Euthanasia was legalized in Canada in June 2016 following a Supreme Court ruling. And what a slippery slope it has been!
Originally, Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAiD, was only permitted for those who had a serious, incurable medical condition and whose natural death was immediately foreseeable. But as we say, once the door is opened to something like this, the door will be pushed open further and further.
A few years later, in 2021, the “death is immediately foreseeable” criteria was removed.
Just two years later, people whose only condition was mental illness were included (implementation of the mental illness inclusion continues to be delayed due to concerns about the impact this could have and is currently delayed until March 2027).
With just 10 years having passed since MAiD was implemented, it has become a leading cause of death, with over 100,000 Canadians having ended their own lives with the assistance of a doctor.
One site looking at the numbers reports, “Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) program accounted for more deaths than gun homicides in the United States in 2024. This is despite the US having roughly eight times the population as Canada,” and another puts it into perspective this way, “Canada’s MAiD program is euthanizing more people than dogs each year.”
And not all those seeking death are doing so because of immense physical suffering. According to one article, “Nearly 23% of people overall reported ‘isolation or loneliness’ as a reason for seeking euthanasia. Medical practitioners reported that about 50% of people requested it because of being a ‘perceived burden on family, friends, or caregivers.’”
Canadian doctors and lawmakers are openly discussing expanding MAiD to include newborns with severe health problems (Canada also allows taxpayer-funded abortion until birth for any reason).
At least one journalist is arguing that, despite the massive health care crisis in Canada right now, Catholic hospitals that won’t participate in MAiD (or abortion, transgender surgeries, or other procedures that violate their conscience) should be secularized and not receive any public funding. He writes, “Religious hospitals need to either offer care without discrimination, or get out of the business altogether.” (In other words, either be okay with killing people or stop helping people!)
Now if all of that doesn’t highlight the slippery slope that Canada is careening down, this recent news story certainly does: “One such case saw a woman in her 70s struggling with losing her ability to cook for her family, something she prided herself on as the matriarch of her family. When she was approved for assisted dying, she told doctors that she felt she had lost her value to her family.”
This elderly woman was apparently approved by doctors to end her own life because she couldn’t cook anymore. How incredibly evil—what complete disregard for the value of her life! (Thankfully, “she decided not to go through with ending her life, at least for now”—but regardless, she was still approved!)
In a culture where people have been indoctrinated that they evolved from animals by random chance processes and that death is the end, it’s no wonder people are treated as if they have no value and there’s a sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness.
MAiD—both in its original form and the monstrosity that it has become today—is a natural consequence of the devaluing of human life. Activist groups like Death with Dignity claim it is the compassionate response to human suffering and that it gives people autonomy over their own lives. But of course, this doesn’t answer questions such as:
- Who defines what unbearable suffering is?
- Who decides what “informed consent” looks like?
- If the standard is autonomy, why is there even a line for what suffering is worthy of MAiD? Shouldn’t that be up to the autonomous individual?
- Who defines what coercion looks like in these situations?
- Who decides whether someone’s suicidality is temporary based on circumstances that could change or is permanent enough to warrant death?
In other words, who is the authority? Yes, once again, it comes back to the question of authority. Once again, it’s either God’s Word or man’s word. When you start with man’s word as your authority, as the government of Canada certainly does, anything goes. This is why euthanasia quickly becomes a slippery slope—if there is no ultimate authority and personal autonomy is considered the standard, then the guardrails will quickly become irrelevant.
What happens when we start with God’s Word as the authority? Well, we don’t have to arbitrarily decide the answers to the above questions because we have a true view of compassion and personal autonomy, not based on our own opinions but based on God’s Word.
God commands Christians to be compassionate toward others and commands us not to murder. So compassion cannot mean killing another human being to end their suffering. Rather, compassion looks, for example, like the Good Samaritan, giving of himself to reduce, as much as he could, the suffering of someone else.
We will never be able to fully eliminate suffering because this world is broken and groaning. There will always be suffering in various forms, and ultimately death. But it is God who has written our days in His book. It is God who is the author of life. It is God who sovereignly guides our days. We don’t have authority to take that control into our own hands. That can be a hard truth for prideful human beings who want desperately to be in control, but it is the Biblical position. We let God be God and resist the age-old temptation of the devil to be our own gods (Genesis 3:5).
And the greatest virtue is not human autonomy because we are not actually autonomous! We depend on God—whether we recognize it or not—for everything: “He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:25).
God has not given us autonomy to decide for ourselves what is best. He has given us His perfect Word as our authority and the starting point for our thinking. And His Word is clear that we are accountable to Him for our actions because He created us and thus owns us. We don’t own ourselves.
When sinful, fallible human beings pass evil laws like MAiD and abortion, they are effectively saying they are gods who have the power of life and death. But God is the only true God, and we will all someday stand before Him and give account for what we have done. It’s sobering to think how many will stand before God on that day with the blood of innocent unborn children and suffering people of all ages—people whom God made fearfully and wonderfully in His very image—on their hands.
As Christians, we cannot allow a false version of compassion to blind us to what programs like MAiD really are: murder of the vulnerable and suffering. We must speak out against this evil for the Lord hates “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17).
We need to be praying for Canada. Unless something dramatically changes, euthanasia will only continue to expand in Canada because they have the wrong worldview with the wrong foundation. As long as man’s word and human reasoning are their authority, they will continue to rationalize and glamorize something the Bible calls evil.
And how long before it’s considered that people should be put to death because they are seen as a threat to society because of their beliefs? Christians? Think it couldn’t happen? It happens now in some countries.
Yes, your starting point matters, and it’s either God’s Word or man’s word.
