Published November 27, 2024
With the U.K. Parliament now firmly in Labour hands, the progressive government is pressing forward with plans for a new vote on the legalization of assisted suicide. Since Parliament last debated the issue (and decisively rejected legalization) in 2015, several other Western countries have embraced some form of euthanasia, with grim results. In most cases, what was sold as a strictly controlled practice with very strict criteria, intended only for terminally ill and grievously suffering patients, has begun to broaden into a blank check for anyone tired of living or deemed unworthy of life. In Canada, MAID (medical assistance in dying) deaths grew thirteenfold in just six years after legalization, to comprise 4% of all deaths nationwide.
Despite such cautionary tales, support for euthanasia continues to grow. Most frequently, the practice is justified as a compassionate antidote to the intolerable suffering that accompanies some deaths, and indeed, no one can be unmoved by such suffering. The timing is odd, however—why is it that support for assisted dying has ballooned in exactly the same era and in the same places that medicine has succeeded most in mitigating end-of-life suffering? Two centuries ago, no one could expect to have their passing eased by morphine, and yet assisted suicide was almost unthinkable in the West. What has changed? At least four trends have contributed to this cultural transformation.
Click here to continue reading.
