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Associated Press: Disability experts accuse Canada of using assisted suicide to dispose of the disabled
Hotair ^ | 08/12/2022 | Ed Morrissey

Posted on 08/12/2022 6:58:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

The horror stories from Canada about pressure for “assisted suicide” choices on the disabled and those with profoundly-chronic illness rarely make news in American media outlets. That makes this report from the Associated Press eye-popping indeed. Disability advocates in Canada have leveled accusations that Canada’s nationalized health-care system has used the legalized assisted-suicide system as a vehicle for euthanasia and cost savings:

Nichols’ family reported the case to police and health authorities, arguing that he lacked the capacity to understand the process and was not suffering unbearably — among the requirements for euthanasia. They say he was not taking needed medication, wasn’t using the cochlear implant that helped him hear, and that hospital staffers improperly helped him request euthanasia.

“Alan was basically put to death,” his brother Gary Nichols said.

Disability experts say the story is not unique in Canada, which arguably has the world’s most permissive euthanasia rules — allowing people with serious disabilities to choose to be killed in the absence of any other medical issue.

Many Canadians support euthanasia and the advocacy group Dying With Dignity says the procedure is “driven by compassion, an end to suffering and discrimination and desire for personal autonomy.” But human rights advocates say the country’s regulations lack necessary safeguards, devalue the lives of disabled people and are prompting doctors and health workers to suggest the procedure to those who might not otherwise consider it.

Equally troubling, advocates say, are instances in which people have sought to be killed because they weren’t getting adequate government support to live.

Those stories have occasionally broken through, but not often. Four years ago almost to the day, Canadian outlet CTV reported that the government medical system had put pressure on Roger Foley to choose “assisted suicide” rather than continue to press for the institutional care to which the seriously disabled Canadian was entitled. Foley got so much pressure from health-care officials that he taped the conversations and made them public:

In the first recording from September 2017, a medical worker is heard telling Foley that he will be charged some $1,500 a day if he stays at the hospital.

Foley labels the attempt as illegal coercion and says his preferences have already been violated. He asks what the plan is for him moving forward.

“Roger, this is not my show,” the man responds. “I told you my piece of this was to talk to you about if you had interest in assisted dying.”

In the other audio recording, reportedly from January 2018, a medical worker is heard asking Foley if he would like to pursue assisted suicide and whether he has had thoughts of self-harm. Foley says he feels like he wants to end his life because of his experience at the hospital, but that if he were given self-directed home care, he would “be fine.”

“You can just apply to get assisted, if you wanted to end your life, you know what I mean?” the medical worker says. “You don’t have to do it in some dramatic manner, you can just apply.”

“Well, they already presented the outcome option to me, but it’s like, Why force me to end my life?” says Foley.

Horrifying. But it doesn’t appear to have changed much, regardless. Two years ago, data on Canada’s assisted suicides showed a significant number choosing it for reasons other than terminal illness:

Over 1200 practitioners in medically-assisted suicide performed 5,631 assisted deaths, the vast majority of whom were primary-care physicians (65%) rather than specialists. Oncologists, for instance, only represented 1.7% of all MAID providers, while palliative medicine represented just 9.1%. …

Only a narrow majority (54-56%) cited unmanageable pain, which is what most people have in mind when it comes to suffering that would justify medically assisted suicides.

For instance, the two leading causes cited are rather basic medical issues — loss of ability to engage in “meaningful life activities” (82%) and “activities of daily living” (78%). Needless to say, these are common in some degree to all chronic medical conditions, which is why people go to doctors — specialists in particular — to manage those issues. How many of those cases did the Canadian health system enthusiastically try to alleviate? The fact that 65% of MAID providers are family doctors suggest that those efforts didn’t get much attention from specialists.

The more shocking numbers are those of “perceived burden on family, friends, or caregivers” (34%) and “isolation or loneliness” (13.7%). This suggests that one driving factor behind hundreds of assisted suicides, if not thousands, is the impression that people want them out of the way rather than help support the sick.

Also alarming, the number of assisted suicides had skyrocketed. Within just a span of four years, assisted suicides had gone from 1,015 in 2016 to 5,631 in 2019. Did Canada suffer a wave of terminal illnesses in that four-year span — or did its health system start selling suicide harder? Anecdotally, it very much looks like the latter.

Inevitably, “assisted suicide” goes from a humane choice to an expectation — especially given the financial incentives within nationalized health systems. As health care systems attempt to conserve resources, the economic incentives push these kinds of outcomes. At a certain point, those incentives create pressure to portray assisted suicide as a duty to others and the desire to live portrayed as a vice. The disabled are particularly vulnerable for this kind of euthanasia policy, as are the emotionally and/or mentally ill.

The choice for assisted suicide may well be necessary and understandable in some limited circumstances. But in countries where there are no options for choosing one’s providers and payers, the economic imperatives that assisted suicide opens up will become imperatives for grotesque ends.



TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: assistedsuicide; associatedpress; bloggers; canada; creepstate; deepstate; disabled; euthanasia; justintrudeau; policestate; progress; progressive; progressivepolitics; singlepartystate

1 posted on 08/12/2022 6:58:06 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

The Nazis did the same


2 posted on 08/12/2022 7:05:09 PM PDT by butlerweave
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To: SeekAndFind

The AssPress alarmed at the fruits of their labor. I love it when they eat their own. Pass the popcorn please.


