“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Much of the world is aghast as to how far Canada has consciously jumped over the Moral Precipice of Voluntary Euthanasia.
It is only 7 years since the Carter decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, but several military veterans — suffering from PTSD after serving their country — were recently offered MAiD as a treatment choice.
Paralympian and military veteran Christine Gauthier, was offered euthanasia instead of the wheelchair-lift she needed for her home.
Non-military citizens have been approved for death even though their main problems were patently poverty, disability and loneliness. From March 2023 — just 3 months from now — providers will be able to legally euthanise Canadians suffering from mental illness alone.
(MAID in Canada is overwhelmingly “voluntary” euthanasia. Assisted suicide is legal, but rarely used. If a person is under some duress — such as poverty — or is being coerced by even an indirect threat — as possible eviction — the choice to accept euthanasia is not being made freely.)
There is continuing pressure to include “mature minors” into the euthanasia program. “Minor” means adolescents and children, possibly down to 12 years old. (They are likely to start at a more ‘acceptable’ age, possibly 14 or 16 years old.) Following our current trajectory, it is just a matter of time for euthanasia to be approved for minors in Canada.
MAiD Providers are likely to start with the most tragic cases because “compassion” sells. The ‘foreseeable death’ clause has been erased, so impressionable adolescents with severe anorexia, gender dysphoria, autism etc., are likely to be killed in ever increasing numbers.
One of the reasons the Supreme Court introduced MAiD was to prevent people with terminal illnesses from losing days, weeks or months to premature, non-assisted suicide. Soon people will be losing years, or even decades of life, to premature euthanasia.
STATE-SANCTIONED HOMICIDE
When we think of “state-sanctioned homicide” we often think of despotic regimes like China. Falun Gong and Uyghurs are being executed in Chinese concentration camps where their organs are harvested illegally and sold into a profitable transplantation program.
We do not think of Canada in terms of state-sanctioned homicide and human-rights violations, but that might be changing. The organ donation program is partly supplied by organs from the MAiD program. Think of all the organs they could harvest from malleable, physically healthy minors. Skin; heart; lungs; liver; kidneys; intestine; bone & bone marrow; pancreas; eyes; middle-ear; etc., all without having to build even one concentration camp.
BLACKSTONE FORMULATION
Sir William Blackstone [1723- 1780] is famous for the ‘Blackstone's Formulation’: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
This principle was adapted by Benjamin Franklin: “It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.”
This has become a cornerstone of law in the West and is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court of Canada opposes Capital Punishment.
(The Innocence Project has saved 241 innocent people from prison after they were found guilty: 10% were capital cases. Reasons for the miscarriage of justice included, false testimony from jailhouse informants; inadequate legal defence; false confessions; misuse of evidence; eyewitness misidentification; lack of DNA evidence, etc.)
THE CORNERSTONE IS CRUMBLING?
The Blackstone Formulation may have been a cornerstone of Western jurisprudence but the protection of the innocent appears to be dwindling. Wrongful death through “voluntary” euthanasia is becoming acceptable.
There may be a few people who have the ability to make a coldly rational and competent decision to accept euthanasia when dying from a terminal illness, but Canada is actively seeking people who are under duress or are — at least indirectly — coerced to end their lives. Canada appears to be infringing the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and aspects of the MAiD program are patently eugenic.
Euthanasia in Canada is expanding without one word of opposition from the Supreme Court. My understanding is that the Court normally would have to wait to rule on a related case, but this situation is radically different. The Court directly instructed parliament to legislate for assisted suicide and euthanasia. In doing so, Parliament modified the Criminal Code of Canada and has since removed or modified many of the criteria as specified in Carter. The longer the SC Justices stay silent about abuses with euthanasia, the more they become complicit in every wrongful death.
All comment on morality aside, even ‘voluntary,’ legal state-sanctioned killing of a citizen is bad for society. A society which plans to kill its young, is planning its own demise.
Kevin Hay
(You can follow Kevin on Twitter @kevinhay77)