Killing Me Softly: Canada's Toxic Compassion
- A T
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
Euthanasia: the intentional act of ending a person's life to relieve them from incurable pain or suffering
I was reading about Canada’s new MAiD (medical assistance in dying) update. Medical assistance in dying is a process by which an individual, with the assistance of a medical professional, takes actions to end their life. Theoretically, the practice is governed by strict laws and regulation of the state and country in which the person lives. In the majority of cases, dying is engendered through pill ingestion, but in some places, IV infusion can be used.
In Canada, MAiD was first approved in 2016. In 2021, Canada’s 10 day reflection period was removed. Currently, eligible Canadian patients only have to prove that their condition is “intolerable,” and the program has been expanded to include requests from those whose deaths are not "reasonably foreseeable,” and will soon include those with mental illness. Those who are approved for MAiD but whose natural death is not “reasonably foreseeable,” must wait a 90 day waiting period and obtain two physicians to sign off on the request, yet the Free Press found that many deaths were completed before the 90 day mark. Per the Daily Mail (link below): “(In 2023 in Ontario), of 219 deaths, 30% of them chose a same-day procedure,” and “In 2024 alone, across all of Canada, 16,500 people participated in the MAiD program.” Most concerning in this expansion and acceleration of MAiD is that there have been documented cases of patients changing their mind but being ignored, or being coached on how to die.
Shockingly in all of this, is my experience that frank euthanasia is very rarely necessary. Time and again I have seen that if a patient is very closely and well managed along the trajectory of their decline, needing to euthanize them prematurely becomes moot. I have had countless complex patients where – because we managed perfectly very close to the trajectory – when dying came, it was seamless and peaceful. The patients were allowed the time to process the course of their decline, to connect with family, and to still pass on their own terms.
I am worried about this perversion of hospice care. The new push for rapid and uncontrolled euthanizing is not motivated by an appreciation of the course of decline and then death, but rather perverse toxic compassion, or worse, a God-complex in thinking one has the clinical right to jumpstart another’s mortality. I hope that there is significant pushback to this ungodly, woke version of hospice care. No patient should have their dying expedited for a fake benefit.
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