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Canada Is Euthanizing the Poor

Canada Is Euthanizing the Poor

Last updated on: May 12, 2022 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Canada Is Euthanizing the Poor 2022-05-08T17:07:17-04:00 Gene Veith

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The “slippery slope” fallacy argues that something must be opposed because it would lead to a sequence of bad outcomes. For example, we are hearing today that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion, next it will strike down gay marriage, then inter-racial marriage, then it will make contraceptives illegal! To think that way is to fall for the slippery slope fallacy.

Nevertheless, slopes exist, and some of them are slippery. Euthanasia laws notoriously begin as “physician-assisted suicide” for the terminally ill, but then keep being expanded to take the lives of other people.

Case in point: Canada. Writing in The Spectator (UK), Yuan Yi Zhu asks Why Is Canada Euthanizing the Poor?

He chronicles how, at first, Canada legalized euthanasia for the terminally ill. Then the law was expanded to allow for euthanizing those who suffer from other non-terminal illnesses, including the disabled. He writes (my bolds),

Now, as long as someone is suffering from an illness or disability which ‘cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable’, they can take advantage of what is now known euphemistically as ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID for short) for free.

Soon enough, Canadians from across the country discovered that although they would otherwise prefer to live, they were too poor to improve their conditions to a degree which was acceptable.

Now people are applying for euthanasia for economic reasons!

A woman in Ontario was forced into euthanasia because her housing benefits did not allow her to get better housing which didn’t aggravate her crippling allergies. Another disabled woman applied to die because she ‘simply cannot afford to keep on living’. Another sought euthanasia because Covid-related debt left her unable to pay for the treatment which kept her chronic pain bearable

The account of that Ontario woman is heart-wrenching. From the news story about her case:

A 51-year-old Ontario woman with severe sensitivities to chemicals chose medically-assisted death after her desperate search for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners failed, advocates say.

The woman’s assisted death appears to be a first in the world for someone diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), a chronic condition also referred to as an environmental illness or environmental allergies, say patient support groups and doctors familiar with her case.

“The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the a**,” ‘Sophia’ said in a video filmed on Feb. 14, eight days before her death, and shared with CTV News by one of her friends.

She died after a frantic effort by friends, supporters and even her doctors to get her safe and affordable housing in Toronto. . . .

“It’s not that she didn’t want to live,” [Disabilities advocate Rohini] Peris said from her home in Saint Sauveur, Que. “She couldn’t live that way.”

Now there is talk of expanding euthanasia even further: to those suffering from mental illness. Another proposal would extend physician-assisted suicide to “mature minors.”

If Canada is already euthanizing those who would prefer to live, I suppose the next step would be euthanizing people against their will.

At the bottom of the slope would presumably be making euthanasia a routine health care treatment, as in veterinary medicine. You go to the doctor, who tells you, “I’m sorry. We’re going to have to put you down.”

Is that a slippery slope fallacy or a legitimate inference?

The actual progression of the law and of individual cases, as reported by the Spectator author, is factual, not an abstract and potentially fallacious chain of reasoning. And it should be enough to show that there is nothing liberal or progressive about euthanasia. The arguments for it are, at best, libertarian, depending on the radical autonomy of the individual, having nothing to do with any kind of social justice, which would seek to ameliorate the conditions that might lead a person to want to die. Then again, the same could be said of abortion.

(For a compelling and entertaining novel linking euthanasia to abortion, read P.D. James’ Children of Men. The great British mystery author’s venture into dystopian science fiction draws on her Christian faith in a devastating critique of our current “culture of death.”)

Photo: “Slippery Slope” [Yosemite National Park] by S. Rae from Scotland, UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Canada's euthanasia law

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