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Euthanasia

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Wesley J. Smith Discusses the Spread of Euthanasia on the Ann and Phelim Scoop

Wesley J. Smith appeared on the Ann and Phelim Scoop, hosted by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, to discuss the spread of euthanasia through the West. Comparing it to a metastasizing cancer, Wesley casts light on why euthanasia has become so popular, the state of euthanasia in Canada, the real reasons people seek euthanasia, and its devastating effects on human life.

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A desolate hospital room with an empty bed, a single IV stand casting a shadow on the floor, sterile white lighting highlighting the emptiness
Image Credit: Oskar Reschke - Adobe Stock

The Callous Cruelty of Canadian Euthanasia Illustrated

The New York Times Magazine has a very long article out today highlighting cases of nonterminally ill people being killed by doctors in Canada. It is too long to comment on the whole thing. (Please take the time to read it.) But one story described was so starkly abandoning, I have to bring it to your attention.

The story describes a woman named Paula, who seems to have been deeply depressed and experiencing chronic pain that could not be diagnosed. She had been abused by her father. She had attempted suicide more than once. After her mother died of cancer, she hit the skids, and she was on the verge of homelessness. Her life went into what would eventually become a literal death spiral. From, “Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?”:

Paula stopped seeing her therapists and her social workers. She stopped seeing a family doctor because she couldn’t find one. She stopped taking mood stabilizers. She didn’t have a cellphone or a computer, and she spent hours a day just talking on an old black landline phone to people back in Perth. Still, Paula said, she was managing things — she was holding it together — until the concussion.

She was beaten up by two women with whom she had been feuding at the housing complex, suffering a concussion, which caused her life to spiral even further. She wanted euthanasia. Tests showed no brain damage. But she was miserable and wanted to die. She went on a crusade to find a doctor — any doctor — who would approve her being killed by lethal injection under Canada’s “Track 2” euthanasia protocol for the nonterminally ill.

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Green grass road on the ancient french cemetery with crosses and tombes in the sunlight in the day
Image Credit: Anastasia Pestova - Adobe Stock

Assisted Suicide on the March

The assisted suicide movement is slowly metastasizing throughout the West. Delaware just became the twelfth U.S. jurisdiction allowing doctors to intentionally prescribe a lethal overdose of drugs as a supposed “treatment” for a terminal illness. (Why such an event pleases certain politicians and activists is beyond me. We are talking about endorsing suicide.)

Now, France is on the verge of legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia as the General Assembly just passed a bill by a comfortable 305-199 margin. From The Guardian:

The legislation would allow a medical team to decide if a patient is eligible to “gain access to a lethal substance when they have expressed the wish.” Patients would be able to use it themselves or have it administered by a nurse or doctor “if they are in no condition physically to do so themselves.”

Patients must meet a number of strict conditions: they must be over 18, hold French citizenship or residency and suffer from a “serious and incurable, life-threatening, advanced or terminal illness” that is “irreversible.”

The disease must cause “constant, unbearable physical or psychological suffering” that cannot be addressed by medical treatment, and the patient must be capable of “expressing freely and in an informed manner” their wish to end their life.

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Wesley J. Smith at Wisconsin Right to Life: There Is No Such Thing as a “Little” Assisted Suicide

On April 3, 2025, Wesley J. Smith gave a presentation to Wisconsin Right to Life. After sharing how a friend’s suicide under the influence of the Hemlock Society propelled him into public opposition of the euthanasia movement, Smith explores the personal and societal consequences of embracing assisted suicide.

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New York State Capitol building at night, Albany NY
Image Credit: sonu_visuals - Adobe Stock

The Lies in New York’s Assisted Suicide Bill

New York is close to passing a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Having passed the assembly, it is currently being considered in the senate. I read the bill, and much of it consists of the usual obfuscating definitions and pretenses seen in all such proposals. But a few of the provisions struck me as particularly mendacious. First, it defines prescribing poison as a “medical practice.” From S. 138: “Medical aid in dying” means the medical practice of a physician prescribing medication to a qualified individual that the individual may choose to self-administer to bring about death. Facilitating suicide is not, and never has been, “medical.” I could prescribe sufficient barbiturates to cause death by overdose. You could too. The only Read More ›

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Caregiver holding elderly senior patient (ageing old adult person) hand in hospital bed or nursing hospice, geriatrician palliative home, while caretaker having medical health care service
Image Credit: Chinnapong - Adobe Stock

