Canadian fashion store pulls euthanasia video after boycott calls

A Canadian fashion retailer has pulled from YouTube its video ad promoting a terminally ill woman’s assisted suicide after the ad campaign was met with shock and calls for a boycott.

The video by La Maison Simons, a popular fashion chain better known as Simons, received more than one million views following its release Oct. 24, the day after the woman profiled in it died.

The ad received blistering criticism by pro-life organizations and news coverage from mainstream and independent media. But as of Dec. 1 the video was no longer available on YouTube, where a notification reads the video is unavailable and has been made private.

The woman whose death is celebrated in the video, Jennyfer Hatch, sought medical assistance in dying (MAiD) after being diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a group of inherited disorders that affect connective tissues, CBC News reported in a story that glowingly endorses Hatch’s death.

“Dying in a hospital is not what’s natural. It’s not what’s soft,” 37-year-old Jennyfer Hatch says at the start of the three-minute video. “In these kinds of moments, you need softness.”

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said it’s natural to “wish to be remembered and to live a full life, with friends, experiences, beauty and joy.”

Simons, however, “has created a concept commercial that sells their products as part of a complete life and dying by euthanasia as the fulfillment of a complete life,” Schadenberg said.

The coalition launched a campaign on CitizenGo to boycott Simons, which has a store at Park Royal South in West Vancouver.

“Before buying products from Simons, remember who you are giving your money to,” Schadenberg said. “Maybe it’s better to buy from their competitors?”

Working with North Shore Pro Life, the coalition produced a flyer directed at Simons. “We wanted to draw their attention to the victims created by medically assisted death,” said North Shore Pro Life president Mario Tancredi.

North Shore Pro Life member Tish Byrne Casey said the flyer is “a good tool for people who are in the Lower Mainland to give a physical response to the store, since it’s right here where we live.”

When Byrne Casey went in to Simon’s this week to hand the flyer to the store manager, she learned the company had pulled the video. “I shook her hand and wished her Merry Christmas, and she let me know that Simons is no longer airing the commercial.”

The manager was unable to clarify exactly what that meant, but the video is no longer available on YouTube. The B.C. Catholic reached out to Simons to find out the status of the ad campaign but had not received a response by press time.

Since Canada legalized assisted suicide in 2016 the number of MAiD deaths has increased each year. In 2016 the number of people who chose assisted suicide was 1,018. In 2021 there were 10,064 MAiD deaths, making up 3.3 per cent of all deaths in Canada.

The Simons ad, titled “All is beauty,” follows Hatch as she draws in the sand, watches the waves, blows bubbles, and laughs with friends while soft music plays in the background. The words “The most beautiful exit” float across the screen.

“Last breaths are sacred,” Hatch says at one point. “Even though as I seek help to end my life, with all the pain and in these final moments, there is still so much beauty.”

The video was discussed on Fox News Tuesday by Laura Ingraham and Rebel News editor-in-chief Sheila Gunn Reid, who said “This is what it means to go woke in Canada now.”

In another, separate video, Peter Simons, chief merchant for the fashion chain, says he felt inspired to tell Hatch’s story after meeting her earlier this year. He insists that it is “not a commercial campaign.”

“It’s more an effort to use our freedom, our voice, and the privilege we have to speak and create every day here in a way that is more about human connection,” he says. “And I think we sincerely believe that companies have a responsibility to participate in communities and to help build the communities that we want to live in tomorrow and leave to our children.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which summarizes Church teaching, explicitly condemns euthanasia. 

“Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible,” it says. “Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.”

It also forbids “an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering,” saying that it “constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.”

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