Hospital chaplains now face a new need for their counselling ministry as health-care professionals are called on to perform “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD), becoming traumatized by the duty to kill their own patients.
It is not the vocation they chose, and one chaplain says some nurses can continue only a few weeks before taking a leave of absence.
More worrisome are “caregivers” who are not traumatized by administering MAiD. What do we make of those who can inject a patient with poison and consider it a “job well done”?
Recently Alberta introduced Bill 18, the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, to provide regulatory guardrails MAiD. Among other things, the bill would:
• Limit MAiD to those facing natural, reasonably foreseeable death as assessed by two professionals
• Prohibit MAiD for those under 18 or whose sole underlying condition is mental illness;
• Allow physicians and facilities to opt out of assessing or providing MAiD
• Forbid health professionals from introducing the topic of MAiD with patients
• Prohibit physicians from making referrals for MAiD outside Alberta
• Restrict public notices or advertisements for MAiD
• Provide training for practitioners and sanctions for violating regulations
The euthanasia movement has been at work in the broader culture for decades without sustained public debate. What happens to a society when it treats the weak or unproductive as disposable?
A journalist once asked a Down syndrome caregiver what the purpose of disabled people was. The caregiver answered, “Their purpose is to teach us to love.”
That is the stark choice before us: either treat human beings as essentially worthy of love, or treat each other as tools to be discarded when no longer productive.
Loving those considered useless may seem an economic liability, but Western civilization was founded on the conviction that every human being bears the image of God—the imago dei. Human life itself is the bedrock good.
The cradle of life is the family, the one social institution economists say consistently accumulates wealth as it lovingly nurtures the next generation. Children are themselves a good, and to think otherwise—reducing the next generation to instruments in a “zero-sum” calculus—leads to our current demographic crisis.
It is precisely this bedrock good of the family that has been ignored in the euthanasia debate. As we have slipped into a euthanasia culture, we have lost our grip on the fundamental reality that life itself is good.
As a result, lonely seniors think of themselves as burdens and consider euthanasia to avoid “wasting” their children’s inheritance in extended care. People facing financial hardship feel pressured toward MAiD as a way out.
Ironically, the medical euthanasia movement was initially presented as progress in human dignity. Advocates claimed it would advance autonomy by giving individuals control over the most important decision of all—when to die.
But it has had the opposite effect by ignoring everyone else affected by MAiD, including loved ones. Suicide has always been traumatic for parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren. It is corrosive for friends, neighbours, and communities. By turning suicide into a purely private decision, MAiD risks reducing a life-and-death choice to something as ordinary as deciding where to travel.
Of course, people have the capacity to decide whether to live or die, and for all its restrictions, Alberta’s legislation accommodates those who fear the final stages of a fatal illness—even though pain is often manageable and loneliness may be the deeper issue.
Those overwhelmed by despair may feel they want to die, but they can often be helped to rediscover the value of life. Individuals can’t always be prevented from ending their life, but they also don’t have a right to be put to death. No one can claim a right to an execution, either as convenience or ideology. Whether it’s recognized or not, life is good.
Many MAiD deaths occur in a context shaped by illness, fear of burdening others, and a cultural tendency to measure human worth in economic terms. Too often, a decision for death is seen as purely individual. Yet how often is someone asking for MAiD really waiting for someone to say, “Please stay—for our sake, because we love you.”
What happens to a society whose weak or non-productive members are treated as disposable? It becomes indifferent to life itself, and no culture can sustain that indifference.
When Moses led the children of Israel to the border of the Promised Land, he told them, “Today, I set before you life and death; choose life!”
It’s not something we should need a reminder about today, but we do, and it’s good that at least one province is trying to provide safeguards for those facing end-of-life decisions.
Joseph Woodard is a research fellow for Gregory the Great Institute in Alberta. He lives in Calgary.
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