Beware of assisted suicide

By Helen Liulevicius

Christine Gauthier, a Canadian army veteran and paralympic champion, petitioned Veteran Affairs Canada to install a wheelchair ramp for her home. After waiting for more than five years to get the ramp, a frustrated Ms. Gauthier told her caseworker at Veteran Affairs, “I can’t keep living like this.” Instead of figuring out how to get Ms. Gauthier what she needed to live well, the caseworker informed her that she had the right to die.

The creeping normalization of assisted suicide endangers us all. Today, physician-assisted suicide is available in eleven states, Washington D.C., and in ten other countries. First, it was offered to the terminally ill, next the mentally ill, then the impoverished, and now even children in Belgium and the Netherlands. In 2024, more than 30,000 people worldwide died from assisted suicide. The war on human life and dignity is here.

Like other moral issues, assisted suicide is shrouded in euphemisms like “autonomy” and “release,” because “suicide” sounds too harsh even to pro-euthanasia activists. Euthanasia organizations call themselves “EXIT International,” “The Last Resort,” “Dignity in Dying,” “Compassion and Choices,” and “Medical Assistance in Dying” or “MAID” for short.

The means for suicide are also intentionally deceptive. In Switzerland, the pro-euthanasia group EXIT International introduced “Sarco” pods. Individuals lie down inside these futuristic-looking capsules and activate a mechanism which releases liquid nitrogen, cutting off the oxygen supply inside. This mechanized death is presented as easy, tidy, and out-of-sight. Other methods include lethal injection, pills, and powders which the patient must self-administer, so the promoters escape legal blame. However, if you replace the sleek medicalized equipment and setting with a gun, noose, or knife, the grotesque nature of assisted suicide becomes clear.

The availability of assisted suicide poisons the doctor-patient relationship. The word “choice” is ubiquitous in healthcare, but is a person capable of making a free choice when, suffering intensely and uninformed of alternatives, he or she receives an offer of euthanasia from a doctor? People naturally respect and trust their doctors! The ancient and venerable Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm” should preclude suggesting death as a treatment, but we are witnessing a decay of basic values in medical ethics.

Organ donations have now become an incentive for encouraging people to consider assisted suicide. In Spain, 13% of those who died by clinician-assisted suicide participated in organ donation. The organs of these mentally troubled people are coveted since the individuals are physically well, and their deaths can be planned, directed, and monitored by hospital staff who procure the organs in the best conditions. Hospitals have become death houses, referring suicidal patients to organ donation groups rather than shepherding them to mental health professionals.

Modern society has devalued human life, claiming the need to slow population growth, conserve resources, and increase economic efficiency. Society denies the intrinsic value of each individual; people are viewed as a burden when they require extraordinary care. This is the “culture of death” that Pope St. John Paul II warned about and the “throw-away culture” Pope Francis criticized.

Yet, the problems which lead people to consider suicide are real. They require creative and earnest efforts that treat the whole person, addressing mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. We must address the causes of human despair, like poor healthcare, housing insecurity, poverty, depression, and loneliness. And we must love people through their suffering.

This gut-wrenching information is tough, but it is a wake-up call. We must appeal to our legislatures to arrest this trend before we become like Canada, where assisted suicide is now the fifth leading cause of death. We can either get informed and act, or we can watch it all play out. Please, do not allow politicians, death activists, and medical specialists to abuse their authority, because a society built on the destruction of its own citizens will not survive.

We must always acknowledge the frailty of human life and preserve its sanctity. As God Himself tells us in Deuteronomy, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.”