3 posted on 08/12/2022 7:07:22 PM PDT by Skid289
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To: SeekAndFind

Well, duh. Isn’t that the idea?


4 posted on 08/12/2022 7:17:18 PM PDT by fhayek
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To: butlerweave

Canada agrees with the Nazi agenda...Wonder when they start killing off the other groups they don’t want around?????


5 posted on 08/12/2022 7:17:37 PM PDT by Hambone 1934 (Dems love playing Nazis.....The republicans love helping them)
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To: SeekAndFind

2022 is the year when the movie “Soylent Green” is supposed to take place.


6 posted on 08/12/2022 7:23:15 PM PDT by Berosus (I wish I had as much faith in God as liberals have in government.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Some nursing homes in MN are doing this. I sent my dad to a nursing home looking for rehab, instead they were looking to help him die. this was during the covid. 11/11/2020.

Good for my dad, he had Last Rites,90 minutes before he died.
I was with him for the last 40 minutes of his life. So was St. Michael. If you know what I mean.


7 posted on 08/12/2022 7:25:17 PM PDT by BarbM (Men who look at porn are impotent to God.)
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To: SeekAndFind
"Disability experts accuse Canada of using assisted suicide to dispose of the disabled"

Does the Canadian government confiscate the assets of those they euthanize?
8 posted on 08/12/2022 7:26:58 PM PDT by clearcarbon (Fraudulent elections have consequences.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bkmk


9 posted on 08/12/2022 7:31:49 PM PDT by rockabyebaby (THE BEST IS YET TO COME - (PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP))
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To: SeekAndFind

That is yo wonnerfull socialized health care , what goes around comes around,get some, everynobody is the same so’s we don’t envy one or other so sed vanjomes
Canda could far do better


10 posted on 08/12/2022 7:35:43 PM PDT by Recompennation (Don’t blame me my vote didn’t count so mee )
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To: SeekAndFind
“You can just apply to get assisted, if you wanted to end your life, you know what I mean?” the medical worker says. “You don’t have to do it in some dramatic manner, you can just apply.”

>>But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.<< Barack H Obama.

The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of someone else's money. PM Margaret Thatcher.

11 posted on 08/12/2022 7:36:49 PM PDT by ealgeone
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To: Hambone 1934

We’ve been doing that since January 1973.


12 posted on 08/12/2022 7:37:26 PM PDT by ealgeone
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To: SeekAndFind

 Aktion T4
13 posted on 08/12/2022 7:39:32 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie (LORD, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
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To: ealgeone

Nurse friend of my family told me once they leave disabled babies in a corner to die..That was 30 years ago...The hospital tells parents baby died while being delivered


14 posted on 08/12/2022 7:54:07 PM PDT by Hambone 1934 (Dems love playing Nazis.....The republicans love helping them)
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To: SeekAndFind

Schadenfreude.


15 posted on 08/12/2022 7:55:20 PM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Federal-run medical care is as good as state-run DMV.)
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To: butlerweave

“They say he was not taking needed medication,”

So if you don’t wish to take their expensive drugs they just run you through the gas chamber. Sort of like vaccines I think.


16 posted on 08/12/2022 8:04:55 PM PDT by WVNan (stop)
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To: SeekAndFind

I bet none of those disabled were anywhere near related to the ruling liberal elites in Canada.


17 posted on 08/12/2022 8:07:49 PM PDT by simpson96
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To: SeekAndFind

Spare cats, spare dogs, spare kids…. They are all the same. This is absolutely necessary for evolution. Step it up, for humanity’s sake. The fit must be the only allowed to live. Anything else is a step back to apes. Hat tip, Ken Ham. On the spares.
Kids are being shown every day that animals can dance, sing, laugh and have relationships just like people.
In reality a trip to the zoo will tell you otherwise.
But this is the strategy to equate humans with animals. Makes sense now, right.


18 posted on 08/12/2022 11:22:34 PM PDT by momincombatboots (Ephesians 6... who you are really at war with. )
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To: butlerweave

Eugenics by any other name, is still Eugenics.

Tommy Douglas (Canadian Socialist), Margaret Sanger (American Socialist) and Adolph Hitler (German Socialist) all subscribed to eugenics as a means to eliminate poverty and mentally defective people within society.

By socializing medicine, you leave doctors in charge of making decisions as to who lives and who dies. They would be directed to perform abortions and sterilization those who live in poverty and on feeble minded individuals, and they would also be directed to euthanize seniors, disabled people and the mentally ill for the betterment of society.

If you’re a Socialist or Nazi, it all makes sense... And sadly, there are far too many Socialist and Nazi’s in our midst.


19 posted on 08/13/2022 2:09:37 AM PDT by jerod (Nazi's were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
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To: SeekAndFind

A more kinder gentler Nazi tactic. Hilter got blow back from the public when they found out that he was terminating them so he sent them off to camp


20 posted on 08/13/2022 3:03:48 AM PDT by ronnie raygun
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