Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Some fight for death; others fight against it.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
The only efficient part of the Canadian healthcare system is the part that kills you.
“When we think of assisted suicide or euthanasia, we imagine a limited number of elderly people with late-stage cancer or advanced ALS in severe pain. The argument for helping them die is clear: Death is imminent. Why should they be forced to suffer?
“In 2015, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that assisted suicide was constitutional. In June 2016, Parliament passed Bill C-14, otherwise known as the Medical Assistance in Dying Act. MAiD was now the law of the land. Anyone who could show that their death was “reasonably foreseeable” was eligible. In this respect, Canada was hardly alone: The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand, among others, allow assisted suicide. So do ten states in the U.S.
“In 2017, the first full year in which MAiD, which is administered by provincial governments, was in operation, 2,838 people opted for assisted suicide, according to a government report. By 2021, that figure had jumped to 10,064—accounting for more than 3 percent of all deaths in Canada that year.
“There have been a total of 31,664 MAiD deaths and the large majority of those people were 65 to 80 when they died. In 2017, only 34 MAiD deaths were in the 18- to 45-year-old category. In 2018, that figure rose to at least 49. In 2019, it was 103; in 2020,118; and in 2021, 139.
“Today, thousands of people who could live for many years are applying—successfully—to kill themselves.”
Why does Canada push people to die? Because it’s cheaper for them. Many who choose to die actually want to live, but the Canadian government goes out of its way to make their life miserable to save a (Canadian) buck.
“The National Post reports that Jennyfer Hatch, the 37-year-old woman who became a poster girl for assisted suicide in a recent Canadian short film, embraced suicide only after failing to secure proper health care. Simons, a Canadian clothes retailer, released a video, All Is Beauty, romanticizing her death. Really, she wanted to live.
“CTV News confirmed that Hatch was the same woman who had spoken to it anonymously last summer ‘about her failed attempts to find proper treatment for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare and painful condition in which patients suffer from excessively fragile skin and connective tissues.’ In June, Hatch told CTV: ‘I thought, “Goodness, I feel like I’m falling through the cracks so if I’m not able to access health care am I then able to access death care?” And that’s what led me to look into MAID and I applied last year.’”
Sometime, there are victories against the death regimes, as small as they may be.
“Euthanasia was on the docket Tuesday at the European Court of Human Rights, and the right to life won.
“Although the human rights court didn’t rule against Belgium’s euthanasia law, it held that the country violated the right to life enshrined in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the euthanasia of Godelieva de Troyer in 2012.
“At age 64, de Troyer died by lethal injection. Her euthanasia was based on nothing more than a diagnosis of “incurable depression.” She was in good physical health.
“De Troyer’s son, Tom Mortier, received a call from the hospital to collect her belongings. He had no idea that his mother had been euthanized.
“And so began Mortier’s harrowing journey to Europe’s highest human rights court. He previously had taken no position against euthanasia, but he was determined to seek justice for his mother.
“The human rights court ruled Tuesday in the case of Mortier v. Belgium that Belgium’s euthanasia commission lacked the requisite independence to offer real oversight—constituting a violation of de Troyer’s right to life.
“This agenda-driven commission, headed by Belgium’s most outspoken euthanasia advocate, simply could not bring accountability to the intrinsically corrupt practice of state-sanctioned medical killing. Notably, this euthanasia advocate is the very person who administered de Troyer’s lethal injection.”
TTFN.
