Medically assisted suicide in Canada reached a record high in 2023, according to a report from the United States’ northern neighbor.
Government data from Canada found, in 2023, medically assisted suicides in the country soared to every 1 in 20, accounting for 15,343 — or 4.7% — of deaths last year. That marks a 15.8% spike from the year before.
Those who took their lives via medically assisted suicide used Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, which has overseen the deaths of 60,301 people since it became legal in 2016.
Health Canada describes MAID as a “health service that allows someone who is found to be eligible to receive assistance from a medical practitioner to end their life.” The grievous program uses poison, which is administered orally or intravenously, to end participants’ lives.
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When MAID was first introduced to the populace, it was accessible only to adults whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable.” Then, in 2021, according to Reuters, the country expanded the offering to those not only with terminal but incurable ailments and disabilities.
The law is set to expand yet again on March 17, 2027, when people suffering “solely from a mental illness” will become eligible to participate in the MAID program. The expansion was initially set to take effect this year, but lawmakers in Ottawa delayed the rollout.
In a statement reported by the BBC, Health Canada said the government “has heard — and agrees — that the health system is not yet ready for this expansion.”
Health Minister Mark Holland said in February he agrees with MAID advocates who equivocate mental and physical suffering and explained the delay is only about ensuring the “readiness” of the medical system in Canada.
Dying with Dignity, an advocacy group supportive of medically assisted suicide, condemned the delay, calling the move a “denial of constitutional rights for suffering people across Canada.”
The editorial board for The Washington Post urged Canada to rethink its euthanasia program in a column earlier this year, asserting the pending expansion of the program “goes too far.”
“Many in the grips of psychiatric distress view, temporarily, suicide as their only way out, only to later be grateful they did not kill themselves in the depths of their suffering,” wrote the board.
That has certainly come to pass in Canada.
In 2019, for example, 61-year-old Alan Nichols was hospitalized over concerns he might have been suicidal and was in jeopardy of hurting himself. Within a month, he applied for the MAID program and was killed, listing “hearing loss” as the reason he wanted to die, according to the Associated Press.
Another person, a woman who went to a hospital in Vancouver, sought psychiatric help because she was experiencing frequent suicidal thoughts and, rather than offering her much-needed medical attention, a hospital staffer reportedly pointed her to the MAID program.
The 37-year-old woman, Kathrin Mentler, said she went to Vancouver General Hospital’s Access and Assessment Centre in June 2023, recalling her goal was to “keep myself safe” because she was “in crisis.”
During her examination, a hospital employee told Mentler there were “no beds” in the facility and asked her if she’d “considered MAID.” The woman told the Christian Institute, “The clinician then went on to speak of her ‘relief’ at the death of another patient struggling with mental illness.”
“That made me feel like my life was worthless or a problem that could be solved if I chose MAID,” said Mentler, later telling The Globe and Mail, “The more I think about [the program], I think it brings up more and more ethical and moral questions around it.”
Please be in prayer for the Lord to intervene in the lives of those considering medically assisted suicide. It is currently legal in 10 states — Maine, New Jersey, Vermont, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, and Hawaii — and Washington, D.C.
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