In Canada, Bishops Protest Against Euthanizing the Most Fragile

In Canada, euthanasia has been legal since 2016. In 2019, for the province of Quebec alone, 1,589 requests for “medical assistance in dying”—white glove murder—were filed: a figure that more than tripled compared to 2016.

It has also been a real boon for the organ donation market: the Trillium Agency, which oversees organ and tissue donation in Ontario, welcomes the exponential growth of assisted suicide candidates opting for organ donation: + 14% in 2019 compared to 2018, and + 107% since 2017.

Pro-life lawyer Wesley Smith denounces the drift of making “suicidal and disabled Canadians believe that their deaths may be of greater value to Canada than their lives.”

But the worst is yet to come: Health Minister Danielle McCann on January 22, 2020, announced plans to extend Canada’s euthanasia law to people who are not near the end of their lives, but who are suffering from serious pathologies, psychological for example: a way of targeting the most fragile once again.

In this context, the President of the Canadian Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Richard Gagnon, Archbishop of Winnipeg, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on January 31, 2020, expressing the bishops “very grave concern” regarding the proposed modifications of current legislation.

The bishops denounce as “shocking” a near future where the killing of depressed young people or of elderly people who have become a burden on society would become a reality. They advocate for “the loving presence of the family, the support of the community, and effective and accessible health care.”

A society that rejects God’s commandments and banishes charity from its horizon inexorably falls into suicidal and inhuman barbarism.