Dutch doctors euthanized an autistic teen. Why some say that should be a 'wake-up call' for Canada - "Despite his young age, his doctor had “no doubts whatsoever” that the youth had the mental capacity to appreciate what he was seeking, and that there was no prospect of improvement, according to the case report. His death, part of a dramatic increase in psychiatric euthanasia in the Netherlands in recent years, should serve as a warning to Canada as a special parliamentary committee reconvenes to assess the country’s readiness to permit MAID on the sole basis of mental suffering, a prominent Canadian psychiatrist says. The Dutch experience “should be taken as a wake-up call,” said Dr. Sonu Gaind, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. “The threshold (for assisted death) in Canada is actually lower than the Netherlands,” Gaind said. “If MAID for sole mental illness is opened up in Canada, the numbers would significantly exceed what you see in the Netherlands.” Proponents of MAID for mental suffering have long held the Netherlands out as a model — “no slippery slope there” — arguing that psychiatric euthanasia in Canada, like the Netherlands, would remain extremely rare. However, the Dutch situation suggests a more appropriate metaphor for the risks of medically assisted suicide for mental illness “is not a slippery slope but a runaway train,” as Charles Lane reported last week in The Atlantic. MAID for psychiatric suffering has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002. O nce “virtually nonexistent,” with only one or two cases per year between 2002 and 2010, the number of psychiatric euthanasia cases has risen sharply, “with a disproportionate increase among young adults and, more recently, minors,” Dutch doctors reported this month in the Psychiatric Times . “The Dutch model, once presented internationally as careful and balanced, is now attracting attention for a different reason: growing uncertainty about whether psychiatry has crossed a boundary it cannot coherently justify,” the authors wrote. While most euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands involve people with medical conditions such as cancer, 219 people whose suffering was largely due to one or more psychiatric illnesses died an assisted death in 2024, up from 88 in 2020. Of the 2024 deaths, 111 involved people aged 30 to 60, 78 involved people 60 and over, and 30 deaths were among people aged 18 to 30. In 2023, two psychiatric euthanasia deaths involved a minor between the ages of 12 and 18. The teen with autism was one of them. Not only are more young people requesting assisted death for autism, depression, personality disorders, eating disorders and other mental conditions, those who died by MAID were disproportionately female with a history of suicidality. Of 397 people younger than 24 who applied for MAID for mental illness between 2012 and 2021, 259 were female. “Once you normalize that death is an acceptable solution for the problem that some people are having — people who are not otherwise dying — then people see it as a solution, instead of other things that might help,” Gaind said. In a brief submitted to Canada’s special joint parliamentary committee on MAID three years ago, psychiatrist and bioethicist Scott Kim, a senior investigator with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, estimated Canada could see 2,500 to 5,000 requests for MAID for mental illness annually, and “not what the expansion advocates have suggested, which is that, ‘Oh, it’ll just be a handful,'” Gaind said. “There is no evidence supporting it will just be a handful.” In the Netherlands, MAID can only be a last resort. A doctor must conclude that the person’s suffering is unbearable, and the doctor and patient together must be satisfied that there are no reasonable alternatives. Canada currently has no similar “due care” requirement... In addition to lower rejection rates for MAID requests, Canada’s law also states that intolerable suffering is subjective and personal. It’s what the person says it is and, unlike the Netherlands, a doctor doesn’t have to agree. Groups such as Mental Health Research Canada have warned youth mental health is in serious decline, with a “generation at risk” of rising rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thinking, and major gaps in care. Given those factors, the approval rate for requests for MAID for mental illness in Canada could be 50 per cent or higher, Kim estimated. The increase in Dutch youth seeking MAID is particularly alarming, Gaind said. “These are people who are not even 30 years old.” “These people are still in the developmental stages of their lives, biologically, socially and psychologically, struggling to find their place in the world, dealing with other issues that are stressing them out, including a mental illness,” he said. “And somehow, in that state, we’re thinking that their wish to have their life ended by the state is potentially OK, even when it’s somebody who is too young to buy alcohol, or marijuana?” In most provinces, the minimum age to drink alcohol or possess pot is 19. Anyone over the age of 18 is eligible for MAID in Canada. Even among psychiatrists, opinions are deeply divided over whether mental illness is ever incurable — terminal. Those who oppose any further delays have been labelled ideological expansion activists; those pushing for an indefinite pause have been accused of over-stating the effectiveness of current treatments. “We can’t make predictions about whether a person’s mental illness will or won’t improve,” Gaind said. “We’re terrible at making those predictions. “To say, ‘this is now a terminal psychiatric condition’ has no scientific basis. The whole concept is nebulous.” “In many cases what people are seeking death for is not suffering that will never get better,” Gaind said. Suffering is broader and often fuelled by isolation and social distress, he said."
