Other Countries Are Warning The USA Not To Normalize Assisted Suicide Before It's Too Late

Since Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted death 30 years ago, Congress has prevented federal funding from being used to pay for the practice by passing the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act, which expressly prohibits using taxpayers’ money to fund practices “assisting in the suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of any individual.” However, a new bill proposed by Democrats could change that by renaming the practice “medical aid-in-dying” and labeling it an “authorized medical practice.”

Medical-aid-in-dying, the proposed bill notes, is when a “mentally capable, terminally ill adult with less than six months to live requests a prescription from their qualified clinician for medication to bring about a peaceful death to ingest at any point if their suffering becomes unbearable.”

However, an online petition has been gaining traction against the proposal, noting that it “would force Americans to pay for assisted suicide (medically approved killing by poison) with their tax dollars.”

“I oppose assisted suicide and I vehemently oppose paying for medically approved killing,” the petition reads. It was created by Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which has dedicated its activism to warning Americans against following the same path as Canada and some European countries, sounding the alarm that medically assisted death “opens a door that can’t be shut.” Assisted suicide numbers have been rising dramatically in Canada every year, and initial "protections" have been gradually eroded, including the rule that natural death had to be “reasonably foreseeable,” which was removed in 2021. By 2027, the practice will be "expanded" to include people with chronic mental illness.

Holland has similar numbers, with 4.1% of deaths aided by doctors, with more than one-third of those choosing to die citing that they felt themselves a "burden" on family and caregivers.

A "Quick Fix" for Failing Healthcare Systems?

Allison Ducluzeau is a Canadian who was diagnosed with stage 4 peritoneal carcinomatosis, an aggressive condition, at age 56. When she saw a specialist, he warned that she might only live a few months and that chemotherapy would likely be ineffective for her cancer, and she was inoperable. Her treatment plan? To go home, get her will in order, and decide if she wanted medically assisted suicide.

"I could barely breathe," Ducluzeau told Ian Birrell at UnHerd, describing her devastation. "I went in there hoping to come out with a treatment plan but was just told to get my will in order. I told [my children] I might only live for another two months. If I’d not had my children, I might have accepted MAID [medical assistance in dying]—but when I saw the effect on them, having just been through the deaths of my own parents, it made me dig really deep.”

Ducluzeau chose to advocate for herself and eventually traveled to Baltimore for treatment. She had discovered that patients could be given debulking surgery to reduce their cancer, followed by targeted use of heated chemotherapy. However, in Canada, she couldn't even get a phone call from a surgeon for at least two months. With the help of relatives, friends, and crowdfunding, she managed to pay for the treatment.

Now, in remission, Ducluzeau is thriving, but she's still disturbed by the fact that Canadian doctors offered to kill rather than treat her. “The way it was presented was shocking,” she told UnHerd. "I was disgusted to be offered MAID twice. Once I was even on the phone, when I was on my own having just come back from Baltimore. It left me sobbing.”

Now, in remission, Ducluzeau is thriving, but she's still disturbed by the fact that Canadian doctors offered to kill rather than treat her.

The debate over assisted suicide is heating across the globe. As Britain prepares to expand the practice, Ducluzeau warned against it until "the health service is fixed—otherwise, it is a very dangerous step to take. We deserve decent and timely care rather than offers of faster death.” It's an especially somber warning when one considers that many cancer patients like herself are the ones accounting for the dramatic rise in assisted suicide.

“We do not have a good standard of care [in Canada], especially for cancer—and that is why it is so dangerous to have MAID, especially when it can be used to take a bit of pressure off physicians and the government.”

Canadian bioethics professor Jaro Kotalik warned lawmakers that assisted suicide seems increasingly to be “a way to compensate for lack of resources and reduce healthcare costs." Similarly, Christopher Lyon, a social scientist at the University of York, witnessed his own father’s assisted death in 2021 and was left devastated by the experience, particularly because it's unclear that his father actually met the criteria of having a "reasonably foreseeable” death.

"It was absolutely horrific,” he told Kathleen Stock at UnHerd. “Britain would be wrong to go down this path. You see some people making the same arguments as in Canada about personal autonomy, control, and the right to make decisions to end your life. It is perhaps a choice for people in very rare cases with extreme and unmanageable suffering at the very end of life, which is not what we see in Canada. But there is no doubt the evidence points towards a slippery slope with widening access—although it is really more of a cliff face. Ultimately, I doubt any assisted death system can be made safe.”

“It is horribly hard to see your father in distress being killed by a doctor with no attempt to help," he added. "It is almost indescribable. It came across as so cruel—but also so avoidable.”

Currently, physician-assisted death for terminally ill patients is legal in 10 states and Washington, D.C., while many more states are considering legislation to allow it. Supporters claim it allows patients to end their suffering. Part of its growing popularity is likely due to the deceptive language, as noted by Kathleen Stock. She pointed out the implication that you are being “assisted” in achieving something, rather than killed by a doctor or killing yourself.

Likewise, the toxic sedative given to “the patient” was merely a “drink,” and its administration a procedure to help the patient “fall asleep.” In a similar vein, Scottish politicians are pushing for the resulting deaths to be recorded as “natural” rather than "suicide," with the hopes that this will reduce the “stigma” around assisted suicide.

"In other words, moral qualms will be framed as bigotry," Stock added.

Opponents of assisted suicide argue that it's a clear violation of the Hippocratic Oath and that it places a dangerous amount of trust in the future judgments of unidentified authority figures. Many assisted suicide advocates are convinced there are enough safeguards to avoid people being killed for the wrong reasons, but the already-rapid erosions of restrictions suggest otherwise. In the Netherlands, for example, assisted suicide is permitted based on “hopeless and unbearable suffering” rather than fatal illness. It's not hard to imagine how such broad criteria will lead to many tragedies.

Still, public polling indicates growing support for doctor-assisted suicide, with recent Gallup numbers suggesting that Americans have “consistently favored” the practice for nearly three decades.

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