Euthanasia Watch

The narrative that Canada’s euthanasia regime is carefully regulated, largely restricted to the dying, and that the regularly reported horror stories are merely sensationalist anomalies has received yet another blow. On October 5, psychiatrists Gary Rodin and Madeline Li laid out their fears in a New York Times op-ed titled “We Implemented Canada’s Assisted Dying Law. We’re Concerned.”

Rodin and Li emphasize that they are both supporters of assisted suicide in principle. Both have “counseled patients about the procedure and assessed whether they were eligible,” and one has “administered the drugs to end patients’ lives.” More than that, they wrote, “together, we created an institutional framework that determined how one of Canada’s largest medical centers would respond to requests for assisted death.” Now, they have fears — and their analysis is devastating to the defenses of Canada’s regime.

“But Canada’s system for assisted death is no longer an option of last resort,” they wrote. “Too many people are receiving the procedure without the opportunity for careful reflection about it with a health provider. In some cases, patients are being approved who should not be. Reports have emerged of people seeking assisted death in the context of poverty or loneliness, raising concerns that they may feel they have no other options.” Even for their cancer patients, they state, “there’s a risk of rushing into it and shortening what can be a meaningful period in patients’ lives.”

That is carefully worded, but read it again. People are being rushed into euthanasia. People who should not be approved are being approved. People are seeking lethal injections because they cannot get what they need, because they are poor, because they feel as if they are a burden. That is precisely what those of us who oppose euthanasia said would happen a decade ago, and what we have been reporting on ever since.

Rodin and Li noted that Canada’s regime is now “one of the most permissive in the world, allowing assisted dying for almost any form of subjectively intolerable suffering that has a medical basis, or even for medically unexplained physical symptoms.” This has resulted in a euthanasia rate that amounts to 5% of Canada’s annual deaths. Since 2016, we have seen a silent, sterile bloodbath in this country. Rodin and Li noted that in their view, this is because assisted suicide activists have largely been in the driver’s seat when it comes to policy. Other medical professionals, they stated, share their concerns.

Kristin is a wife, mother, and veteran of the US Air Force, who was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. What followed was not just a battle against disease, but a fight for her very dignity.

Living in Canada, Kristin says doctors told her her only option was physician-assisted suicide. Instead of offering aggressive treatment or hope, she was allegedly told that her condition was terminal and that procedures like HIPEC surgery would not save her life.

Rather than honoring her life, the system presented her with a devastating alternative: end her life early instead of pursuing further care.

But Kristin and her husband, Donovan, refused to accept that answer.

Determined to fight for her life, the couple made a bold decision. They arranged to travel to the United States, searching for doctors who would be willing to treat her. In Seattle, they found that hope. Doctors quickly moved forward with HIPEC surgery and chemotherapy—treatment options they had been told would not help.