Canada has gone all in for euthanasia, and it is going to get worse now that the “strict guidelines to protect against abuse” — in the movement’s parlance — have expanded to people with chronic and disabling conditions, and will soon expand to those with dementia and mental illnesses.
The statistics are startling and illustrate that once euthanasia consciousness infects a culture, it grows like a fungus. Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reports that:
Comparing the Third Annual report (2021) to the Second Annual Report (2020), the report states that there were: 10,064 assisted deaths in 2021 up from 7603 in 2020, 5661 in 2019, 4480 in 2018, 2838 in 2017 and 1018 in 2016.
The report indicates that the number of assisted deaths increased by 32.4% representing 3.3% of all deaths in 2021.
When all data sources are considered, the total of number of euthanasia (MAiD) reported assisted deaths in Canada from legalization to December 31, 2021 is 31,664.
That’s a Huge Number
With the newly loosened guidelines fully in effect for 2022, the darkness will only deepen. A few more thoughts:
- Some of these people might still be alive had they received sustained suicide prevention treatment. But that essential service is not usually offered to people asking for euthanasia in Canada (nor assisted suicide in the U.S.). This abdication of compassion is a profound abandonment of the despairing ill.
- Only 15 percent of Canadians have access to quality palliative care — compassionate treatments that can make all the difference in wanting to live or die.
- In Ontario, doctors have no conscience rights. They must either kill qualified patients who ask to die or find a doctor they know will do the deed — known in the euphemisms so typical of the movement as an “effective referral.”
- Some people were euthanized out of fear of loneliness caused by Covid lockdowns. In one case, a woman asked to die because of the isolation she faced. Ironically, her family was allowed to attend her death, but not visit as a means of helping her continue on. Moreover, hundreds of people chose death, at least in part, due to fear of loneliness in 2019, a trend that has continued.
- Canada conjoins euthanasia and organ harvesting, giving the despairing a reason to choose death over life.
- Beginning in 2023, the mentally ill will be eligible for euthanasia.
Our Closest Cousin
Some readers may think that this doesn’t matter because Canada isn’t the U.S. That reaction is truly whistling past the graveyard. Canada is our closest cultural cousin. If it can happen there, it can happen here, too.
And here’s a shocking truth: Nearly 4 million Americans die each year. If the same percentage of people were killed by doctors here as are now in Canada, it would amount to more than 120,000 euthanasia killings per year. And even more, if or when the law permits euthanasia/assisted suicide beyond the terminally ill, as will surely happen should American culture swallow the euthanasia movement’s cultural hemlock.
We had better pay close attention to Canada. Because the same culture-of-death pathogen is coursing through our national veins, albeit our resistance is stronger. Once a society falls into the cultural abyss, it is very difficult to climb back out.
Cross-posted at The Corner.