By Clare Marie Merkowsky
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has warned against Canada’s euthanasia program, urging the repeal of legislation that allows the killing of non-terminally ill individuals.
Canada’s euthanasia regime has become too radical even for the anti-life United Nations, who recently called on the nation to repeal its law allowing non-terminally ill patients to qualify for death through the state’s “Medical Assistance in Dying” program.
In closing remarks published March 21, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities argued that Canada should repeal its 2021 MAID expansion legislation that allowed those who are chronically ill but not terminally ill to be put to death by the state.
The committee said that Canada’s regime “establishes medically assisted dying for persons with disabilities based on negative, ableist perceptions of the quality and value of the life of persons with disabilities, including that ‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.”
It pointed out that “the concept of ‘choice’ creates a false dichotomy by setting up the premise that if persons with disabilities are suffering, it is valid for the State Party to enable their death.”
In Canada, euthanasia is divided into Track 1 and Track 2 requests. Track 1 requests deal with those whose death is allegedly imminent or foreseeable. Track 2 requests deal with those who are not terminally ill but have lost the will to live due to their having chronic health problems.
The UN committee took specific issue with Track 2 MAID, writing that it is “extremely concerned about the 2021 amendments to the State Party’s Criminal Code through Bill C-7 that expanded the eligibility criteria for obtaining Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), known as ‘Track 2’ MAiD by removing the ‘foreseeable death’ criteria.”
The committee further recommended that Canada not euthanize its citizens for mental health reasons and abandon additional expansions of the program. Such an expansion is slated to come into effect in 2027.
It is worth noting that while Track 2 cases of MAID are indeed evil, so are Track 1 cases. The Catholic Church infallibly teaches that euthanasia is a grave evil tantamount to murder and must be rejected in all circumstances.
The UN committee’s criticism of Canada’s euthanasia regime comes after many have pointed out that the regime has spawned a culture of death and eugenics in the country, with the disabled and the poor often being those who request or who are even suggested to request death via Track 2 MAID.
In one case, a Nova Scotia grandmother revealed that doctors repeatedly offered her euthanasia while she underwent cancer treatment, making her feel as though she was “better off dead.”
“I felt like a problem that needed to be [gotten] rid of instead of a patient in need of treatment,” she said. “I don’t want to be asked if I want to die.”
Similarly, in May of last year, LifeSiteNews reported on a Canadian man who felt “completely traumatized” and violated that he was offered MAID “multiple times” instead of getting the proper care he needed while in the hospital.
The most recent reports show that MAID is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.
When asked why MIiD was left off the list, the agency said that it records the illnesses that led Canadians to choose to end their lives via euthanasia, not the actual cause of death, as the primary cause of death.
According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAID lethal injections. This accounts for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.
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