A disturbing headline about Canadian assisted suicide laws regarding the mentally ill caught my attention recently. As I read the article, the first line chilled me: “Medical assistance in dying (MAID) has been available in Canada since 2016 and is set to expand in March 2023, extending eligibility to those with a mental illness.”
It goes on to say that the new bill would allow people to apply for medical aid in dying “solely on the basis of a mental disorder.”
Dying with Dignity Canada called the signing of the bill “a momentous day for end-of-life rights in Canada.”
A momentous day, indeed.
When a government deems it appropriate to “care” for people by allowing them to take their own lives, we have reached a point of serious crisis.
Mental illness is a terrible thing. According to Canadian statistics, over five million people seek mental health services each year, and about one in three Canadians will be affected by mental illness every year. The statistic is higher in the US, where about one in five has a diagnosed mental illness. That’s 20% of our population. And with the COVID pandemic and lockdowns, we have seen an increase in mental health problems throughout our country.
Chances are, someone you know is suffering from some type of mental illness. This is not a crisis to take lightly. As Christians, we desire to help such people, not to make them feel like failures or like burdens so that they want to end their lives. Yes, this law is Canadian and doesn’t extend to America, but the mentality is pervasive—and though laws do not cross borders, ideologies do. Similar laws have been on the books in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg for two decades.
Such laws are outrageous and anti-human. No one should ever feel as if their life is not worth living. Life is a gift. But we are not naïve enough to think that life is full of rainbows and sunshine. Life can be incredibly difficult. We’ve all had days or weeks or maybe even months when we just couldn’t seem to do anything right, when we began losing hope, when we didn’t seem to have any friends, or when we felt so lonely that it was almost unbearable. But we put one foot forward, we persevered, we prayed, we begged God for help, and we eventually created a new chapter in our lives. But this isn’t always the case, especially for those with mental illness. Sometimes they need the help of mental health professionals or meds to get to a place where they can just get out of bed in the morning.
This is why we must pay attention to those around us. We must look at their needs and offer to help them. Sometimes we can do nothing but listen or even just sit. But even by sitting with them, we are giving them the most important message we can: You matter to me.
And when people know they matter, they will be less likely to want to take advantage of assisted suicide laws.
We live in a society that often fails to think about how others react and feel about situations. We spend time immersed in online games, watching TV, and on our phones, and we sometimes neglect the people around us. We choose to spend our time laughing at TikTok or funny videos rather than having a conversation with a friend, a family member, or someone at work.
We must realize that when people hurt, they tend to suffer silently. They withdraw into themselves. Those with anxiety and depression sink deeper and deeper into the belief that they are worth nothing, that they don’t matter to others, and that the world would be “better off” without them in it.
Once they start this line of thinking, what do they do? They search the Internet, looking for some type of validation one way or the other. They want someone to love and care for them, or they want a way out.
Then along comes laws like the one in Canada that tell people that it’s okay to feel so despondent that you want to take your own life: “Here, we’ll make it easy. The world will be better off without you. You don’t matter.”
It’s evil, and it gives people a free pass from taking care of one another.
The only way that we can stop the insidiousness of assisted suicide laws is to speak out against them and to ensure that our friends, family, and neighbors know that we value them.
Christ told us that whatever we do to others, we also do to Him. Let us remember this, especially as we head into the holidays. The world is full of people who are hurting. It is our job to help them through the pain, not to help them extinguish their lives.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
But think of the money the health system and insurance companies could save.
Many of us in Canada have been watching this nightmare unfold. The entire thing started with a lie. In June 2016 the so-called MAID bill was passed – medical aid in dying. It was to be limited to those in intractable pain and near death. We were told there was no slippery slope by the Justin Trudeau government. Yet just six months later the Liberals asked a committee of academics to stury the possiibility of extending euthanasia to teens, the mentally ill and those in pain but not dying. Sre enough we now have euthanasia for those who are ill and not dying and in March 2023 the mentally ill can apply. The government has also talked about letting teens access euthanasia.
This is a good law and hopefully this comes to America soon also (and it will). Anything less than limitless sovereignty over one’s own body is unacceptable; a non-starter. This is another issue where the RCC thinks they are doing the “right thing” by opposing something like this whereas in actuality it creates more suffering for people rather than less, just like an abortion ban. Condemning someone to live with some kind of terminal condition where every second is pure agony is not mercy, it is cruelty. This sort of empathy vacuum is only possible through arrogance and delusion whereby life is “sacred” and “I am the center of the universe and it was all created just for me” and my life has “infinite value”. Life isn’t sacred, nor is it worthless. It has value, but please be pragmatic and honest about the extent of it.
Andrew, there’s a critical difference between suicide & euthanasia. Euthanasia requires the actions of another person(s). You may want “limitless sovereignty over one’s own body ” but we can’t force others to participate in killing you. They have sovereignty over their consciences as well. Euthanasia’s a group effort.
And if we don’t presume the mentally ill wholly responsible for their actions legally, how do they give full consent to being put down?
“Condemning someone to live with some kind of terminal condition where every second is pure agony is not mercy, it is cruelty.”
There is actually no data or current research to support your position. You are just using emotionally charged language to make a tenuous point. I would give you an A for emotional reasoning and an F for rational argument.
mrscracker, that isn’t a distinction worth nitpicking over, let the person push a button if you require non-participation from anyone else, but in the cases where the person is immobilized (ALS or similar), leave them the option of their will alone, which would require the actions of someone else, but then again so does any other type of healthcare. not really sure what the concern is here. it’s certainly not a moral gotcha.
Athanasius, there is no data or current research to support creationism, so if those things are your bar, which would be perfectly reasonable btw, at least be consistent.
