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Search CATEGORY: Pro-life – Euthanasia

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Pro-life - Euthanasia

Ontario shows why euthanasia “safeguards” can’t work

A lengthy article in the Winter 2025 edition of The New Atlantis, titled “A Pattern of Noncompliance,” shows how Ontario isn’t strictly enforcing its euthanasia regulations. The provincial “Office of the Chief Coroner” is in charge of monitoring how euthanasia killings are committed and from 2018 onward they have,

“…thus far counted over 400 apparent violations — and have kept this information from the public and not pursued a single criminal charge, even against repeat violators and ‘blatant’ offenders.”

Ontario’s Chief Coroner, Dirk Huyer, admitted back in 2018 already that:

“we see a pattern of noncompliance, we see a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation, and frankly we can’t just continue to do education to those folks if they’re directly repeating stuff that we’ve brought to their attention.”

So what penalty have the “non-compliers” had to face? As journalist Alexander Raikin reports, one of the most severe cases of non-compliance involved a euthanizer who brought the wrong poisons, which didn’t work, but did, according to Huyer, cause tremendous suffering. What penalty was imposed? The euthanizer will no longer be allowed to kill people, but he maintained his medical license. And the case was never referred to the police.

The lack of compliance was evident even early on. In a report on Ontario’s first 100 euthanasia killings, 39 percent of the euthanizers skipped a notification requirement. They were supposed to notify the pharmacist of the purpose intended for the drugs requested, and they just didn’t. Euthanizers either didn’t understand the regulations or couldn’t be bothered with them, but either way it underscores the ineffectiveness of such regulations.

The point Christians need to highlight is that it doesn’t matter what “safeguards” are included with euthanasia legislation, they won’t work. They can’t work, because the only real line that can be drawn is the God-given one, that our lives are not our own, but are entrusted to us by God, and that the taking of any life is a violation of His command, “Do not murder.”

Our culture has tried to draw other lines, but they are drawn in shifting sand and are constantly being ignored or wiped away by the next cultural shift. So yes, our legislators have made a distinction between the unlawful killing of a human being, codified as murder, and the lawful taking of a human life, described as euthanasia (and abortion). But what would it be then, if someone committed euthanasia unlawfully? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that any unlawful taking of a life must be a murder. But that’s not a conclusion they are willing to come to.

Why? Well, how many doctors do you think would be willing to do a procedure that, if they ever didn’t do it quite right, would send them to jail for murder? Not many, right? Which means that whatever the regulations or “safeguards” in place, if they were strictly enforced, it would have a chilling effect – doctors would be reluctant to consider killing for their living if it could cost them their freedom. That, then, could put an end to euthanasia altogether: it wouldn’t matter if was legal if there was no one willing to inject the poison. So, for euthanasia to be both legal and available, the government will always be motivated to overlook irregularities or neglected safeguards. And since the victims are dead, there isn’t going to be much of an outcry either.

Careless with matters of life and death – that’s the natural outgrowth of a godless culture. It’s only when we turn to God’s unchanging law that we can find a standard that can’t be bent and can’t be ignored with impunity.

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Pro-life - Euthanasia

Euthanasia changed the abortion battle

Dozens of pro-life volunteers spent the summer talking to strangers about the unborn ***** In 2016 euthanasia was legalized. That was also the summe...
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News, Pro-life - Euthanasia

State-sanctioned murder now the 5th leading cause of death in Canada
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Pro-life - Euthanasia

Getting even crazier: 27% of Canadians think being poor is good enough reason for euthanasia
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News, Pro-life - Euthanasia

“Markus showed us how to find meaning in suffering”
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Pro-life - Euthanasia

They shoot horses, don't they?

