Free Republic

‘Hastening death becomes the path of least resistance,’ says a medical ethicist as Canada nears 110,000 MAID deaths.One out of every 20 deaths in Canada is triggered by the government-run assisted suicide program. The sheer number is startling. Even more shocking is the speed and efficiency with which it ends patients’ lives. In Ontario alone, 219 people were killed by the end of the next day following their request for “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) in 2023, according to a 2024 report by an advisory committee. About 30 percent of those deaths occurred on the same day that the person...

A flying taxi took a spin over San Francisco Thursday — and the Bay Area’s tech crowd was there to watch. The small electric aircraft from Joby Aviation flew across San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge during a demonstration flight that drew reporters and industry guests to the St. Francis Yacht Club. The flight is part of the company’s push to launch electric air taxis — small vertical takeoff planes designed to carry passengers on short trips of roughly 10 to 50 miles. Joby’s aircraft seats four passengers and uses six propellers. The company says rides could cost...

Canada is set to pass a grim milestone in its medically-assisted suicide program with a total of 100,000 citizens projected to be euthanized by the government before its 10th anniversary on June 17. The Great White North’s MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) program will soon cross the sickly six-figure threshold, according to The National Post. Ottawa’s most recent data shows 15,767 Canadians were euthanized by the state in 2024 — 5.1% of all deaths in the nation that year. Rachel Fournier, who has requested medical assistance in dying, looks out a window at a palliative care center. About 45 Canucks...

Canada performed thousands of same-day assisted suicides, as it was revealed one elderly woman was killed despite withdrawing her request the day before. The medical assistance in dying (MAiD) program was approved in 2016 and has since been expanded to include requests from patients whose deaths are 'not reasonably foreseeable,' and will soon include those with mental illness. More than 200 people in Ontario alone chose to die within 24 hours of their approval in 2023, a 2024 Ontario report found, The Free Press first reported. Of the 219 deaths, 30 percent of them chose a same-day procedure. In 2024...

Euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting just took a particularly disturbing turn in Spain, where a woman was euthanized and then had part of her face transplanted. From the Catalan News story: Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia. Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours . In presenting the milestone procedure, the healthcare director, Maria José Abadías, highlighted the “extraordinary generosity of the donor,” ​the “collective effort” behind the...

A Canadian actress and comedian is seeking a medically assisted suicide after a long-term battle with several crippling mental health issues, according to reports. Claire Brosseau, 48, is suing for the right to die through Canada’s Medical Aid in Dying program after struggling with manic depression, anxiety disorder, substance abuse disorder, chronic suicidal ideation and a plethora of other mental illnesses since her childhood, she detailed to the New York Times. Brosseau, a Montreal-born actress who appeared in dozens of movies, revealed she has attempted suicide several times and has been under the care of a slew of different psychiatrists...

It's a fresh Monday morning in the quaint city of Amersfoort in the Netherlands, and a group of elderly guests are listening attentively to the words of an Australian physician. Dr Philip Nitschke, the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, lethal voluntary injection, and the inventor of the controversial Sarco pod, is presenting his latest gadget. The Australian-born founder of Exit International, the non-profit that provides guidance on assisted suicide, stirred controversy in 2024 when a woman ended her life using the so-called suicide pod, in apparently the first case of its kind. But undeterred by the...

She’s Kathy Kevorkian. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday she’ll sign a controversial doctor-assisted suicide bill – capping a years-long battle over making New York a state that allows terminally ill people to take their own lives. Many religious leaders and disability advocates quickly condemned Hochul’s decision to approve the Medical Aid in Dying Act, while the governor cast it as civil rights issue on par with gay marriage. “The right to spend their final days not hearing the droning hum of hospital machines but instead the laughter of their grandkids echoing in the next room. The right to tell their...

Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker expanded his state’s culture of death on Friday by signing a bill into law legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill people. Illinois is now the 12th state, plus Washington, DC, that allows physicians to assist terminally ill people in killing themselves — all in the name of “choice,” compassion, and easing end-of-life suffering. Pritzker signed the bill despite concerns from opponents that such a law could be a slippery slope (look no further than Canada) and could be used to coerce people with disabilities and financial hardships to choose death. […] The bill, called the...

In a striking scene in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge asks two men raising money for the poor, “Are there no prisons? … And the Union workhouses? … Are they still in operation?” When the charity supporters reply that many would rather die than go to such places, Scrooge replied, “If they would rather die … they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Later in the story, Scrooge is reminded of his dehumanizing words and is ashamed. Recently, in real life Britain, Lord Falconer of Thoroton suggested to the British House of Lords that the...

