Legalized homicide is now the cause of one out of every 20 Canadian deaths.
The country's "medical assistance in dying" regime — MAID — has been in effect for 10 years and has taken an estimated 100,000 lives.
The numbers, and shocking stories like Brigitte Stegemann's, are a warning to America of what the euthanasia movement has in store for us.
Stegemann was an 83-year-old woman who did not understand that the procedures she allegedly consented to would lead to her death.
According to her granddaughter, when she explained to Stegemann what was going to happen, the elderly woman started crying and said she'd made a mistake.
She was put to death anyway on July 10, over her granddaughter's objections.
The old and ill are vulnerable — even young and mostly healthy individuals know that hospitals and other medical facilities can be high-pressure environments in which people who are sick or in pain can't always make clear and well-considered decisions.
Patients are weak; medical establishments and their administrators are comparatively strong, so much so that even hints and suggestions can be taken as commands by the infirm or excessively trusting.
In the context of euthanasia, there are no safeguards that can prevent killing without consent. The only variable is how often it happens.
Yet homicide with consent is an abuse in itself, placing the medical profession in the service not of life but of death.
With healthcare systems as bureaucratic as those of America and Canada — and the rest of the Western world — the decision to kill might as well be made by a machine, and in the name of efficiency, it probably won't be long before artificial intelligence is calling the shots, even when they're the lethal injections.
It's true that medicine can now prolong life without restoring health, making dying a lengthier process than it may once have been.
As our population gets older, the right care for those nearing the end of their lives will become an ever bigger issue.
But killing isn't care, and the convenience that overburdened medical systems may find in eliminating high-cost patients will give rise to motives for euthanasia that are fundamentally mercenary.
Is anything in modern medicine a model of highly personal relationships between patients and doctors?
If there's no deep human investment in anything else, what would make euthanasia any different?
Whatever humanitarian rhetoric it may be dressed up in, killing by physicians will be just as impersonal as all of today's treatments are.
Cases like Stegemann's in Canada already show this to be, and there are examples to be found wherever euthanasia has found a legal haven.
That includes at present 13 American states — among them New York, Illinois and California — and European nations such as Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Significantly, all but one of the states that have so far embraced "death with dignity" are Democratic-leaning blue states: Republican-leaning Montana is the sole exception.
If Democrats win big in federal and state-level elections this November, they'll make America more like Canada at every opportunity, including where "assisted suicide" and euthanasia are concerned.
When Bill Clinton said he wanted abortion in America to be "safe, legal and rare," what he meant was that it should be legal up to birth — or afterward, in the case of partial-birth abortions — terminal for the unborn, and available on demand.
Don't buy a sales pitch for euthanasia that uses similar language:
It won't be safe or rare once it's legal.
It may not be the top priority for a Democratic Congress, but it will only be a matter of time before euthanasia and related practices are being made the law of the land nationwide, not just in blue states.
Canada has crossed an ethical line no civilized nation should trespass.
Yet there's nothing to stop this murderous idea at the border — and there are people here who would welcome the Canadian system.
The time to reject it is now, before it can gain greater purchase in this country.
Medical assistance in dying is not only a mortal danger to the most vulnerable members of society, it's deadly to the very principles of human dignity that our society is founded on.
Like the medical profession, the law exists to protect life, not hasten death, and inverting the law's purpose is itself a form of a suicide for nations, not just individuals.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• 09/22/26: Sore Losers Are Socialism's Allies
• 09/15/26: The Immigration Politics of a Felon's Pardon
• 09/14/26: Jobs and Manufacturing Are on the Ballot
• 09/01/26: How to Tackle Domestic Extremists' Foreign Enablers
• 08/25/26: Why Hasan Piker Mocks a Murdered Man
• 08/18/26: Dems' Southern Strategy
• 08/11/26: Homebuyers Deserve the Facts About Crime and Schools
• 08/04/26: Diversity, Equity, and Confabulation
• 07/28/26: Democratic Socialists of America vs. John Adams
• 07/21/26: Why Dems Can't Do Better Than Kamala Harris in 2028
• 07/14/26: Prescription for a Socialist Workforce
• 07/07/26: The Smithsonian's Patriotism Problem
• 06/30/26: Bill Maher, Liberalism's Apostate
• 06/23/26: Can Anyone Govern Britain -- or America?
• 06/16/26: University Professors Against Academic Freedom
• 06/09/26: Pope Leo Courts the Global Left
• 06/02/26: A Mass-Graves Myth Is Media Malpractice
• 05/28/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/26/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/12/26: Dems finally come clean 'bout their radical design
• 05/05/26: The Silenced Generation
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print