A Warning to the World

righttolife.org.uk

The “radical” and “rapidly expanding” euthanasia practices of Canada and the Netherlands were under scrutiny recently during the third oral evidence session of the UK Health and Social Care Select Committee’s (HSCSC) inquiry into assisted suicide. MPs heard testimony from six experts concerning euthanasia laws in Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium, jurisdictions where euthanasia is permitted for those who are not terminally ill.

Canada a “warning sign”

Prof Trudo Lemmens of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto explained how Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada is “accessible largely on demand in very broad circumstances” and is “the most rapidly expanding system in the world”. Speaking in follow up to Prof Lemmens’ comments, Steve Brine MP, the Committee’s Chair, put it to Scott Kim, professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, that Canada is “a warning sign to the rest of the world”. Agreeing with the assertion, Dr Kim labelled MAID in Canada as the “most radically medicalised system of providing assisted dying”, describing “the combination of very open eligibility that is implemented through a well-networked framework of medicalisation” as “sobering”.