Has there ever been a slippery-slope argument that hasn’t panned out? Every government program has led to mission creep that wildly expands the size and scope of not only that program, but government in general. Always. This phenomenon is not unique to the United States, it is what happens with all governments – any program always bleeds over its boundaries and spreads into areas it was never supposed to or its creators swore it never would. Assisted suicide is one such area, as euthanasia becomes the cause of 1 in every 20 deaths in Canada.
The main promise of assisted suicide proponents is that it would only be for the terminally ill in severe pain – people suffering in the last days or weeks of life. Opposition warnings of a slippery-slope were painted as religious fanatics seeking to impose their will on the suffering. “Compassion” – written with all the sarcasm air quotes can muster – won the day, and large swaths of the rest of the world, including some states here in the US, have embraced “death with dignity.”
But a funny thing happened on the way to Utopia…
Honestly, everyone is terminal – it’s part of the human condition. We prefer not to think about it, but it’s true and you know it. Knowing it is one of the biggest things that separates us from animals. So, in a technical sense, anyone can engage in government sanctioned suicide with the argument that they are terminal.
That’s an argument a lawyer would make and something advocates would deny, at least while fighting to get the laws passed. Now that they are in many places, things have changed.
Being near death is being replaced with simply wishing you were dead. That’s a flippant way to refer to depression, but it is done to illustrate the absurdity of the point, because it is happening.
Europeans who are perfectly healthy and young are being put to death because they suffer from depression. We were promised this would never happen, yet a few short years after becoming law the air around the slope began to get colder. Now it is frozen.
A story in the International Business Times reports, “Since the establishment of Canada's Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) law in 2016, more than 60,000 people have used euthanasia to die. Euthanasia accounted for 15,343 deaths in 2023 or 4.7% or about 1 in 20 of all deaths in the country. According to a 2023 annual report on medical assistance in dying, assisted dying cases grew more than 15% last year but the growth in increases of euthanasia cases is slowing. Health officials are not sure if that means cases are leveling out to a more predictable yearly average. Most recipients were older adults, with a median age of 77. Most also had terminal illnesses, such as cancer, though 4% were granted euthanasia for chronic conditions without imminent death.”
The slope is now iced over.
But this isn’t new, or unique to Canada. In 2018, the BBC reported, “In January a young Dutch woman drank poison supplied by a doctor and lay down to die. Euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide are legal in the Netherlands, so hers was a death sanctioned by the state. But Aurelia Brouwers was not terminally ill - she was allowed to end her life on account of her psychiatric illness. ‘I'm 29 years old and I've chosen to be voluntarily euthanised. I've chosen this because I have a lot of mental health issues. I suffer unbearably and hopelessly. Every breath I take is torture…’”
Why would governments support this? For the elderly, it’s because they’re expensive. After a lifetime of paying taxes and being productive, old people become an expense that governments don’t want to pay. Mentally ill people, often times, don’t even have the lifetime of productivity, often being on welfare programs to get by. Governments have no use for them, aside from getting their votes.
As budgets become bigger issues with rising prices, every bit of savings helps. If governments can normalize simply killing yourself because the days ahead might not be all wine and roses, think of the savings.
You might think that’s a little cold to say, just imagine how cold that slope is and remember how cold the arguments were to help get it that way. Liberals deny everything…until they no longer exist, then it’s pretty much too late to do anything about it anyway.
