to adults?

Besides, as the story briefly notes, the Netherlands already allows doctors to lethally inject disabled and terminally ill babies. There is even a bureaucratic checklist to guide the infanticide known as the “Groningen Protocol.” Here is what I wrote some 20 years ago when the protocol was first released:

The publishing of the Groningen Protocol isn’t designed to end the secret that is not a secret. It is intended to legitimize eugenic infanticide and move it from a crime tolerated by the, oh, so tolerant Dutch, to outright legality. In other words, the last vestige of protection left in the Netherlands against infanticide — that is, the technical illegality of killing babies in the Netherlands — is to be stripped away, including the protection against the killing of disabled infants not dependent on intensive care for survival.

In a more righteous world, allowing infanticide would make the Netherlands a pariah nation, but we have become morally stunted in the West, so what’s a little baby killing among friends? Many (but certainly, not all) in bioethics believe that killing babies that don’t suit us is morally acceptable — and not just Peter Singer. Indeed, the protocol was even published without criticism in the New England Journal of Medicine.

So, let us not be shocked by Canada’s threatening infanticide rumblings. Instead, let us look clear eyed at the policies that logically follow from eliminating suffering by eliminating the sufferer, and turn back from the metastasizing euthanasia cancer before we lose what remains of our moral compass.

Previous articles about this topic:

• Canada's euthanasia lobby is pushing for child euthanasia (Link). 
• Australian Human Rights Commission pushes Assisted Suicide for Children. (Link).
• The euthanasia lobby is pushing for child and infant euthanasia (Link).
• Canadian children may be euthanized with or without parental consent (Link).

Peter Singer endorses elder suicide.

This article was published by National Review online on April 14, 2025

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

Peter Singer, the internationally influential emeritus bioethics professor from Princeton, is known as a moral philosopher — which in his case is an oxymoron. Not only has he repeatedly endorsed the moral propriety of infanticide, but he has also yawned at bestiality and suggested experimenting on cognitively disabled people rather than animals if they are not “persons,” among other ethically depraved opinions.

Singer and another philosophy professor — Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek — just took to the opinion pages of the New York Times to endorse geriatric suicide. It seems a noted 90-year-old psychologist named Daniel Kahneman committed assisted suicide last year at one of Switzerland’s death clinics. Kahneman wasn’t seriously ill or debilitated but feared the infirmities that he believed were coming, so off to Switzerland he flew. Singer and Lazari0-Radek heartily approve.

Peter Singer

Before Kahneman killed himself — and knowing what he planned — Singer and Lazari-Radek interviewed him on their podcast. At his request, the interview did not discuss the looming suicide — Kahneman died just a few days later. But Singer and Lazari-Radek noticed he wasn’t seriously ill or debilitated. From “There’s a Lesson to Learn from Daniel Kahneman’s Death:”

Despite his advanced age, he was still capable of research and writing and could still enlighten audiences on how to make better decisions. Apart from his intellectual gifts, he was healthy enough to participate in friendship and family life. Why did none of this give him sufficient reason to continue to live?

Do you see the problem with that attitude? Do the philosophers not understand how bigoted and anti-intrinsic dignity of life their relativistic assumptions are about when a life is worth continuing? It is as if one must earn the privilege of remaining alive and is very close in substance to the geriatric disdain expressed by the bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel when he wrote in The Atlantic that he wanted to die at age 75 because “living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining.”

No matter. Singer and Lazari-Radek think that being made dead when one wants to die is “dignity:”

Professor Kahneman signaled concern that if he did not end his life when he was clearly mentally competent, he could lose control over the remainder of it and live and die with needless “miseries and indignities.” One lesson to learn from his death is that if we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo. Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.

Of course, it is important to talk freely about wanting to commit suicide. Indeed, anyone in that situation should — so they can be helped with unequivocal suicide prevention and other interventions. Besides, sometimes “shame,” “taboo,” and worry about stigma can save lives if they prevent people from doing the deadly deed.

And get this. At the bottom of the column, the Times added this addendum:

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

What a sick joke. One way to help suicidal people continue living is to not publish pro-suicide opinion pieces!