If the stress of euthanizing animals drives some vets to suicide, what will happen to euthanasia doctors? **** Every year, about 1.5 million cases of euthanasia take place in the United States. Does this have a negative impact on healthcare workers? Sorry, about 1.5 million cases of cat and dog euthanasia take place. But the question is still relevant. Veterinarians, veterinary assistants and shelter workers experience great stress at having to put animals down. Vets are idealists. They love animals and choose a career so that they can help them. Instead, many find that a significant part of their daily routine is killing animals, often for frivolous or utilitarian reasons. Bernard E. Rollin, a philosopher at Colorado State University who specializes in veterinary ethics, recently observed: The consequences are manifest. One recent study showed that one in six veterinarians has considered suicide. Another found an elevated risk of suicide in the field of veterinary medicine. Being asked to kill healthy animals for owner convenience doubtless is a major contribution. What makes the vets so uncomfortable with the deaths of cats and dogs? Professor Rollin attributes it to a condition which he has called “moral stress” which “grows out of the radical conflict between one's reasons for entering the field of animal work, and what one in fact ends up doing.” With euthanasia, or assisted suicide, or both, legal in seven jurisdictions in the United States, plus Canada, the Netherland, Belgium and Luxembourg, it’s worthwhile examining the experiences of vets to see what the future may hold for doctors. The emotional connection between the work of human doctors and animal doctors is closer than you might think. Rollin points out that most pet owners feel that their companion animals are “part of the family.” In some surveys the proportion reaches 95 percent. Owners often react to a pet’s death with the intensity of grief which appears equivalent to the loss of a beloved relative. So the moral stress which vets experience is relevant. Rollin points out that moral stress is different from other kinds of workplace stress, which can be relieved with psychological techniques. Furthermore, normal avenues for alleviating stress are not available in this area. Whereas if one is stressed by normal stressors, standard stress management vehicles are quite helpful, for example relaxation techniques or talking it out with peers and family, these modalities are not available for moral stress. He explains that vets may not be supported when they try to share the stress of having to kill animals. As one woman who worked in a shelter told me, "I tried to explain to my husband at dinner that I had killed the nicest dog earlier in the day. He responded by clapping his hands over his ears and telling me he did not want to hear about it." If the stress is not handled properly, it can have very serious consequences for their health. The eventual effect of such long-term, unalleviated stress is likely to be deterioration of physical and mental health and well-being, substance abuse, divorce, and even, as I encountered on a number of occasions, suicide. Suicide amongst vets has been the topic of several studies. “Veterinarians are four times more likely than members of the general population and two times more likely than other health professionals to die by suicide,” according to a 2012 study in the journal of The American Association of Suicidology, Suicide and Life-Threatening Behaviour. Australian research found that “veterinarians who perform a greater number of euthanasias each week experience greater levels of job stress than those who perform less” – and job stress is a significant factor in suicide. Why? Performing euthanasia day in, day out, also appears to make some vets less able to resist the temptation to commit suicide. The authors of the 2012 study found that: ... individuals who have had more experience with euthanasia were less fearful regarding the prospect of their own death, and this was accounted for by the diminished distress about euthanasia that comes with repeated exposure ... That performing euthanasia is something relatively unique to the veterinary profession may explain why veterinarians die by suicide more often than members of other professions ... ... all else being equal, veterinarians may be more likely than members of other professions to enact a lethal attempt when they desire suicide because their exposure to euthanasia has rendered them less fearful of death. Aren’t there lessons in these finding which are relevant to doctors who euthanize their patients? Sometimes doctors in Belgium or the Netherlands are quoted as saying that the death they helped was beautiful or peaceful. Could that be bravado masking their own nonchalance about human death? No matter how much affection people feel for their companion animals, the similarity between veterinary euthanasia and human euthanasia is far from being exact. But there are lessons to be learned. How many times have we all heard the argument, “They shoot horses, don’t they?” Its logic is that if the suffering of animals and humans is essentially the same, they both should be released from suffering in the same way. “You wouldn’t let a dog suffer like this...” But if the animal-human parallel works for the patient, why not the doctor? If we allow euthanasia, surely we can expect the same burn-out rates and the same suicide rates as veterinarians ... at least the same. That should scare us all – especially the doctors who will be responsible. This article by Michael Cook was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence. MercatorNet.com is not Reformed, but holds to a general Judeo-Christian outlook, defending the inherent dignity of Man. If you enjoyed this article, you can find many more like it at MercatorNet.com. ...

