All human beings have infinite worth because they are made in the image of God. And the taking of a life—any life—is showing contempt for God and His image. Life is sacred. It is not ours to do with as we please. 

O, Canada! What are you thinking… and doing?

In an absolutely devastating analysis from The Atlantic, the headline said it all: “Canada Is Killing Itself.” And yes, quite literally. In 2016, Canada’s Parliament gave its citizens the right to die, and now, doctors are struggling to keep up with the demand. Known as MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying), it set in motion what now accounts for one in 20 deaths in Canada. That is more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined. In Quebec, more than 7% of all deaths are by euthanasia, giving it the highest rate of any jurisdiction in the world. Canada now surpasses countries such as Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where assisted dying has been legal for much longer.

In a classic case of a “slippery slope,” Elaina Plott Calabro writes:

MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who were already at the end of life. The law was then expanded to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to minors.

But then she quips, “It doesn’t feel quite right to say that Canada slid down a slippery slope, because keeping off the slope never seems to have been the priority.” Calabro adds that what is at the heart of the explosion is the concept of “patient autonomy.” It is normal for a physician to do what they can to honor a patient’s wishes, but in Canada it has become the engine of a runaway train. It has allowed Canada’s MAID advocates “to push for expansion in terms that brook no argument, refracted through the language of equality, access, and compassion.” Doctors, some of whom have euthanized hundreds of patients, call them “deliveries,” borrowing from maternity ward terminology.

Oh, and the Quebec College of Physicians has raised the possibility of legalizing euthanasia for infants born with “severe malformations,” a rare practice currently legal in the Netherlands—the first country to adopt it since Nazi Germany did so in 1939. MAID for mental illness is set to become legal in Canada in 2027. The Canadian Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying has formally recommended expanding MAID to include mature minors. It would require “parental consultation,” but not “parental consent.”

“This is the story of an ideology in motion,” writes Calabro, “of what happens when a nation enshrines a right before reckoning with the totality of its logic. If autonomy in death is sacrosanct, is there anyone who shouldn’t be helped to die?” As one family physician on Vancouver Island put it, “Once you accept that people ought to have autonomy—once you accept that life is not sacred and something that can only be taken by God, a being I don’t believe in—then, if you’re in that work, some of us have to go forward and say, ‘Well do it.’”

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