Johannes M. Koenraadt on X - "This is my video that recently went viral. I cover the euthanasia situation in the Netherlands. For people under 30, it mostly targets autistic people (75%) and women (74%)."
Marko Jukic on X - "People grow up on dystopian horror stories from 1984 and World War II and the Soviet Bloc and so on but we live in a world where Western governments right now are just directly, outright, admittedly murdering teen girls and nobody does anything about it and many support it."
Dr. Heidi Klessig on X - "According to her lawyer, Noelia Castillo Ramos cannot change her mind about undergoing euthanasia because her organs are already committed. Her lawyer highlights the hospital’s conflict of interest in this case, because Noelia’s organs are worth millions in billable charges."
Emerald Apple on X - "In Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium, they call this procedure "Organ Donation After Euthanasia". The person is sedated and "euthanized", and organ harvesting starts while the patient's heart is still beating in many cases. The patient is declared dead 'legally' before the cutting starts. In just these 4 countries alone, over 1000 organs have been taken from patients in these assisted euthanasia programs. There have been cases of patients changing their minds... In 2026, in Canada, an elderly woman in her 80s was euthanized despite her changing her mind. In Canada, organ donation is discussed during MAiD consultation and causes implicit pressure on the patients, who see themselves as "worthless" and see organ donation as a final altruistic act. In other countries like Spain, this notion of the patients feeling like they "should" is strong, leading to undue coercion.... especially since many of these countries market medically assisted euthanasia + organ donation as a 'heroic' act."
Scotland’s assisted dying bill exposes a dangerous blind spot in care - "In 2023, Professor Leonie Herx, the globally-renowned palliative care expert, described the nihilistic and dystopian outcomes from assisted suicide legislation. Predictably, poor people or those experiencing short-term or long-term vulnerability were more at risk than affluent people with subjective decisions about the value of human life motivated almost entirely by cost considerations... Prof Herx pointed out that legislation in her native Canada had advanced at “breakneck speed” beyond many of the so-called safeguards. These included the proviso that assisted death would only occur in exceptional circumstances and for physical suffering that couldn’t be controlled, even though investment in palliative care at the end of life can relieve such suffering. In Scotland and throughout the UK, almost every disabled rights organisation had expressed opposition to what they regarded as horrific outcomes and consequences for those with mental and physical challenges. Professor Herx cited the case of a physician who’d been the main organiser of euthanasia provision at a hospital in Calgary. He was now a passionate opponent of euthanasia because he’d been appalled at how it was being used to target the weak and the vulnerable. It had been extended to children deemed capable of consent and those who had made “advanced requests”. In Scotland and the UK, such concerns have been brushed aside under the catch-all “we’ll put provisions in the legislation to ensure no-one is unduly coerced into suicide”. Yet as the co-signatories of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s letter show, in Scotland any concerns around this are regarded as being of a secondary nature. It’s not difficult to understand why Britain’s entire disabled rights sector is troubled by Mr McArthur’s Bill and the expected passing of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill at Westminster. Implicit at their core is the concept of the value of human life according to a cost index and subjective perceptions of usefulness. The fact that babies with Down’s Syndrome can be aborted up until birth tells you that these tiny human beings are not considered worthy of being called fully human. None of what’s being proposed in Scotland and England even considers the concept of palliative care for those suffering near the end of their lives. Professor Herx, who has advised authorities throughout the world about what can be achieved by proper investment in palliative care, says that no-one needs to suffer intolerable pain at the end of their lives. In Scotland, the political establishment’s callousness around the care of the sick and the vulnerable is already evident. During the SNP’s watch outrage at the obscenity of drugs-related deaths has eased to resigned acceptance. The Scottish Government and its media sycophants think that by turning addicts into zombies by handing them unlimited Class A drugs in a safe consumption room is morally acceptable. I can’t think of anything more callous and savage. Rather than see them as fully human and thus deserving of the chance of recovering through rehab facilities they condemn these poor people to a twilight existence in which, inevitably, they’ll eventually die prematurely and thus relieve the state of burden of caring properly for them. To then locate these houses of death in disadvantaged areas miles from the where the political and media elites live adds another level of contempt. So, why would you trust such a class of amoral opportunists when they tell you they’ll provide safeguards so that the poor and those lacking advocates aren’t targeted by bad actors exploiting assisted dying? They already regard Scotland’s most vulnerable people as below contempt. So what chance do the sick and the dying have?"
