On Thursday, The Catholic News Agency reported that Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) accounted for 1 in 20 deaths in Canada last year.
The article reports:
Government statistics indicated that 15,343 people were euthanized by medical officials in Canada in 2023, out of a total of just under 20,000 requests. Those numbers represent “an increase of 15.8%” over 2022, the report says, a drop from an average annual growth rate of about 31%.
Though the growth rate declined, it is “not yet possible to make reliable conclusions about whether or not these findings represent a stabilization of growth rates over the longer term,” the report said.
“An increased awareness of MAID within the care continuum, population aging, and the associated patterns of illness or disease, personal beliefs, and societal acceptance, as well as the availability of practitioners who provide MAID, may all influence the rate of provisions,” it noted.
The “vast majority” of euthanasia incidents detailed in the most recent report, about 95%, were administered to individuals classified as “Track 1,” whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable” due to a medical condition.
More than half of those individuals were over 75 years old, with cancer as the “most frequently reported underlying medical condition.”
The article concludes:
Concerns have been raised recently that regulators are not effectively policing the country’s euthanasia program. A bombshell report in November alleged that out of hundreds of violations of the country’s controversial euthanasia law over the course of several years, none of them had been reported to law enforcement.
Activists, meanwhile, are pushing for the government to expand the law to cover individuals with mental illnesses. The government recently considered making that expansion itself, though early this year it paused the measure to allow the country’s health care system “more time” to prepare for it.
This is concerning. I understand that people suffering look for a way out, but the devaluing of life that is euthanasia cannot be ignored. This is a slippery slope that we do not want to go down. As of 2023, ten states in America allow assisted suicide, and a number of states are looking into making it legal.