euthanasia

Canada has gone hog wild for euthanasia. But the pro-death tide may — may — be beginning to turn. The province of Alberta just passed a bill that significantly restricts eligibility for euthanasia (medical aid in dying, or MAID), soon to be signed into binding law. The biggest change in Bill 18 ends the eligibility of non-terminally-ill patients to be MAIDed (known as Track 2). Among the provisions of Bill 18 (“Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act”), as summarized by the government: Eligibility in Alberta to individuals 18 and over with capacity to make their own health care decision whose natural death has been determined by a physician or nurse practitioner as being reasonably foreseeable, also known as Read More ›

The other day, I wrote about Wendy Duffy, a healthy woman in deep grief because of the death of her son, who was planning to die at a Swiss death clinic. Alas, Duffy apparently did the deed. From the New York Post story: The physically healthy British mom, irreparably heartbroken over the death of her only son, died by euthanasia in Switzerland on Friday. Wendy Duffy, 56, died at the Pegasos assisted suicide clinic in Basel, in what the controversial organization called a “sane suicide,” the Daily Mail reported. “I can confirm that Wendy Duffy, at her own request, was assisted to die on April 24 and that the procedure was completed without incident and in full compliance with her Read More ›

A grieving mother who is in good health has been accepted for termination by a Swiss suicide clinic. From the New York Post story: A physically healthy British woman heartbroken over the death of her only son is heading to Switzerland to end her own life at an assisted suicide clinic. Wendy Duffy, 56, attempted to take her own life after her son died four years ago — but is soon bound for Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, after her application was accepted by a clinic, according to the London Times. Duffy, a former care worker from the West Midlands, told the Daily Mail that she paid Pegasos, a Swiss assisted-dying nonprofit organization, $13,500 to euthanize herself under its Read More ›

After a bear was euthanized in California because she paw-swiped a human who owned a house under which the bruin and her cubs were living, there was a popular outcry. Now, a bill has been put in the hopper in the California State Senate promoting “coexistence” between people and wild animals. From S.B. 1135:

It is the policy of the state that the management of wildlife shall include an emphasis on the coexistence of humans and wildlife through department-led efforts to reduce, minimize, and mitigate conflicts. These efforts shall also seek to align with the state’s conservation, public safety, environmental planning, and climate adaptation goals and to be accomplished through coordination and cooperation between the department and wildlife coexistence partners.

Here are the details:

Upon appropriation by the Legislature, the department shall establish the Wildlife Coexistence Program to manage and promote wildlife coexistence by conducting all of the following activities:
(a) Managing, tracking, and responding to wildlife conflict calls, reports, and incident responses.
(b) Avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating conflicts between humans and wildlife by proactively and continuously implementing best practices that emphasize effective and ecologically appropriate nonlethal conflict resolution solutions developed using best available science and indigenous knowledge.
(c) Investigating, documenting, and analyzing reported human-wildlife incidents, including, but not limited to, depredation, perceived or actual human-wildlife conflicts, and wildlife health issues.
(d) Maintaining a statewide wildlife incident reporting tool.

Once killing becomes an acceptable answer to human suffering, the kinds of “suffering” that justifies killing continually expands. In the Netherlands, where mental illness can provide the pretext for being MAIDed and there are no age limits (including infanticide for disability), it was recently reported that a suicidal autistic teenager was lethally injected in 2023. From the National Post story: Four-and-a-half years after he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a Dutch teen was euthanized at his request. The boy, aged between 16 and 18, had described his life as “joyless.” He’d struggled with anxiety and mood-related problems, and where he fit in, in the world. Oversensitive to stimuli, “every day was an ordeal he had to get through,” according Read More ›

A Canadian activist has argued that the mentally ill must have access to euthanasia to prevent their committing suicide. From the National Post story: A leading MAID advocate argued to parliamentarians last month that Canada must legalize assisted suicide for the mentally ill, lest those same patients commit suicide. The statement was made at a March 24 parliamentary committee debating the legalization of MAID for Canadians whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness.” Jocelyn Downie, a leading MAID activist since 2004, warned that if the federal government keeps excluding mentally ill Canadians from accessing assisted suicide, the result will be more mentally ill Canadians dying by suicide. The idea here is that a “suicide” will be potentially messier Read More ›

As the West lunges toward propagating a right to be made dead, the deleterious societal impacts of being legally “MAIDed” (killed by “medical assistance in dying”) are becoming increasingly clear. A recent professional analysis published in the Psychiatric Times illustrates the lethal influence on mentally ill suicidal people — including youth — in the Netherlands. From “Psychiatric Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Young People, Procedural Medicine, and the Limits of Psychiatry” (citations omitted): Requests for euthanasia on psychiatric grounds have risen sharply, with a disproportionate increase among young adults and, more recently, minors. The Dutch model, once presented internationally as careful and balanced, is now attracting attention for a different reason: growing uncertainty about whether psychiatry has crossed a boundary it Read More ›

Is love really all you need to make something ethical? In a culture that treats good intentions as the highest moral standard, this episode asks a harder and more important question: Can love be ethical without truth? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I’m joined by Fr. James Dominic Brent, OP, a Dominican priest and philosopher in the Thomistic tradition, to examine why sincerity alone isn’t enough in moral decision-making, especially in medicine, relationships, and family life. Drawing on Catholic moral theology and the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Brent explains: From IVF to euthanasia to sexual ethics, consent, and modern ideas of affirmation, this conversation challenges the assumption that “if it’s done out of love, it can’t be Read More ›

What happens after killing is legalized? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, to examine what Canada’s euthanasia regime reveals about medicine, consent, and human dignity. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are often framed as compassion about choice, autonomy, and relief from suffering. But as Canada’s MAiD system shows, once killing becomes legal, safeguards collapse, definitions expand, and the most vulnerable people are placed at risk. In this conversation, we discuss: This is a difficult conversation, but a necessary one. If we redefine care as killing, what happens to medicine, trust, and our responsibility to protect one another? For Episode Resources, please visit the episode page here. For more Read More ›

Euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting just took a particularly disturbing turn in Spain, where a woman was euthanized and then had part of her face transplanted. From the Catalan News story: Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia. Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours. In presenting the milestone procedure, the healthcare director, Maria José Abadías, highlighted the “extraordinary generosity of the donor,” the “collective effort” behind the operation and the “pride” of all workers who took part in it. Don’t get me wrong. There is no inherent moral Read More ›