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Pro-life - Euthanasia

Euthanasia and the folly of downward comparisons

Have you ever heard a euthanasia advocate argue that to force grandma to live in pain is to treat her worse than a dog? The assumption is that if euthanasia is compassionate for the dog, it’s compassionate for the human: “I put my dog down because of horrible pain, so why can’t we put grandma down too?” A simple rebuttal The simple answer: “Because grandma is not a dog.” As Barbara Kay eloquently wrote in the National Post a few years back, …if we applied human standards of compassion in all things to our treatment of animals, our willingness to euthanize them when they are suffering would be “compassion’s” exception, not the rule. Sure, we euthanize animals when their lives are a burden to them (and us). We also line-breed them when we want more of them, neuter them when we want fewer of them, give them away when our children develop allergies to them, control what and how much they eat, when and where they sleep, and when they may go outside to relieve themselves. Those in our care who do have sex with others of their species only do so when we permit it, infrequently and only for breeding purposes. We separate them from their biological families to make them members of our own. Is all that compassionate? Not if they were human. But they’re not human, you see, so there’s nothing unethical in any of those actions. Two understandings of “compassion” Our response to the question of suffering is predicated on our worldview. Two radically different answers to the question of our origin result in two radically different answers to our expiration. If we accept that we are mere animals, then maybe we should only be treated as animals. Social Darwinism has us oriented downward instead of heavenward. But the Judeo-Christian worldview re-orients us. Paradoxically, we are both dust and ashes (Ps. 90:3; Eccl. 3:20) and yet a “little lower than the angels” (Ps. 8:5) because we are “made in the image of God” (Gen. 1:26-28). And so our response to suffering is not to “put down” our fellow man like a dog, but to do everything we can to alleviate the suffering of our fellow man. Ideas have consequences, and societies need to understand those consequences when we decide what ideas we are going to embrace. In the ongoing euthanasia debate we can choose to view every one of our neighbors as just another animal and treat them as such. Or we see them as “little lower than the angels” and treat them as such. Let’s not lose ourselves to the animals. We can do better. André Schutten is the Director of Law & Policy, and General Legal Counsel for ARPA Canada. A version of this article first appeared on their website ARPACanada.ca....

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Adult non-fiction, Pro-life - Euthanasia

"A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide": a summary review

Do you find it harder to make the case against euthanasia than against abortion? That might be, in part, because we have less experience – abortion has been legal in Canada since 1969, and euthanasia only since 2016. Also, in abortion, we have victims who need advocates because they can’t speak for themselves, whereas in euthanasia the victims are also the perpetrators. How do you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped – who wants to die? And consider how, in euthanasia, many of the cases involve terminal illnesses, and so have the same emotional tension as the hardest cases – those involving rape and incest – have in the abortion debate. That’s why it’s more difficult. JUST TWO OPTIONS But, just as in the abortion debate, the key is to first find the central issue. With abortion, the main question is, "Who is the unborn?" There are only two options. If the unborn is not human, there is no justification needed for “its” surgical removal. But if the unborn is human, then no justification is sufficient for killing him or her. As in Blaise Alleyne and Jonathan Van Maren’s explain in their new book, A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide Similarly, the crux of opposition to euthanasia can also be boiled down to just one question: How do we help those who are feeling desperate enough to want to kill themselves? And again, there are only two options: either we prevent suicide, or we assist it. Alleyne and Van Maren have given us a wonderful tool in this book. Their extensive experience in the pro-life movement is evident as they start by framing the debate. If we’re going to be effective, pro-lifers need to understand the three possible positions that people hold on this issue. They are: the split position – we should prevent some suicides while helping others the total choice position – anyone who wants to commit suicide should be helped to do so and the pro-life position – all life is precious, and all suicides are tragic THE SPLIT POSITION So how do we respond to the split position? Van Maren and Alleyne say that it is the job of pro-life apologetics is to show the split position’s inherent inconsistency. Suicide is tragic sometimes, but to be celebrated other times? The authors then give ways to counter the reasons often used to justify some suicides, given by the acronym QUIT for: Quality of life Unbearable suffering Incurable condition Terminal prognosis They spend 20 pages showing why these are fallacious reasons, so I can’t properly sum up their argument in just a line or two, but one underlying flaw to these justifications for suicide is that they are based on ageism and ableism. So in much the same way we can expose the inadequacy of many justification for abortion by bringing out an imaginary "two-year-old Timmy" (“What if the mother was too poor to have a baby?” “Would that be a good reason to kill Timmy?”) in the assisted suicide debate we can bring out an imaginary able-bodied 19-year-old. If someone opposes this 19-year-old committing suicide, why is it that they are fine with that 90-year-old doing so? Or that wheelchair bound lass? We can expose them for being ageist and ableist – treating people as less worthy of life based on their age or ability – and show them it is wrong to assist the suicide of anyone, of any age or level of health because as the authors put it, "suicide is a symptom , not a solution." TOTAL CHOICE Next, the authors take on those are (sadly) willing to be consistent and advocate total choice for all who desire to be assisted in ending their lives. Our only response is to insist that the suicidal need love even more than they need argument. THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES The fourth chapter shows how dangerous it is to accept either the split or the total choice position, because they have always involved a slippery slope toward more and more assisted killings they reduce the willingness to prevent suicide they undermine the morale of everyone who works in any facility that provides suicide assistance THE PRO-LIFE POSITION Finally, the authors show the pro-life position. We know, on the one hand, that life is a gift from God, so it is not to be thrown away, but on the other, that all life ends, and because of Jesus we need not fear death. So the pro-life position is not about continuing life at all costs. It allows for: the refusal of burdensome treatment the use of pain medication, even when that risks hastening death, as long as the intent of such medication is to alleviate pain rather than to kill The pro-life position also offers positive responses to the suicidal: psychological health resources, pain management, palliative care, and dignity therapy. The authors end with two pleas: "Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination." In other words, may no-one ever have their death hastened because we refuse to imagine how we may show more compassion. "As people who believe in the dignity and value of every human life, it is our responsibility to.... persuade people that assisted suicide is wrong." In their Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide Alleyne and Van Maren have done an admirable job of giving us the tools to carry out that responsibility. Given the urgency of the push toward euthanasia in both Canada and U.S., we need to read this book. “A Guide for Discussing Assisted Suicide” can be ordered at lifecyclebooks.com (where you can also find the option to buy in bulk for your pro-life group or circle of friends at greatly reduced prices). This article was originally published under the title "Speaking against suicide: a summary review of 'A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide'."...

