Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Back in April, a reckless assisted suicide bill looked like it was going to pass and be made British law. But instead, it was shut down by the House of Lords. And then in May, the Irish Parliament rejected a law that would have expanded abortion there by a vote of 85 to 30.
But on this side of the Atlantic, things are headed in the opposite direction. Like all such so-called mercy-killing laws, Canada's medical assistance and dying law was promised as an option only for those facing imminent death and who would consent. Things are long past that. Likely will go even further. In fact, recently, a Quebec physician suggested that Canada's already draconian-made program be expanded to include babies.
In response, Brandon Tran of Canada's Campaign Life Coalition said this, quote, Canadian law currently permits the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for critically ill newborns. But this medical practitioner's proposal goes further. He calls for the calculated killing of an infant. These are patients, babies, who cannot speak, cannot consent, cannot ask for help. If we cannot draw the line here, I'm not sure where medical professionals imagine the line to be.
End quote. A physician-assisted suicide is always sold to the public as a so-called compassionate measure necessary to spare those with no reasonable chance of recovery from unbearable pain and suffering during the last days of their lives. But in every context in which it's been made legal, assisted suicide has never remained limited to rare instances, certainly not just the rare instances for which it was sold. And there are reasons this particular slope has always proven so slippery anywhere and everywhere it's been made legal. Once it's decided that certain lives are not worth living, the list of people eligible for physician-assisted suicide inevitably grows.
It becomes easier to reevaluate life based on some criteria other than intrinsic value, like convenience or financial cost. It's a small step indeed from being eligible to die to being expected to die. And that's why wherever doctor assisted suicide is legalized, it happens due to a series of bait and switch claims to the public. For example, so-called terminal illness is quickly expanded to include chronic illnesses and permanent disability. In Belgium, the Netherlands, and Canada, even mental illness and depression can now be considered sufficient justification for suicide.
Given that trajectory, it's only a matter of time before the requirement of an actual illness is dispensed with altogether. For example, the original promise is always that only those certifiably in their right minds can be euthanized. But that was always a lie. Anyone who goes to an American emergency department claiming they want to die would be diagnosed with suicidal ideation, then admitted and put on psychological hold. Suicidal ideation is rightly regarded as a symptom of an underlying mental disorder.
People with untreated mental illness are not allowed to make life and death decisions, or at least they weren't. In Oregon, for example, since doctor-assisted suicide was made legal, over 96% of people given lethal drugs did not undergo a psychiatric evaluation at all. That's why, as one of our What Would You Say videos on the topic so clearly explains, there's nothing compassionate about physician-assisted suicide. The end. It is the exact opposite of compassion, the abdication of a civilized society's responsibility to care for those who need it most when they need it most.
In his book, The Fanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy described how a society could devolve to the point of thinking that killing patients instead of healing them is compassion. A psychiatrist, Percy wrote of well-trained and exquisitely credentialed doctors who, quote, turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old, useless people, unborn children, born malformed children. all for the good of mankind. What Percy wrote in 1987 has now become reality.
Some form of assisted suicide is now legal in 13 United States and the District of Columbia. And like abortion, the legal fight against assisted suicide is only part of the battle. It has to become unthinkable to strip away the intrinsic and indelible dignity that every single human person possesses, no matter the condition of their life. Otherwise, there's simply no way to stop from sliding down a slope that is so very slippery. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
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