assisted suicide

As established by the great medical humanitarian, the late Dame Cecily Saunders, hospice was designed to treat “total pain” of patients — whether physical, emotional, or spiritual — to the end of ensuring that the care offered is about living, not just death. When it works as intended, as it did for both my parents, the beneficence offered to patients and their families cannot be quantified.

Alas, the hospice movement is in serious trouble. I can’t tell you how often now people approach me after a speech or call in on talk radio to tell me that they do not trust hospice to properly care for their loved ones.

Why has this happened? My friend Ira Byock, the great palliative doctor and author of Dying Well, has noted that the for-profit sector of the industry too often does not live up to the hospice promise of profoundly personal and compassionate care. Also, there is a problem with fraud and abuse, about which, Byock insists, there must be institutional “zero tolerance.” In addition, the integration of palliative care within the American health system has stalled, despite demonstrating that quality care for seriously ill and dying people is both feasible and affordable.

And from my perspective — not Byock’s — the assisted suicide movement has been a body blow to the hospice movement. Partly this is because the media is so besotted with “aid in dying” propaganda that there is little room left to tell good hospice stories. But I also blame institutional hospice organizations, which pretend that assisted suicide isn’t a mortal threat to the hospice philosophy. As a consequence of this institutional cowardice, all one hears from hospice organizations about legalizing assisted suicide is the proverbial sound of silence, further diminishing the importance of the sector.

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.

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 ›

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 ›

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.

For those who may not remember, Terri Schiavo was a profoundly cognitively disabled woman who became the subject of a legal and cultural battle that made international headlines. The case became a bitter and protracted conflict between Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband who wanted to pull her feeding tube, and the Schindler family that fought to save their child and sister’s Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith joined host Simon O’Connor on Family Matters, a show from Family First New Zealand, to discuss human exceptionalism. Together, they discuss what makes humans different from animals, the problem with mainstream bioethics today, why euthanasia is wrong, and more!

Switzerland is the world’s suicide tourism capital. Indeed, for the price of transportation and about $11,000, you can be helped to make yourself dead at one of the country’s notorious suicide clinics. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland if not done for a “selfish” purpose and if the soon-to-be-dead person has decisional capacity. (Why charging more than $10,000 to help make one dead isn’t considered “selfish” is beyond me, because it sure ain’t altruistic!) It used to be that each such assisted suicide had to be at least cursorily investigated by the authorities. But now, that minimal protection has been gutted in one canton and the costs of what’s left of oversight passed on to the suicidal deceased. From the Swissinfo.ch story: Read More ›