Euthanasia

Wesley J. Smith recently participated in a Symposium hosted by the Human Life Review. He was asked to react to the following statement: In the decades between Roe v. Wade and Dobbs, most prolifers believed that Americans were more or less opposed to legalized abortion on demand because a) this was the case in 1973; b) it was imposed on us from above by “raw judicial power,” rather than legislated; and c) surveys repeatedly showed substantial percentages of Americans being disquieted by abortion, especially when you got beyond the hard cases and the earliest weeks of pregnancy. In the first year or so following Dobbs, prolifers got a reality check through legislative defeats even in some reddish and purple states. We can say (what is true) that massive Read More ›

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ›

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 ›

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 ›

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 ›

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 ›