MAiD
Assisted suicide is never really about ‘choice’: here’s why
From LifeSiteNews
Just a few years ago, we understood that suicidal ideation itself was an indication that something was seriously wrong – but our euthanasia regime has changed all of that.
Just last week, I wrote a column on the normalization of euthanasia and the sinister insistence by those who advocate for it that being killed by lethal injection is, in fact, both a good and a life-saving thing. We are seeing the complete perversion of language in order to justify medicalized killing, which is why you don’t read terms like “killing” or “suicide” in the context of the euthanasia debate in the press. Activists realized very quickly that these terms were unhelpful in the push for normalization.
Earlier this month, Canadian MP Kevin Lamoureux, a Liberal, took it a step further, stating: “MAiD [assisted suicide] legislation, even on occasion, I would ultimately argue, saves lives.”
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/bFU57gKxCJ
— Michelle Ferreri (@mferreriptbokaw) February 12, 2024
What a truly insane thing to say – and the sad fact is, he likely believes it. He also likely doesn’t realize how dangerous his statement is. What message is being sent to those the government has deemed eligible for state-facilitated suicide? Euthanasia is, legally speaking, a choice. But just as with abortion, the “choice” is often a farcical one.
When women were legally granted the “choice” of abortion, it swiftly became an expectation. Sick, sad, and depressed people may be told they merely have the “choice” to be euthanized – but as we have seen, this choice often seems like a social obligation.
This point was made in a recent essay about euthanasia in Newsweek by Katherine Brodsky, who supports euthanasia in principle. She has, however, come to have doubts that a euthanasia regime in which choice is freely exercised is possible. She writes:
I am now skeptical about the true autonomy of individuals opting for assisted death, especially in a country with socialized health care. The risk of medical practitioners recommending MAiD as a cost-cutting measure to alleviate strain on the health care system is unsettling, as suggested by a 2020 analysis estimating potential annual savings of save $66 million annually in health care costs. Individuals considering MAiD are already vulnerable due to physical or mental suffering, making them susceptible to external pressures. Reflecting on my own past struggles, I recognize the unpredictability of emotions and circumstances. What seems unbearable one day may change with time and support – yet the choice to end life is a permanent one.
Fortunately, the Canadian government has delayed – for the second time – expanding euthanasia to those suffering from mental illness. But they insist that this is a delay, not a cancellation, meaning that the position of the Trudeau government is that someone suffering acute despair caused by a mental illness is clear-headed enough to choose suicide-by-doctor. This is obviously untrue, and I genuinely wonder why the government seems so hellbent on doing this. Just a few years ago, we understood that suicidal ideation itself was an indication that something was seriously wrong – but our euthanasia regime has changed all of that.
Brodsky notes that the “choice” being offered to a specific subset of Canadians who have been pre-approved for this “choice” – a choice not offered to all Canadians, but only those the government has decided have lives not worth living – is often a false one. Citing the example of Lauren Hoeve, the Dutch girl who was euthanized earlier this year, she notes:
And yet, I was struck by something in the statement put out by Lauren Hoeve’s parents. ‘Millions of people are affected by ME/CFS, with no established treatment pathways and no cure,’ they wrote on X on Feb. 2. ‘Why is their suffering acknowledged enough for euthanasia but not enough to fund clinical research?’ And herein lies the rub. Why is euthanasia offered as a viable solution to a potentially non-permanent problem, when other options are possible?
Mental health services in Canada (and elsewhere) are scarce. Psychologists are expensive and out of reach for many. Psychiatric services are free of charge, but the wait lists are even longer than those for psychologists and few people can get access. The wait to get help is usually over a year. Family physicians just end up prescribing medications based on a checklist and see what sticks.
READ: Terminally ill children in the Netherlands can now be euthanized against their will
Precisely true. We know that many people in Canada have chosen euthanasia because it was the only “choice” being offered to them at all. Cancer patients who cannot get the treatment they actually want have opted for suicide-by-doctor instead. One woman noted that her requests for additional help to deal with her chronic condition were denied, and thus euthanasia was, she felt, the only option left available. “Ultimately it was not a genetic disease that took me out, it was a system,” she wrote. “There is desperate need for change. That is the sickness that causes so much suffering. Vulnerable people need help to survive. I could have had more time if I had more help.”
So, what does an ill and suffering Canadian hear when an MP stands up in the House of Commons and says that euthanasia “saves lives”? They know it doesn’t save their life. As Amanda Achtman noted: “Obviously, it’s not the lives of those being killed that are being saved. Such a utilitarian calculation amounts to a war against the weak and this is dehumanizing and wrong.”
From LifeSiteNews
‘It made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say ‘here’s a solution, just kill yourself.’
Yet another Canadian combat veteran has come forward to reveal that when he sought help, he was instead offered euthanasia.
David Baltzer, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, revealed to the Toronto Sun that he was offered euthanasia on December 23, 2019—making him, as the Sun noted, “among the first Canadian soldiers offered therapeutic suicide by the federal government.”
Baltzer had been having a disagreement with his existing caseworker, when assisted suicide was brought up in in call with a different agent from Veteran Affairs Canada.
