(In)Voluntary Euthanasia?

A woman in Canada was recently euthanized against her will, making a macabre mockery of the ‘free choice’ aspect of this evil. God rest her soul, but she is the canary in the proverbial coal mine, a ‘hard’ case that will make the future ‘cases’ all the easier. After heart surgery, the woman was ailing, so in despondency she agree to MAiD – the Orwellian acronym that Trudeau and his policy-wonks came up with. Medical assistance in dying – now, whether you want it or not. For just afterwards, the woman rescinded, wanting to die a natural death in hospice. But her husband – if we may so use the term – who also had health issues, disagreed, saying he couldn’t care for her, or wasn’t up to it, or whatever. So when she went unconscious, or sleeping, he sought a ‘physician’ – again, terms now don’t seem to fit – who would do the dirty dead of offing his wife.

Like the big bad wolf, the first demurred, so did the second, but third time ‘lucky’, finding a straw doctor; and whoever that anonymous assassin was, killed her in cold blood.

Pope John Paul II warned this would happen, decades ago. In 1993, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, he wrote:

If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others… Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate no individual, group, class, nation or State. Not even the majority of a social body may violate these rights, by going against the minority, by isolating, oppressing, or exploiting it, or by attempting to annihilate it.

The ‘right to life’ is the most fundamental of those rights for, as the Pope says, without this right, no other rights could exist. The Pope then warns, quoting his Centesimus Annus of two years earlier:

This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgment of truth impossible. Indeed, “if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

The Rubicon that we must never cross is intrinsic evil, those moral acts which are prohibited, semper et ubique. Once we positively permit or legalize something that is contrary to the divine and natural law, then what is holding us back from a descent into ever-greater evil? What we allow the State to do to us voluntarily, the State can do to us involuntarily, given the right circumstances and ‘good’ intentions, with which the road to Dante’s inferno is paved. Why wait ’til the afterlife? We’re doing a good enough job building it here on earth. Woe to those who seek medical help if they are moribund – which is to say, any illness at all that could possibly lead to death. A growing number of physicians are now willing to accelerate the process.

Where will it all lead? In a recent post in response to a question What work will humans do when AI can do anything?, someone offered an answer:

They’re already exploring a solution to mass unemployment and the problem of millions of superfluous non-consumers. It’s being test marketed in Canada, in a program called MAID.

Sure, it may not come to that dystopic Logan’s Run scenario, but they’re already talking about the millions of dollars in savings that (in)voluntary euthanasia offers, especially since the greatest cost of healthcare is in the last days, weeks and months of life:

Doctor-assisted death could reduce annual health-care spending across the country by between $34.7 million and $136.8 million, according to a report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday.

A bargain, really, given how relatively inexpensive it is to kill people:

The savings exceedingly outweigh the estimated $1.5 to $14.8 million in direct costs associated with implementing medically assisted dying.

The savings exceedingly outweigh the estimated $1.5 to $14.8 million in direct costs associated with implementing medically assisted dying. All this before we get to the rising costs of the Canada Pension plan, by far the costliest of government programs,  consuming one out of every six dollars of government spending, and only going to get worse as our Dominion gets older and grayer. Why not hurry them – which is to say, us – along into the grave or crematorium?

Canadians are so blithe and blasé, like the proverbial euthanized frogs in boiling water, since this is all so clinical and detached. Perhaps we’d be knocked out of our apathy if, instead of medical assistance in dying, we changed the acronym to mafia assistance. Just wheel old granny out to the back alley. A bullet costs just over a dollar, and a hitman would demand far less than a physician, especially if he’s protected by law, as these doctors now are. You could even pay some of them with drugs. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, as the lyrics have it.

But that would be too vivid, too visceral, too real, even if it’s the same species of act, and achieves the same end. Instead, we continue our slide into anesthetic euthanasia, as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed upon the world.

As John Paul exhorts in Evangelium Vitae, it’s not enough to refuse euthanasia or any other crime against life. We must build a counter-culture of life – caring for our elderly, infirm, the sick and abandoned, assisting mothers, their babies, children and families, and all that is true, good and beautiful. We must also see the spiritual value in suffering, and more on that anon, as we make our way into Lent soon enough.

Only so can we give hope to live and thrive.