Sometimes really loving someone means unequivocally supporting them in living — not in suicide — even when they can’t see a way forward themselves. But that is not the “lesson” taught by Singer and Lazari-Radek’s column. Rather, their opinions — and its publishing by one of the world’s most influential newspapers — promote the West’s devolution into a pro-suicide culture. The victims of such a nihilistic mindset will be the elderly, people with disabilities, the mentally ill, and the seriously sick in an ever-widening swath of premature deaths.

Euthanasia is a national tragedy — and it's only getting worse

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Brian Bird

Brian Bird, who is a lecturer at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC, and a contributor to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute wrote a Special to the National Post that was published on December 19, 2024 examining Canada's experience with euthanasia. Bird looks at Canada's recent national euthanasia report and states:

A new report from Health Canada confirms that more than 60,000 lives have been lost to “medical assistance in dying” in Canada between 2016 and 2023. Euthanasia was supposed be the exception to the rule, but Canada has become a case study in how euthanasia is virtually impossible to confine once legalized.

Euthanasia in Canada was initially envisioned as an option only for competent adults nearing death who ask for their lives to be ended. A few years later, the requirement that death must be reasonably foreseeable disappeared from the law.

Parliament also enacted legislation that, if not for subsequent amendments, would have already decriminalized euthanasia for people suffering exclusively from mental illness (an expansion now scheduled for 2027).

Bird then comments on Québec's euthanasia experience:

In 2022, Quebec’s college of physicians proposed that infants with severe disabilities should be candidates for euthanasia. Last year, a parliamentary committee recommended that euthanasia be granted to certain minors.

Doctors in Quebec can now end the lives of people with illnesses that have rendered them unable to consent to euthanasia, as long they asked for it in advance. That province recently amended its legislation to allow euthanasia for people who “suffer from a serious and incurable illness leading to incapacity to give consent.”

This change allows people living with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, for example, to make an “advance request” for euthanasia long before they are suffering severely and in a state of irreversible decline. Doctors need not obtain fresh consent from them before they are euthanized.

Yet the federal Criminal Code says that euthanasia cannot be granted based on this sort of advance request. Anyone who euthanizes a person in such a scenario could be prosecuted for the crime of assisted suicide or culpable homicide, depending on the circumstances.

Between the Government of Quebec directing the province’s prosecution service to not enforce the Criminal Code in these cases and the federal government saying that it will not litigate the matter, we are left with medical professionals in Quebec being overtly authorized — if not encouraged — to commit serious criminal offences. The federal government has hinted that this practice could soon be decriminalized across the country.

Bird continues by explaining what euthanasia by advance request actually is:

As for what advance requests for euthanasia in Quebec might look like, picture a person who is diagnosed with dementia and makes an advance request for euthanasia. Years later, this person meets the remaining legal criteria for euthanasia but no longer has the mental capacity to express a desire either to be euthanized or to cancel the advance request.

The person has, in the preceding weeks, resisted care and reacts negatively as the euthanasia process begins. The doctor in charge determines that the resistance is a symptom of the dementia, not a refusal to be euthanized. After members of the medical team restrain the person, the doctor injects a lethal substance.

Bird then says that he is not fear mongering since the fears by critics of euthanasia have so far been accurate. For instance:

...a judge in British Columbia recently halted a scheduled euthanasia due to allegations that the person to be euthanized was not legally eligible for it. In Ontario, recently uncovered documents reveal that 428 euthanasia-related cases in that province featured potential violations of the Criminal Code.

Bird then comments that Canada's short experience with euthanasia should act as a cautionary tale to other jurisdictions and yet Britain just voted, at second reading, in support of a bill that would legalize assisted suicide. Bird concludes by stating:

When I think about the troubling road Canada has travelled with respect to euthanasia, I am often reminded of the words of our national anthem: “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.” Part of standing on guard for Canada is the duty to stand on guard for each other.

With euthanasia, we are failing in our duty. With every expansion of euthanasia, we confer a form of second-class citizenship on more Canadians, sending the message that they are less valuable than others.

This lie at the root of euthanasia must be undone. Every person, no matter their circumstances, has dignity and worth that never disappears. This truth — and the hope it promises — never dies.

Previous articles by Brian Bird:

• Canada is euthanizing persons and personhood (Link). 
• Hospitals should not ask people to consider euthanasia (Link).
• Euthanasia is a runaway train. It's time to hit the brakes (Link).

