December 19, 2022
THE POINT IS TO KILL THE VULNERABLE:
No Other Options: Newly revealed documents depict a Canadian euthanasia regime that efficiently ushers the vulnerable to a "beautiful" death. (Alexander Raikin, Winter 2023, New Atlantis)
A number of recent news articles have reported on Canadians who, driven by poverty and a lack of access to adequate health care, housing, and social services, have turned to the country's euthanasia system. In multiple cases, veterans requesting help from Veterans Affairs Canada -- at least one asked for PTSD treatment, another for a ramp for her wheelchair -- were asked by case workers if they would like to apply for euthanasia.As this article will show, in internal meetings, those close to the system have long talked openly about red flags that many people are choosing euthanasia because they're not getting the "supports and cares" they need. The physicians in charge of the process not only know that this is happening, but they have discussed it in seminars, collected evidence, and then kept it quiet in public.The safeguards promised by Trudeau and others to prevent vulnerable people from heading down the road to euthanasia turn out to be vague, pro forma, and easy to get around by doctor-shopping. And interviews with patients and their loved ones show that some of them, perhaps many, are making it to the end.One of the greatest reasons for concern is the sheer scale of Canada's euthanasia regime. California provides a useful point of comparison: It legalized medically assisted death the same year as Canada, 2016, and it has about the same population, just under forty million. In 2021 in California, 486 people died using the state's assisted suicide program. In Canada in the same year, 10,064 people used MAID to die.Important people -- prominent politicians, physicians, and judges -- promised Canadians that their rights to autonomy would be expanded. But the picture that emerges is not a new flowering of autonomy but the hum of an efficient engine of death.
Killing them is simply easier.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2022 5:27 PM