Estonia’s Supreme Court Declares a Right to Suicide

Five years ago, the highest court in Germany declared that committing suicide is a fundamental right — for everybody and for any reason — and that being assisted or assisting others in the act are ancillary rights associated with that liberty. In other words, death on demand. Now the Supreme Court of Estonia appears to have followed the same course. Here’s the context: A man who provided a suicide machine to those who wanted to kill themselves was acquitted of any culpability. He was charged, among other crimes, with providing health services without a license. But the Court ruled — quite logically and correctly — that helping someone commit suicide is not health care. From the ERR News story: The Read More ›

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A crowded hospital waiting room with people in need of medical attention, contrasted with a private clinic with immediate service
Image Credit: Syahrul Zidane A - Adobe Stock

In Canada, Euthanasia Might Sometimes Be Easier to Access Than Medical Care

The Canadian health care system is melting down — and yet the country still embraces radical euthanasia policies. Here’s a current example: A woman injured in an auto accident has waited nearly two years for a consultation with a spinal surgeon — despite now having to use a wheelchair. So, she wants to come to the U.S. for a simple diagnosis, which will cost $40,000! From the CBC story: A London woman injured in a car crash says she’s left with no choice but to pay to see a doctor in the United States after waiting almost two years for a diagnosis from an Ontario spine surgeon. Sydney Gesualdi was rear-ended at a red light in July 2023, after which she was initially diagnosed Read More ›

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Set iv fluid intravenous drop saline drip hospital room,Medical Concept,treatment emergency and injection drug infusion care chemotherapy, concept.blue light background,selective focus
Image Credit: Trsakaoe - Adobe Stock

New Jersey Program Aims to Prevent Suicide — Just Not All Suicides

New Jersey has started an admirable program to prevent suicide. From the NJ.com story: A new state program will send trained mental health professionals and people with lived experience to respond to adults who contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The Mobile Crisis Outreach Teams, which consist of one peer and one professional, will be dispatched through the state’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline centers to help adults struggling with mental illness and substance use disorder, without the need for police. “Today’s announcement underscores that — in New Jersey — help is truly only a phone call or text message away,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement announcing the program’s launch. That’s great. Too bad the effort won’t apply to all suicides. You see, assisted suicide Read More ›

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Image by Ula Zarosa at Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Singer_2017.jpg

Peter Singer Endorses Geriatric Suicide in the New York Times

Peter Singer, the internationally influential emeritus bioethics professor from Princeton, is known as a moral philosopher — which in his case is an oxymoron. Not only has he repeatedly endorsed the moral propriety of infanticide, but he has also yawned at bestiality and suggested experimenting on cognitively disabled people rather than animals if they are not “persons,” among other ethically depraved opinions. Singer and another philosophy professor — Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek — just took to the opinion pages of the New York Times to endorse geriatric suicide. It seems a noted 90-year-old psychologist named Daniel Kahneman committed assisted suicide last year at one of Switzerland’s death clinics. Kahneman wasn’t seriously ill or debilitated but feared the infirmities that he believed Read More ›

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a hand in a medical glove draws liquid from an ampoule from a syringe with a needle
Image Credit: kazakova0684 - Adobe Stock

Ten Euthanasia Stories That Caught My Eye

I always enjoy Kathryn Lopez’s ongoing Corner feature in which she posts about news stories that “caught my eye.” So I decided to blatantly steal the concept to discuss euthanasia/assisted suicide stories that have recently been in the news.

  1. A Spanish father lost a legal case to prevent his daughter’s euthanasia. The young woman, who has a severe mental illness, tried to commit suicide previously by jumping off a building, leaving her with paraplegia. A court has now decided, in a bitter irony, that due to her disability, doctors can finish what she started. Awful.
  2. Euthanasia killings in the Netherlands increased by 10 percent between 2023 and 2024, with nearly 10,000 killed by doctors in one year. Lethal jabs for the mentally ill also increased to 219, and 427 dementia patients. There were also 54 reported cases of simultaneous euthanasia deaths of family members. The report doesn’t say how many of these people were organ-harvested.
  3. Nearly 4,000 Belgians were euthanized in 2024. According to the Brussels Times, “The vast majority of patients experienced both physical and psychological suffering (82%). Just under 16% experienced only physical pain and 1.9% psychological suffering.” Belgium was also a euthanasia tourism destination, with 120 people traveling to Belgium from other countries to be killed.
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