Canada shows that assisted suicide is a cliff

Canada shows that assisted suicide is a cliff, not a slippery slope

John Kleinsman, Chair of the Care Alliance, says that Canada is providing a stark warning that “assisted suicide is a cliff, not a slippery slope”.

The Canadian government last week submitted a bill that would legalise ‘medical assistance in dying’ in response to the Supreme Court’s judgment last year in Carter v Canada.

The National Post columnist Andrew Coyne has highlighted that the chief complaint of euthanasia advocates about the bill is that “it does not include children and the mentally incompetent.”

What once was unthinkable is now indispensable. The extraordinary step of authorizing doctors (and nurse practitioners: another innovation), sworn down the centuries to save lives, to take them instead, has been swallowed and digested as if it were nothing. The debate has moved on to its next inevitable stage.

Dr Kleinsman says the Canadian experience shows there is no logical limit once you start legalising assisted suicide. “Taking the single, fateful step of believing that assisting suicide is a legitimate response to suffering puts you in free fall. You simply cannot withhold it from some if you allow it for others.”

He noted that David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill proposes legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide for anyone over the age of 18. “If Mr Seymour truly believes it is compassionate for the State to kill adults, why on earth would he withhold such ‘compassion’ from children?

Belgium, the Netherlands and now Canada show that is exactly where this thinking leads you, and Mr Seymour should at least be honest about it.”

ENDS

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