No one mentioned creationism, so your piint is a red herring. You are defending the indefensible.
Andrew, murder isn’t healthcare.
A doctors role is to save life and alleviate suffering. The doctors have a range of options at hand to relieve pain. Most doctors aim to increase life, yet some hold to the view you have expressed.
Jesus went through intense, agonizing suffering on behalf of all of mankind. All He asks us to do in return is to believe in His work on the cross. His life and death mean something. A person who is suffering still has meaning and purpose, we may not be able to discern it, yet if that persons life brought one person to faith in Jesus Christ, would the acute ordeal not be worthwhile?
1 Peter 5:10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
Matthew 5:10-12 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
John 6:37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
Dignity is found in living, also in dying. God will help the believer through the most problematic of times. It is a matter of faith and the great blessing is that God supplies faith to those whom ;He has called.
Yup. It’s always cheaper to put people down than to care for them properly.
It’s more a US issue but AARP (insurance for those 50+) lobbied against conscientious objection clauses for healthcare workers who did not want to participate in things like euthanasia. Locally we have AARP offering free meals & speakers at their meetings. It makes for a pleasant night out for older folks. Orthodox Catholics are joining up & don’t realize what sort of organization they’re actually supporting & how it may affect their care down the road.
It is also worth considering that part of cause of the mental health crisis is precisely the overemphasis on emotion. We can feel all sorts of things, but feelings aren’t that interesting or even important. Beliefs are important. Bad beliefs, not bad feelings per se, are what need to be addressed. Playing the feelings game, feeding the feeling addiction our culture enables, merely reinforces the problem.
Yes, and literally making life and death decisions on the basis of emotions is particularly destructive.
—-Christ told us that whatever we do to others, we also do to Him.
Perhaps he did, but historically we failed to follow his instruction.
Mrs. Cracker above – I’m not 100% sure but I think the CARP (Canadian ARP) did the same.
Thank you Gilberta for sharing that.
The world is insane. A person can be psychiatrically imprisoned (involuntarily committed) if as a result of mental illness, they are at risk of killing themselves but under this law if they ask for help to kill themselves it will be provided.
There is, of course, nothing novel about the postmodern forms of reductionism, materialism, and determinism; these are doctrines with which Socrates contended long ago. What is new today is that, as philosophies, they seem (to many people) to be vindicated by scientific advances. Here, in consequence, would be the most pernicious result of our technological progress, a result more dehumanizing than any actual manipulation or technique, present or future: the erosion, perhaps the final erosion, of the idea of man as noble, dignified, precious, or godlike, and its replacement with a Gnostic, though recurrent, view of man, no less than of nature, as mere raw material for manipulation and homogenization.
As a cultural matter, the challenge of soulless scientism is surely daunting, even dispiriting. With philosophical anthropology in hibernation, only religious teachings appear to support the intuitions of the uninstructed human experience of the human. Our secular absolutely relativistic moral elite, all in the service of rational, universal science, is only too happy to charge these teachings with parochialism, dogmatism, and narrow cultural prejudice. The same elite is above all determined to banish all such teachings and (especially) their proponents from public discourse about such “scientific” matters as euthanasia. But take heart: as a philosophical matter, these challenges should not bother us. Without for a moment calling into question, the elegance or accuracy of any genuine scientific findings, each of these challenges can be met, even without turning to religion. An adequate philosophy of nature would know what to say. Yet the deepest limitation of a scientist’s account of the human condition concerns not man as a knower but man as an ethical and spiritual being—a being whose existence is defined not only by Kant’s first great question, “What can I know?” but by his second and third great questions: “What ought I do?” and “What may I hope?” ( to which would St.Thomas have answered the Creed, Commandments, and the Our Father.) For man alone among the animals goes in for ethicizing, for concerning himself with how to live, and with better and worse answers to this question. Science, notwithstanding its great gifts to human life in the form of greater comfort and safety, is notoriously unhelpful in satisfying these great longings of the human soul. Gnostic contemporary bio-prophets tell us that we are en route to a new stage of knowledge, the body’s manipulation (founded on materialistic evolutionism, to the creation of a post-human society, a society based on science and built by technology, a society in which traditional teachings about human nature will be “passé” and religious teachings about how to live will be irrelevant.
But what, then, will guide this evolution? How do we know whether any of these so-called enhancements is in fact an improvement? Why ought any human being embrace a post-human future, a Brave New World Without God? Scientism has no answers to these critical moral questions. Deaf to nature, to God, and even to moral reason, it can offer no standards for judging scientific progress—or for judging anything else. Instead, it tacitly preaches its own version of faith, hope, and charity: faith in the goodness of Comtean scientific progress, hope in the promise of transcendence of our biological limitations (transhumanism), a charity in promising everyone ultimate relief from, and transcendence of, the human condition. No religious faith rests on the flimsier ground. And yet the project for the mastery of human nature proceeds apace, and most people stand on the sidelines and cheer.
So this is our peculiar moral and religious crisis. We are in turbulent seas without a landmark precisely because we adhere more and more to a view of human life that both gives us enormous power and, at the same time, denies every possibility of non-arbitrary standards for guiding its use. Though well equipped, we moderns do know not who we are or where we are going. We triumph over nature’s unpredictabilities only to subject ourselves, tragically, to the still greater unpredictability of our capricious wills and our fickle opinions. Engineering the engineer as well as the engine, we race our train we know not where. That we do not recognize our predicament is itself a tribute to the depth of our infatuation with scientific progress and our naive faith in the sufficiency of our humanitarian impulses.
Despite the fact that there is no philosophical reason to despair and that philosophical and religious anthropology could meet the challenge of scientism, there are in fact large cultural reasons to worry. Can our religious traditions rise to the challenge?