Bioethicist Peter Singer Devalues Human Life and Supports Euthanasia

Richard Weikart
Professor emeritus, Department of History
California State University, Stanislaus

Peter Singer (left) Richard Weikart (right)

Richard Weikart published the book: Unnatural Death: Medicine's Descent from Healing to Killing (Order from Amazon).

In 2016, after my book The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life appeared, I had a radio debate with Peter Singer, one of the thinkers I discussed in my book. The question for our debate was: “Is human life intrinsically valuable?” Singer argued that no, human life is not intrinsically valuable.

When the radio host asked Singer what would make a human more valuable than some other being, Singer responded that certain capacities that humans have give them value. In this interview, Singer specifically mentioned the ability for humans to make plans for the future, especially the long-range future. In his writings, Singer claims that a person must be “a rational and self-conscious being” in order to have a right to life. Singer overtly argues that humans who do not have the requisite rationality or ability to plan the future are not really “persons” and thus have no right to life. On the basis of this view, he believes it can be morally justifiable to kill infants, even after they are born, and to provide euthanasia to those with dementia.

While many euthanasia proponents insist that they only support voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide, Singer is not so circumspect. His “personhood” theory provides justification for involuntary euthanasia when people no longer have a certain level of rationality or ability to plan the future.

One of the big problems with Singer’s philosophy is that he never provides any reason why rationality, self-consciousness, and the ability to plan the future have any value. In our debate I pressed him on this issue, asking why he chose those particular capacities, and I was stunned that he could not provide an answer. He stated, “I think that’s a discussion we should be having. This discussion needs to be an open one. We need to think about these things and perhaps we’ll eventually reach some kind of consensus on what’s important.” Thus Singer bases his whole conception of what gives value to human (and animal) lives on these traits, but he cannot provide a reason why they have value.

This problem is compounded by the fact that Singer’s own worldview undermines his own view that these traits confer value on (some) humans. Indeed in his many writings Singer argues forcefully that human life has no meaning and purpose, because biological life began “in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall purpose.”[i] According to Singer’s worldview, human life is just a cosmic accident without any real significance.

Singer has continually campaigned against the idea that human life has value, meaning and transcendent significance. Thus the title of one of Singer’s books: Unsanctifying Human Life. In a 2004 interview Singer claimed that there is nothing special about humans, and then stated, “All we are doing is catching up with Darwin. He showed in the nineteenth century that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin’s theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe.”[ii]

Now here’s the contradiction: If both human life and the cosmos in general have no transcendent purpose or meaning, as Singer clearly believes, then how can rationality or self-consciousness or the ability to plan the future have more value than anything else in the cosmos? In Singer’s worldview, they are just as much the product of blind, chance processes as anything else in the cosmos. From my vantage point, it seems that Singer’s choice about what gives humans (and/or other animals) value is arbitrary (though Singer has obviously chosen traits that place himself within the ranks of “persons” who have a right to life).

But that’s not all. How much rationality or self-consciousness or ability to plan the future counts? These are not traits that one either has or doesn’t have. They exist on a continuum. Singer is often very cagey about this problem and doesn’t like to be pinned down about where to draw the line. In one of his earlier books he argued that a one-month-old baby may be killed, because it does not have the requisite rationality to be a “person.” However, more recently he tries to avoid drawing any line.

Where to draw the line is a huge problem, not only for Singer, but also for euthanasia proponents in general. When does a person’s life no longer have value? Different jurisdictions that allow assisted suicide and euthanasia draw the lines in different places. For those promoting euthanasia there doesn’t seem to be any logically consistent place to draw the line, so it becomes completely arbitrary.

A much better approach—and one that is not arbitrary—is to regard all human beings—regardless of their mental capacity—as persons with an inherent right to life. Thus we should value and protect the lives of all our fellow humans.

End Notes:

[i] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 331.

[ii] Peter Singer, interview with Johann Hari, “Peter Singer—On Killing Disabled Animals, Saving Animals, and the Dangers of Superstition,” at www.johannhari.com/2004/07/01/peter-singer-on-killing-disabled-babies-saving-animals-and-the-dangers-of-superstition, accessed November 18, 2009.