The founder of Dignitas, a controversial assisted suicide organization, ended his own life at age 92, the group announced Monday. It’s a tragic irony that underscores the dehumanizing consequences of the deadly practice. Ludwig Minelli, a former journalist and human rights lawyer, died November 29 through what Dignitas described as “voluntary assisted dying,” just days before his 93rd birthday on December 5. The Zurich-based death group, which Minelli established in 1998 to enable people to end their lives “on their own terms,” provided no further details about the circumstances of his death. Dignitas, one of Switzerland’s most prominent suicide killers,...

German police have opened up an investigation into the death of variety show stars and twin sisters Alice and Ellen Kessler, who shot to fame in the 1950s. According the the German news agency dpa, the pair were found on Monday in the home they shared in Grünwald, a prosperous suburb of Munich. They were 89

A lady who wrote to a financial advice column detailing her financial struggles in accessing healthcare has been told about how easy it is to access assisted suicide, which would mean she “wouldn’t need to worry”. Writing to MarketWatch’s financial advice column, a woman in her sixties detailed how she was concerned about being unable to access Medicaid, a government health insurance programme in the United States, unless she sells off her assets. “It also goes against my principles to dispose of my assets just so the government will support me”, she said. As age and life experiences have left...

Scott Adams, the influential author, cartoonist, and pundit, revealed Monday that he is suffering from metastasized prostate cancer — the same diagnosis President Joe Biden reported the day before. “I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has,” Adams said. “I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones.” “My life expectancy is maybe this summer,” he said. He said that he was considering ending his own life, as California law allows, using self-administered drugs. “I’m in pain,” he said, “I’m always in pain.” He said he had come to terms with his condition. “It’s kind of...

Walls was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer in 2023Aussie rules legend Robert Walls has died aged 74 after using voluntary assisted dying laws. Walls won three premiership titles with Carlton Football Club as a player and a coach. He was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer, named acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, in 2023. The Age reports that Walls decided not to go through another round of chemotherapy after being told he had months to live earlier this year. “Having battled cancer for more than two years, Robert did it his way and...

Proposed laws to give terminally ill adults on the Isle of Man the right to choose to end their own lives have been agreed by the Manx parliament. It means the bill can now be sent for Royal Assent, making it the first parliament in the British Isles to take this step. Under the provisions in the Assisted Dying Bill 2023, adults with a prognosis of 12 months or less to live would be given the right to choose to die. Those eligible would have to be over the age of 18, and have lived on the island for five...

A dangerous new bill introduced in the Oregon legislature would lower guardrails to obtain assisted suicide prescriptions, putting medically vulnerable people at risk in Oregon and across the country. Senate Bill 1003, introduced during Oregon’s 83rd legislative session, would modify existing terminology in Oregon’s “Death With Dignity” law to allow physician assistants and nurse practitioners, rather than exclusively physicians, to prescribe lethal drugs to end the lives of people diagnosed with a terminal illness. The bill would expand access to legal assisted suicide, which has already skyrocketed in recent years as a cause of death for Oregonians and out-of-state residents....

Assisted dying cases would no longer have to be signed off by the High Court under changes suggested by the bill's supporters. The proposed law currently says a High Court judge must check each person is eligible and has not been coerced into making the decision to die. But BBC News has been told Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the bill, will suggest replacing this with a panel of experts who would oversee applications. It comes after concerns were raised over the court's capacity to hear each individual case.

A federal judge on Wednesday agreed with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's statement that pro-lifers “have no place” in New York.The judge then moved to make that recommendation a legal reality.The Washington Examiner reported that a federal judge struck down a Trump administration rule that would have allowed for healthcare workers to refuse to provide or refer to sterilizations, abortions, and medically assisted suicide if doing so violated their faith.

Canadian doctors, having accepted the country’s assisted-suicide regime, are now considering whether to harvest organs from euthanasia patients before they have died, The Federalist reported Wednesday. The doctors reason thus: Organs are normally removed from a donor as soon as possible after death to ensure they are in the best possible condition for transplant. If organs were removed from a live person, they would be in even better condition. And if that patient is about to die voluntarily anyway, what’s the harm in killing him by taking his organs? Stealing Hearts “The best use of my organs, if I’m going...