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Pro-life - Euthanasia

Physician-assisted suicide: would it be wrong to refer?

Even before euthanasia was legalized in Canada, Christian and other pro-life medical professionals were being pressured to go along. The final report of the Expert Advisory Group on Physician-Assisted Dying said all healthcare providers should be required to: inform patients of all end-of-life options, including physician-assisted dying, regardless of their personal beliefs. either provide a referral or a direct transfer of care to another health care provider or to contact a third party and transfer the patient’s record. These demands aren't going away. As ARPA Canada's Colin Postma noted earlier this month: "the policy in Ontario requires doctors to provide someone who requests euthanasia or assisted suicide with an effective referral to another doctor, if they refuse to carry out the killing themselves." It's because we're going to continue to hear these demands that we need to have a ready response to them. So should Christian doctors and nurses be willing to advise patients about all their "end of life options"? And may Christian doctors and nurses who would never help patients kill themselves refer patients to someone else who will? Or would that make them partially responsible for the evil that is then done? We need clarity for our own sakes – if Christian doctors and nurses are going to take a stand against even referring they need to know this is what God requires of them. So would it be wrong to refer? Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project says yes, and as simple as his argument is, it's also compelling. In a piece at Mercatornet.com he noted that before Canada’s Supreme Court legalized assisted suicide, if a physician had made arrangements of any sort to have someone kill their patient they: "…would be exposed to criminal prosecution as a party to the offense of first degree murder or assisted suicide, or conspiracy to commit first degree murder or assisted suicide." In other words, when Canada still recognized assisted suicide as murder, it also recognized that referring for it should be a criminal offense too. Referring meant becoming part of a "conspiracy to commit first degree murder or assisted suicide." Now that Canada no longer condemns assisted suicide, it also doesn't condemn referring. But we know better. We still understand that assisted suicide is murder. So for us it is still clear that even the act of referring is a step too far. The Devil wants to sow confusion on this point, because where there is confusion, it is hard to take a stand – who among us wants to risk our career on a stand we aren't sure of? But if we know we are doing what God wants, then the apostle Peter's encouragement in 1 Peter 3:14-17 can give us the courage we need: "But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. 'Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.' But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil." When we are clear in our own minds, then we can make a clear stand to the world. We can share that we think this murder and want no part in it. We can make a compelling case that the government shouldn't force doctors and nurses to do what it would have prosecuted them for just a few years ago. And we can point out that asking doctors to violate their conscience is only going to lead to doctors without consciences....and who would think that a good development? Standing with God may bring suffering. But we've also seen how He can use such a stand to bring relief to Christian doctors and nurses. In Manitoba, earlier this month, the provincial government passed Bill 34, which offers at least some conscience protection to medical personal who don't want to refer. So let's continue to pray and work. May God give Christian doctors and nurses the freedom to continue their life-saving work, and may He give us all the courage and clarity to speak his Truth to a lost and confused world that so desperately needs to hear it....

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Movie Reviews, Pro-life - Euthanasia

Euthanasia film highlights horrors, but offers the wrong solution
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