Britain’s bitter assisted dying debate is about to come roaring back to life - "Her ally Charlie Falconer, the bill’s sponsor in the Lords and an old ally of Tony Blair, claims up to 150 backbench MPs are willing to put Leadbeater’s law in their own name if they are given the chance. After that, they plan to use a rare procedure to pass the bill without the Lords’ approval if it gets stuck again... One backer, Simon Opher, suggested to Sky News that the entire public bill committee could be made up of supporters to reduce the risk of amendments. This would be an “abuse,” said Nikki Da Costa, the Conservative former legislative affairs director for 10 Downing Street who opposes the bill, as such committees are meant to reflect the breadth of MPs’ views... Meg Hillier, a veteran Labour MP who opposes the bill, argued MPs are “weary” at the prospect of another round. “Everyone is very worried about what’s going on in the world … so why would we have a national conversation about this again and prolong it even further?”... Opponents of the bill argue that the debates in the Lords have exposed holes in the law that the Commons scrutiny did not. One, Labour peer Luciana Berger, pointed out that the bill has sweeping powers and 59 clauses — far longer than any known private members’ bill, including those that allowed abortion and outlawed capital punishment. “This process has shown that we can’t get a bill that is safe,” said Berger. “What are [proponents] saying about the medical colleges in this country — the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Medical Examiners, the Royal College of GPs, who all as organizations say they are publicly neutral on the principle of assisted dying, but on this piece of legislation, have very substantive and significant concerns about this bill?” Falconer argued that these concerns had been dealt with during debates in the Lords... Berger countered that “ninety-nine percent of the time, Charlie [Falconer] has rejected every single amendment.”... Hillier argued that any “abuse” of the process, as she described it, would set a “dangerous precedent” for a theoretical future government run by the right-wing populists Reform UK. “You play games with parliamentary procedure with real caution,” she said. “It opens the door for any future government to try and push something through the private members’ bill process without the scrutiny that you would get in the normal way.”"
Why are left wingers so keen to kill people?
Kathy Hochul Embraces the Culture of Death - "In an op-ed defending her decision, the governor peddles various false equivalences and red herrings. She opens by invoking the Founding Fathers, claiming that they established a nation committed to protecting rights including “privacy and bodily autonomy.” Hochul’s cavalier misuse of history collapses under a passing familiarity with the nation’s constitutional tradition. These supposed rights appear nowhere in the Constitution, and no Founding-era American would have recognized them as such. The Supreme Court invented a constitutional “right to privacy” in 1965, derived tenuously from the Fourteenth Amendment, itself ratified nearly a century after the Founding. To project the modern concept of extreme bodily autonomy backward onto America’s origins is pure mythmaking to suit the Left’s political ends. The historical reality is far different: suicide was a felony at common law—felo de se, a crime against oneself—because it violated the natural law of self-preservation and repudiated life as a gift bestowed by God. Those who took their own lives were denied Christian burial and interred at crossroads with a wooden stake driven through the bodies. Their property was forfeited to the Crown as punishment, as deterrence for others, and as compensation for the public obligations that the deceased would no longer fulfill. Whatever one thinks of these practices today, they bear little resemblance to Hochul’s fatuous interpretation of the Founders’ promise of “choice and freedom.” On a personal note, Hochul recounts her mother’s degenerative death from ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease), but a careful reader will notice that the governor never claims that her mother asked for euthanasia. Instead, the anecdote inadvertently reveals what assisted suicide is often really about—the perceived burden that severe illness imposes on families and caregivers and the desire to eliminate such an imposition. The governor writes that she reflected on this decision during a Catholic funeral Mass, concluding that “God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be”—which, in her telling, apparently means offering the “merciful option” of a lethal drug cocktail to those “searching for comfort.” This is a poor attempt to sway less-informed religious readers using the cloak of sympathy. It inverts Catholic teaching, which has been clear and consistent for centuries: the Catechism states that intentional euthanasia, “whatever its forms or motives, is murder. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.” Hochul further argues that denying assisted suicide would “condemn” patients to excruciating pain. This claim ignores how modern medicine can alleviate even severe pain without resorting to intentional life-ending measures. Ethicists of many philosophical stripes—including the Catholic moral tradition—have long recognized the legitimacy of administering pain-relieving treatments that may foreseeably shorten life, provided that death is not the intended outcome. This principle of double effect preserves the physician’s role as healer and the crucial moral line between relieving pain and causing death. The most unsettling passage in the governor’s op-ed is her portrayal of MAiD as allowing terminally ill New Yorkers to spend their final days at home, “with sunlight streaming through their bedroom window” and the “laughter of their grandkids echoing in the next room.” Putting aside the maudlin sentimentality, hospice-at-home services already make such deaths possible—without resorting to lethal drugs. Experience from abroad and other states shows that assisted-suicide regimes do not remain confined to Hochul’s paradigmatic case of the terminally ill... Oregon’s 2021 report on its assisted-suicide program documents deaths attributed to nonterminal conditions such as arthritis, hernia, kidney failure, and even complications from a fall... The real impetus behind Hochul’s move, unsurprisingly, is political. With progressives emboldened by last month’s mayoral election, she has chosen to accommodate the far Left before the next legislative session rather than risk a damaging fight."
