A recent story out of the Netherlands reminds us, as the adage goes, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. According to an article in the New York Post, the country, which has long led the world in legalizing and promoting euthanasia, has now expanded the reach of its angels of death to include those suffering from mental illness and even autism. Other countries are falling in line.
Following the lead of the province of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick became the second jurisdiction in Canada to adopt a policy of “presumed consent” for organ and tissue donation. Instead of willingly opting in to be an organ donor, residents 19 years and older, with limited exceptions, will be opted in by default.
While many see this as a solution to the perpetual demand for transplant organs, laws like these treat the ethics of organ donation as a settled matter while treating humans and their bodies as means to other ends. Even more, considering Canada’s policy of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), this step will corrode the already thin ideas of “autonomy” and “consent” while incentivizing a utilitarian view of human nature.
Is pain good or bad?
This was the question asked recently by physician and author Matthew Loftus in an essay entitled “Arcs of Life” published in The New Atlantis. Loftus makes the case that the contemporary obsession with avoiding pain has led to an increasing acceptance of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia, even for infants and for those suffering with mental distress. Our approach to pain amounts to, as Loftus puts it, “Eliminating suffering by killing the sufferer.” The appeal is made mostly to our collective commitment to autonomy:
The euthanasia regime begins with a pitch to the smartest among us. Wouldn’t you like to go out before the party winds down, before age and decrepitude shatter the autonomy and strength you cherish so deeply?
Offering death under the guise of compassion inevitably subjects human life to a medical cost-benefit analysis. States which execute their own citizens will find it impossible to not devalue them. And in a culture that advances state-sponsored death, people granted the “right to die” soon sense it is their duty to die. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.
n 2016, Canada legalized euthanasia through the euphemistically titled Medical Aid in Dying (or MAiD). Since passing, the number of Canadians who either “enthusiastically” or “cautiously” support the practice has risen slightly from 75 percent to 80 percent. The response from communities representing those with disabilities, however, has remained consistently opposed. Their fears, that Canada’s end-of-life policies would prove to be only the cliff edge of a moral abyss, have proven to be largely accurate.
Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves.
We should consider the consequences for societies that leap into medical suicide with nothing but good intentions.
A Netherlands medical committee recently changed its code of practice to allow doctors to slip sedatives into the food or drink of patients with dementia or Alzheimer's before they are euthanized.
In Belgium, the residents of nursing and rest homes were, according to a new report, “abandoned” by government authorities as the coronavirus epidemic raged. Out of fear of overwhelming Belgian hospitals, only about half of COVID patients in nursing homes that needed to be hospitalized, were. What happened in Belgium is outrageous.
Last week, the Dutch national health minister proposed that doctors should be permitted to euthanize “terminally ill” children under the age of thirteen.
