That Damnable Conscience!

     Quite a lot of the First World has legalized euthanasia. Some nations that haven’t done so de jure permit it de facto. And some “health care providers” are discovering that they don’t really approve of it:

     A homeless man refusing long-term care, a woman with severe obesity, an injured worker given meager government assistance, and grieving new widows. All of them requested to be killed under Canada’s euthanasia system, and each sparked private debate among doctors and nurses struggling with the ethics of one of the world’s most permissive laws on the practice, according to an Associated Press investigation.
     As Canada pushes to expand euthanasia and more countriesmove to legalize it, health care workers here are grappling with requests from people whose pain might be alleviated by money, adequate housing or social connections. And internal data obtained exclusively by AP from Canada’s most populous province suggest a significant number of people euthanized when they are in unmanageable pain but not about to die live in Ontario’s poorest and most deprived areas.
     Some doctors fear moving forward even with cases that meet Canada’s legal requirements, which allow euthanasia for people with “irremediable suffering” from serious but nonfatal medical conditions and disabilities. On private forums, doctors and nurses have expressed deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable, according to messages provided to AP by a participant on condition of anonymity due to their confidentiality.

     The subject tests many persons’ consciences… but it should surprise no one when physicians are troubled by it. To kill, however antiseptically and bloodlessly, is the exact opposite of “health care.”

     Governments –organizations whose entire existence is founded on having the power of life and death over others – have a somewhat different attitude. Euthanasia helps a government in so many ways! It balances budgets. It reduces unpleasant statistics. It quiets popular discontent. A sufficiently ruthless regime can even use it as a tool for social control.

     Remember when Ezekiel Emanuel pronounced that living past seventy-five is “living too long” — ? What do you think he had in mind for those of us with different views?

     Now some Canadian doctors are finding their consciences tested. Not all of them, of course; some like the power to kill under color of law. The love of ultimate power isn’t confined to politicians, even in ultra-polite Canada.

     “But the patients want it! They consent to it!” rises the cry from the death-cult activists. Are you quite sure of that? It would be terrible to be wrong.

     Some of this was foreseeable when I wrote this Baseline Essay. Medicine, the practice of treating illness and injury in the hope of restoring or improving life, has already advanced so far and encompassed so much of human existence that some practitioners were eager for new realms to conquer. The ascendancy of the worldwide death cults was sure to encourage them.

     No subject could possibly be more serious than government approval of death administered as “health care.” The practice has even been legalized in a few of these United States. It’s time for men of good will to ponder what it means for the future of our species… and our souls.

1 comment

    • trangbang68 on October 17, 2024 at 8:48 PM

    The devil went to Canada. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. It was bland, boring, What the heck happened to it?

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