“It made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say ‘here’s a solution, just kill yourself,” Baltzer told the Sun.“I was in my lowest down point, it was just before Christmas. He says to me, ‘I would like to make a suggestion for you. Keep an open mind, think about it, you’ve tried all this and nothing seems to be working, but have you thought about medical-assisted suicide?’”
Baltzer was stunned. “It just seems to me that they just want us to be like ‘f–k this, I give up, this sucks, I’d rather just take my own life,’” he said. “That’s how I honestly felt.”
Baltzer, who is from St. Catharines, Ontario, joined up at age 17, and moved to Manitoba to join the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, one of Canada’s elite units. He headed to Afghanistan in 2006. The Sun noted that he “was among Canada’s first troops deployed to Afghanistan as part Operation Athena, where he served two tours and saw plenty of combat.”
“We went out on long-range patrols trying to find the Taliban, and that’s exactly what we did,” Baltzer said. “The best way I can describe it, it was like Black Hawk Down — all of the sudden the s–t hit the fan and I was like ‘wow, we’re fighting, who would have thought? Canada hasn’t fought like this since the Korean War.”
After returning from Afghanistan, Baltzer says he was offered counselling by Veteran Affairs Canada, but it “was of little help,” and he began to self-medicate for his trauma through substance abuse (he noted that he is, thankfully, doing well today). Baltzer’s story is part of a growing scandal. As the Sun reported:
A key figure shedding light on the VAC MAID scandal was CAF veteran Mark Meincke, whose trauma-recovery podcast Operation Tango Romeo broke the story. ‘Veterans, especially combat veterans, usually don’t reach out for help until like a year longer than they should’ve,’ Meincke said, telling the Sun he waited over two decades before seeking help.
‘We’re desperate by the time we put our hands up for help. Offering MAID is like throwing a cinderblock instead of a life preserver.’ Meincke said Baltzer’s story shoots down VAC’s assertions blaming one caseworker for offering MAID to veterans, and suggests the problem is far more serious than some rogue public servant.
‘It had to have been policy. because it’s just too many people in too many provinces,” Meincke told the Sun. “Every province has service agents from that province.’
Veterans Affairs Canada claimed in 2022 that between four and 20 veterans had been offered assisted suicide; Meincke “personally knows of five, and said the actual number’s likely close to 20.” In a previous investigation, VAC claimed that only one caseworker was responsible—at least for the four confirmed cases—and that the person “was lo longer employed with VAC.” Baltzer says VAC should have military vets as caseworkers, rather than civilians who can’t understand what vets have been through.
To date, no federal party leader has referenced Canada’s ongoing euthanasia scandals during the 2025 election campaign.
From LifeSiteNews
Even happy, healthy lives without major issues can warrant needless ending if they are ‘complete.’
Notorious secular “ethicist” Peter Singer has co-authored an opinion piece in The New York Times positing a chilling new rationale for assisted suicide: the determination that one’s life is simply “complete.”
Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March 2024 at age 90. His cause of death was not disclosed at the time, but a year later, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Kahneman had emailed friends the day before to tell them he was traveling to Switzerland to avail himself of the country’s legal physician-assisted suicide.
“I think Danny wanted, above all, to avoid a long decline, to go out on his terms, to own his own death,” WSJ journalist and longtime friend of the deceased Jason Zweig wrote. “Maybe the principles of good decision-making that he had so long espoused — rely on data, don’t trust most intuitions, view the evidence in the broadest possible perspective — had little to do with his decision.”
On April 14, The New York Times published a guest essay by the infamous Singer, a pro-infanticide Princeton bioethics professor, and philosophy professor Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, who shared that they too knew of Kahneman’s plans and that days before he had told them, “I feel I’ve lived my life well, but it’s a feeling. I’m just reasonably happy with what I’ve done. I would say if there is an objective point of view, then I’m totally irrelevant to it. If you look at the universe and the complexity of the universe, what I do with my day cannot be relevant.”
“I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief,” Kahneman reportedly said. “I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am 90 years old. It is time to go.”
Singer and de Lazari-Radek argued that this was an eminently reasonable conclusion. “(I)f, after careful reflection, you decide that your life is complete and remain firmly of that view for some time, you are the best judge of what is good for you,” they wrote. “This is especially clear in the case of people who are at an age at which they cannot hope for improvement in their quality of life.”
“(I)f 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,” the authors added. “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.”
Pro-lifers have long warned that the euthanasia movement devalues life and preys on the ill and distraught by making serious medical issues (even non-terminal ones) into grounds to end one’s life. But Singer and de Lazari-Radek’s essay marks a new extreme beyond that point by asserting that even happy, healthy lives without major issues can warrant needless ending.
“Instead of seeing every human life as having inherent value and dignity, Singer sees life as transactional: something you are allowed to keep by being happy, able-bodied, and productive — and something to be taken away if you are not,” Cassy Cooke wrote at Live Action News.
In America, nine states plus the District of Columbia currently allow assisted suicide. In March, Delaware took a step closer to becoming the 10th with its own legalization bill, although it has yet to become law. Another bill recently failed in Maryland.
Support is available to talk those struggling with suicidal thoughts out of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.
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