Aletho News

Internal docs show Canadians are choosing euthanasia out of poverty, loneliness

By Clare Marie Merkowsky | Life Site News | October 22, 2024

Internal information has revealed that Canadian doctors are questioning the morality of euthanizing vulnerable and impoverished patients who are choosing death not just because of illness, but because of poverty and loneliness.

According to internal information published October 16 by the Associated Press, poverty and loneliness are two popular reasons for choosing euthanasia in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a phenomenon which has left doctors grappling with the morality of the deadly practice.

“On private forums, doctors and nurses have expressed deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable,” the report found.

Canada has one of the most permissive euthanasia programs in the world, euphemistically called “Medical Assistance in Dying.” First introduced in 2016, MAiD was initially only available to those who were terminally ill. However, in 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government expanded the deadly practice to be available to those who are not at risk of death but who suffer from chronic illness. It is worth noting that whether someone is terminally ill or just chronically ill, it is gravely immoral to intentionally kill a human person, a truth infallibly affirmed by the Catholic Church.

In its report, the Associated Press revealed that internal information shows that this 2021 expansion of MAiD has led to a significant number of people in Ontario’s poorest areas seeking MAiD when their pain might be alleviated by “money, adequate housing or social connections.”

While pro-euthanasia Dying with Dignity Association President Dr. Konia Trouton assured the AP that killing patients for vulnerability or financial reasons alone is “completely forbidden,” it remains true that patients themselves suffering with these conditions are factoring that in when opting for death.

In one case, a doctor told forum participants that a middle-aged worker, whose ankle and back injuries had left him unable to work, felt that the government’s insufficient support was “leaving (him) with no choice but to pursue MAiD.”

While the man was eligible under the current MAiD law, the doctor was hesitant to euthanatize him since he had listed the reduced government payments as a key factor in his request.

In another case, a doctor revealed that a patient with a serious lung disease was seeking MAiD “mostly because he is homeless, in debt and cannot tolerate the idea of (long-term care) of any kind.”

While the doctor was hesitant, some on the forum encouraged him to euthanize the man, claiming that “looking at the wall or ceiling waiting to be fed … to have diapers changed” was sufficiently painful. The doctor finally agreed to euthanize his patient.

Other cases included an obese woman who described herself as a “useless body taking up space,” which one doctor argued met the requirements for MAiD since obesity is “a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.”

In another case, an 80-year-old woman who required dialysis sought MAiD after she lost her husband, sibling and cat in a six-week period. Some doctors argued that the loss of her husband would make her pain unbearable, while others recommended grief counseling.

Overall, in Ontario 116 of 4,528 euthanasia deaths in 2023 involved non-terminal patients, with many of those killed being from impoverished communities.

2023 data from Ontario’s chief coroner revealed that over three quarters of those euthanized when their death wasn’t imminent required disability support before their death.

Similarly, nearly 29% of those killed when they were not terminally ill lived in the poorest parts of Ontario, while only 20% of the province’s general population lives in those areas.

While some doctors appeared to have little to no qualms about killing Ontario’s vulnerable, others questioned the morality of killing their patients instead of offering real care to those in need.

“I don’t want (euthanasia) to become the solution to every kind of suffering out there,” one physician wrote on the forum.

“I have great discomfort with the idea of MAiD being driven by social circumstances,” another admitted. “I don’t have a good solution to social deprivation either, so I feel pretty useless when I receive requests like this.”

While some doctors prefer patient care to MAiD, Trudeau and his government have worked to expand MAiD thirteen-fold since it was legalized, making it the fastest growing euthanasia program in the world.

Currently, wait times to receive care in Canada have increased to an average of 27.7 weeks, leading some Canadians to despair and opt for euthanasia instead of waiting for assistance. At the same time, sick and elderly Canadians who have refused to end their lives via MAiD have reported being called “selfish” by their providers.

The most recent reports show that MAiD is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.

When asked why MAiD was left off the list, the agency said that it records the illnesses that led Canadians to choose to end their lives via euthanasia, not the actual cause of death, as the primary cause of death.

According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD lethal injections. This accounts for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.

October 27, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Canada, Human rights