As we've seen in Canada, assisted suicide programs are a slippery slope to wholesale euthanasia. In fact, the supposedly "free" healthcare system up there, the one that makes you wait hours in the emergency room or months for an MRI, has found the resources to off Canadians the same day they ask to die.
Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program was billed as a "death with dignity" for only those who were terminally ill. Instead, it expanded to include veterans, the mentally ill, those with treatable conditions like hyperparathyroidism, and even the poor and homeless. They're looking to expand the program to include disabled children and infants, too, because the depravity just didn't go far enough, apparently.
In the U.K., politicians have been debating introducing "death with dignity" legislation into the nation's National Health Service (NHS) for a while now. One MP, Chris Coghlan, even whined that his priest denied him communion for supporting the bill (as the priest should). Such legislation is not only against Catholic teaching, it's fundamentally anti-life and dangerous.
So I'm glad to report that the "right to die" legislation in the U.K. appears poised to fail, and precisely because of the path Canada's MAiD program took.
"I used to support the right to die...when I witnessed my parents age and die...realised my mistake...how much old people worry about being a burden...[who] will try to make up for the [NHS'] by "doing the right thing"...AD could become the final solution to social care crisis"… pic.twitter.com/klbibbUrky
— Nikki da Costa (@nmdacosta) March 16, 2026
Here's more from The Telegraph (emphasis added):
Yet until recently, McArthur’s bill seemed a slam-dunk. Eighty per cent of voters support the right to die. Most party leaders seemed to favour the principle. Prominent media figures such as Dame Esther Rantzen campaigned for it. The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater tabled a similar bill in Westminster with the approval of Sir Keir Starmer.
Progressive opinion formers seemed agreed that this was about freedom of choice. People with painful and incurable diseases should not be forced to endure them just because of moral objections from “reactionary” religious groups, who tended to be the ones who initially opposed assisted dying. After all, we put down dogs, don’t we?
But after consideration most politicians in Scotland and England now realise that humans aren’t dumb animals. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is failing in the House of Lords, weighed down by reasoned and reasonable amendments about safeguards.
The tectonic plates started to shift in Holyrood after Nicola Sturgeon first expressed her doubts last year. The main Scottish party leaders have now all shuffled into the opposition camp, joining Labour’s Anas Sarwar, who was already there. The first minister, John Swinney, eventually came out against the bill and the Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay changed his mind only last week, citing worries over coercion.
...
We no longer respect old people in the way we did. They hear media figures and politicians forever complaining that the older generation has, in some way, grasped the wealth of the nation in their wrinkled hands. The row over the pension triple lock is largely based on this claim of intergenerational unfairness.
The endless social care debate, with its talk of elderly people “bed-blocking” in hospital wards, has added to their sense of being in the way. Given the lack of resources for palliative care, there is an obvious risk that old people, especially those with embarrassing conditions, will try to make up for the inadequacies of the NHS by “doing the right thing”. Assisted dying could become the final solution to the social care crisis.
There are some people who seized on the phrase "the final solution to the social care crisis," and it's obvious implications. The article is clearly attacking assisted dying for being a cost-saving measure for social programs because that's precisely what's happening in Canada. In 2024, even Leftist Jacobin Magazine was appalled that MAiD had become a cost-saving measure, calling it a "dystopian replacement for care services, exchanging social welfare for euthanasia."
In 2022, Amir Farsoud faced the risk of losing his housing and couldn't get additional assistance, so he applied for MAiD rather than becoming homeless. A 26-year-old Ontario man with a history of mental illness applied for, and was granted, MAiD despite not being terminal. And his family said his history of mental illness should have prevented his suicide. The stories are as numerous as they are sad and maddening.
As I have long argued, in places where assisted suicide is the norm, the "right to die" soon becomes a "duty to die" and eventually the state doesn't give you a choice in the matter at all. That risk is elevated in places like Canada and the U.K., where the healthcare system is nationalized; the government controls the purse strings, after all, and if you're a drain on the system, they'll make the mathematical conclusion that your life is no longer worth the expense.
I support death with dignity. It's called hospice. And yes, it needs some reforms — it's sometimes hamstrung in the U.S. by the asinine rules concerning pain medications, for example — but it's the only way a patient and his family gets to truly make the decision when to die and die with dignity, as opposed to some bean counter in Ottawa or London.