(LifeSiteNews) – Euthanasia Prevention Coalition executive director Alex Schadenberg warned that the recent expansion of euthanasia laws in the Canadian province of Quebec to those with serious disabilities amounts to a sort of “eugenic concept” that will soon lead to more deaths.
Quebec already has the highest rates of euthanasia rate in the world and last week passed into law Bill 11 that mandates palliative care homes offer the deadly practice to those who ask for it and expand it to those with a serious physical disability.
Bill 11 passed with near-unanimous consent with 103 votes in favor, only two MPs voting against and one abstaining.
Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews that palliative care homes that do not want to offer the practice might have no option but to comply with the new rule, but local authorities might look the other way.
“As for palliative care homes that don’t want to offer euthanasia, the law says that they will have to provide it, but I hope that the regional authorities won’t force them to provide MAiD,” Schadenberg observed.
“It simply doesn’t look good because the original Quebec law didn’t force palliative care institutions to participate in MAiD.”
Schadenberg pointed out that Quebec has its own unique Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) laws that first came to light in 2015. Canada’s federal law allowing MAiD went into effect in 2016.
The Quebec law applies only to that province. However, it should be noted that every Canadian province could choose to regulate euthanasia further.
As for Bill 11, it will, as noted by The Physicians’ Alliance and Living with Dignity, allow for no less than three new things:
– Creating an obligation for palliative care homes to offer MAID (in six months);
– Offering MAID in cases of serious physical disability* (in nine months);
– Offering MAID by advance request* (in a maximum of 24 months)
*together with the other criteria of the Act respecting end-of-life care.
Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews that when it comes to advanced consent, it means that a person would state within their “power of attorney for healthcare document that in a certain circumstance, if they became incompetent that they would want to die by MAiD (lethal injection).”
As the sanctity of human life is degraded around the world, we are seeing a particularly horrifying phenomenon – the euthanasia of children.
As if killing adults is not bad enough, giving lethal injections to children was first legalised in Belgium in 2014, and the Dutch health minister has recently announced that the country is expanding eligibility for children to be given lethal injections, from infants and older teenagers, to include children aged one to twelve. In both countries, there were reports that these so called mercy killings of children occurred before it was legalised.
Sign our petition to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, calling on them to take action against states that permit this horrific practise.
In The Netherlands from 2005 to 2018, official reports indicate that 14 children between the ages of 12 and 18 were actively euthanased; that is, about 1 per year. However, a death certificate study in 2001, of children aged 1 to 17, in found that there were about 5 cases per year (0.7% of all deaths of minors; narrowly defined as only those with a request from the child).
Importantly, another 15 children per year (2.0%) were actively euthanased with no specific request from the child, but instead one from the parents. This 2001 death certificate study occurred before the law changed to permit euthanasia of minors, hence illegal euthanasia of minors (older or younger than 12) was happening.
In Belgium in 2007/2008, a death certificate study revealed that while there were no cases of active euthanasia narrowly defined as by request only, 7.9% of all deaths were in fact active euthanasia (by lethal drugs) without an explicit request from the child, amounting to about 10 per year in Flanders alone. Again, this occurred at a time when euthanasia of minors was illegal in Belgium.
Reports from Belgium and Holland up until 2010 show that between 7% and 9% of all infant deaths involved active euthanasia by lethal injection.
This push to kill sick children is not just happening in Europe. In Canada, a parliamentary committee has recommended that Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) should be extended to ‘mature minors’.
This Report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, recommended that ‘the government of Canada amend the eligibility criteria for MAID set out in the Criminal Code to include minors’, with the stipulation that, without lethal intervention, their death should be ‘reasonably foreseeable’.
The committee emphasised that ‘MAID should not be denied on the basis of age alone’ and therefore, it should be accessible to any child whom doctors believe has ‘requisite decision-making capacity’. What child has the capacity to make a life or death decision?
Horrifyingly, the report further recommended that, ‘where appropriate, the parents or guardians of a mature minor be consulted in the course of the assessment process for MAID, but that the will of a minor who is found to have the requisite decision-making capacity ultimately take priority’. This means that parents would be powerless to stop an anxious teenager who wants to be euthanised from being killed by doctors.
Sign our petition to stand up for sick children and their parents.
We are calling on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to make a statement condemning the euthanasia of children, and to take action against state parties who practise it.
The Declaration of the Rights of the Child states that “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth”. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, as the body responsible for monitoring implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has a clear duty to take action to protect children from being killed by the state.
Sign the petition now!
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“If that circumstance occurs, then the doctor will be able to go ahead and kill the person, even though the person cannot consent at that time, since they consented in advance,” he added.
Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews that “advanced consent” presents a “serious problem with the concept of euthanasia by advanced consent” as a person is “unable to change their mind.”
“The advanced consent is only considered because the person is incompetent and therefore incapable of consenting to be killed. Since the person is incompetent, even if the person changes their mind, it is impossible to legally change the request,” he said.
The actual cost of euthanasia is covered for free by Quebec’s medical insurance.
Deaths by euthanasia have skyrocketed in Quebec since the practice was legalized in 2015, going from 63 in 2016 to 3,663 in 2021-2022. That makes Quebec the province with the highest rate of euthanasia in Canada, with the provincial government spending nearly $6 million on the procedure.
MAiD for the disabled a ‘eugenic concept’
As Bill 11 will now allow for those with a serious disability to get MAiD, Schadenberg said this seems like a preview to a type of “eugenics.”
“Changing of the definition to allow euthanasia based on serious disability is a eugenic concept, that certain lives are not worth living,” he told LifeSiteNews.
“Further to that, due to inadequate social supports, many people with disabilities live in poverty, they have difficulty obtaining effective medical treatment and some of these people experience homelessness or are forced to live in institutions.”
Schadenberg noted how the new changes via Bill 11 means MAiD will no doubt be approved for thousands of more people very soon.
“Not because they want to die, but because they are struggling to live,” he noted.
Schadenberg said that “killing” has now become a “business” in Canada. A recent report revealed a Quebec funeral home charging $700 for patients to partake in government-sanctioned, doctor-led suicide in a private “room.”
Earlier this month, LifeSiteNews reported about how a prominent pro-life researcher called out the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for handing out more than $3 million to a pro-euthanasia advocacy group, the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers.
The expansion to include MAiD to those suffering solely from mental illness came as part of the 2021 passage of Bill C-7, which also allowed the chronically ill – not just the terminally ill – to qualify for doctor-assisted death.
The mental illness expansion was originally set to take effect in March. However, after massive pushback from pro-life groups, conservative politicians and others, the Liberals under Trudeau delayed the introduction of the full effect of Bill C-7 until 2024 via Bill C-39, which became law on March 9.
The delay comes after numerous public scandals, including reports that veterans were being offered the fatal procedure by workers at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC).
The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) has been trying to fight back against MAiD being expanded.
Recently, a Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) bill that would repeal the expansion of euthanasia laws to those suffering solely from mental illness got its first official debate in the House of Commons.
The bill – officially known as Bill C-314, “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying)” – was introduced in February by CPC MP Ed Fast. It received immediate praise from Canada’s top pro-life organization, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), after it passed its first reading.
The expansion of euthanasia to those with mental illness will automatically become law in spring 2024, but because the date is more than a year away, there is a chance a new government could stop it.