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The cruelty of Canada’s euthanasia policy


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Unheard

Its liberal Maid programme has been turned into a political weapon
Lionel Shriver

Aug. 21 2023

With uncharacteristic humility, I would concede that a few positions I’ve argued fiercely in print might be viable on paper, but in practice are a disaster. The “war on drugs” being a fiasco, years ago I advocated the legalisation of recreational pharmaceuticals. But given the dirty, dangerous, dismal tent cities full of addicts in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland — which have all effectively decriminalised drug possession — it may be fortunate that glib journalists like me don’t control public policy.

(Snip)

Introduced in 2016, Canada’s government-sanctioned euthanasia by medically administered lethal injection and legalisation of assisted suicide (there’s a difference; the latter usually entails patients themselves swallowing fatal tablets prescribed by a doctor) were initially intended to put the terminally ill who’d had enough out of their misery. Yet sister programmes in the seven other countries that permit euthanasia generally restrict the pool of applicants to people destined to die naturally within six months. Maid initially codified no such limitation, merely citing vaguely that death should be “reasonably foreseeable”, as it is for all us mortals. Hypothetically, then, even the programme as originally conceived could have been open to people whose ailments would only kill them many years hence. Yet, bolstering its critics’ “slippery slope” argument, the programme soon radically loosened its restrictions. Assisted dying is now available in Canada to all adults with a serious illness or disability, regardless of whether the source of their torment would be fatal over time.

Most controversially, the government is considering the offer of lethal injection to “mature minors” — whatever that means. The programme is also set to extend to Canadians who are mentally ill. That said, the start date of state-sponsored death for the psychologically unwell (which on one day or another would probably include us all) has been pushed back to March 2024, indicating a degree of bureaucratic anxiety.

Given the stories in the press, that anxiety may be warranted.

At the age of 61, Alan Nichols had a history of depression and was hospitalised as a suicide risk in 2019 — something of an irony, as in due course the hospital staff, according to his family, was altogether too helpful in facilitating the patient’s application for euthanasia. That application was accepted, even though the only health condition it cited as so intolerable that Nichols wanted to die was “hearing loss”. After Nichols was put to death, his family objected that the man was not suffering unbearably, had been refusing to take his medication, and wouldn’t use the cochlear implant that helped him hear. But no medical personnel had ever contacted his relatives, out of respect for patient confidentiality.

(Snip)

Ironically, the very liberality of Canada’s system has turned it into a political weapon for opponents of kindred programmes proposed in countries such as Britain, where the practice of assisted dying is still banned. But there’s no reason a state that allows what used to be called “mercy killing” under strictly defined circumstances necessarily slides down that hackneyed slippery slope and starts slaughtering every citizen whom someone considers inconvenient or costly. A well-designed protocol should require a waiting period and make it easy for clients to change their minds. Knowing they have the option of an ultimate exit gives many people the fortitude to keep going.

If I would not offer legal euthanasia to anorexics, people with hearing loss, or depressives, much less to the poor or homeless, let’s remember what’s at issue: not whether the state forces you to keep living but whether the state actively helps you die. For any folks bound and determined to not be here anymore, a range of old-fashioned if unpleasant remedies remain at hand. If that disagreeableness presents enough of a barrier to get you to reconsider, maybe you’re still up for continuing to kick around the planet after all.

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