Within a few days a suicide forum had me questioning everything in my life - "I’m a feminist and I find it horrifying how often the “my body, my choice” mantra is deployed on this site, or how often it’s described as “pro-choice” in its outlook; equating their quest to take their own lives with the global women’s movement to give us control over our reproductive health. Deciding to die can be a choice, yes, but what choice is any if it obliterates your chances to ever make another choice again?"
Considering that the UK is passing a euthanasia bill, and that "my body my choice" really does imply that (though we know left wing slogans are always misleading, like "love is love is love"), this is what happens when you pretend to glorify bodily autonomy (though of course, this doesn't apply to vaccines, or selling yourself into slavery, because left wingers don't care about logical consistency)
Diana S. Fleischman on X - "You would expect antifascists to oppose things that have closer proximity to Nazi protocols but they are, in general totally fine with government assisted euthanasia and abortion of disabled fetuses. It's almost like people are more influenced by the arbitrary opinions of their ingroup than an overarching principle."
Arrests after Sarco 'suicide pod' used in Switzerland - "In July, a pro-assisted dying group, which promotes the Sarco device, said it anticipated that it would be used for the first time this year. Advocates say it provides an option not reliant on drugs or doctors, and that it expands access to euthanasia as the portable device can be 3D-printed and assembled at home. However, there also has been opposition in Switzerland, despite the country having some of the world's most protective laws surrounding assisted dying. Critics fear the device's modern design glamorises suicide and the fact that it can be operated without medical oversight is concerning."
Did suicide pod malfunction? Strangulation marks raise alarms in Swiss case - "An autopsy report uncovered strangulation marks on the 64-year-old American woman’s neck, raising disturbing questions about her cause of death and prompting Swiss authorities to explore the possibility of “intentional homicide,” according to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant... Dr Florian Willet, president of the Swiss assisted-dying organisation The Last Resort, was reportedly the only person present at the time and remains in custody as officials probe the circumstances surrounding her death. Swiss Chief Prosecutor Peter Sticher, leading the investigation, has indicated that the incident may not have been as straightforward as intended, hinting at a potential malfunction or interference... Surveillance footage captured by two cameras – one inside the pod, trained on the control button, and another positioned on a nearby tree – revealed unusual activity. De Volkskrant, which reviewed the footage, noted that the internal camera was triggered twice in quick succession shortly after the woman pressed the button. However, due to the angle, the recording does not clearly show what happened during those crucial moments. During police questioning, Dr Willet reportedly stated that two and a half minutes after the procedure began, the woman appeared to experience severe muscle cramping – a reaction he described as common in nitrogen-induced deaths"
Denmark's Ethics Council advises against legalising euthanasia - "An overwhelming majority of the Danish Council on Ethics have advised the country's parliament against voting to legalise euthanasia. Fully sixteen out seventeen members of the committee concluded in a report that it was "in principle impossible to establish proper regulation of euthanasia", and as a result recommended that the law in Denmark should not be changed to allow people suffering mental or physical distress to receive help to end their own lives. "The very existence of an offer of euthanasia will decisively change our ideas about old age, the coming of death, quality of life and what it means to take others into account," they wrote in the full report. "If euthanasia becomes an option, there is too great a risk that it will become an expectation aimed at special groups in society.""
UNN on X - "Wait a second. Something wrong here. All the adverts for 'assisted dying' are white people. Where have all the mixed race and African families gone who appear in the majority of adverts in the UK?"
Thread by @ddhitchens on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Last week four Labour MPs warned their colleagues they weren’t being given the full picture on the assisted suicide bill. If anything the MPs understated it. Here are 10 things we’ve learnt from the committee stage which Leadbeater and allies have studiously avoided mentioning:
1. Huge anxiety that the state of public services will incentivise assisted suicide. Several witnesses talked about this, including the head of the Royal College of Nurses and, most eloquently, @doctor_oxford:
2. People will request lethal drugs because they feel like a burden. Nobody denied this, and some pro-bill witnesses like Sam Ahmedzai defended it:
3. The bill’s supporters have entirely failed to reassure people with disabilities. Disability Rights UK - who Leadbeater originally didn’t want to invite - opposed the bill, and Dr Miro Griffiths said it was “nonsense” to suggest it didn’t apply to disabilities.
4. The bill is not safe for those with eating disorders. @ChelseaRoff made that point powerfully to the committee; it wasn’t clear that Team Leadbeater had even begun to think this through.
5. A lot of controversy about capacity assessments. A few witnesses, including Chris Whitty, thought they were a good safeguard; the majority disagreed.
6. Also much disagreement about coercion. Notably, even two eminent witnesses who support the bill thought the safeguards here don’t solve the problem.
7. The bill is probably bad news for palliative care. Some witnesses were more optimistic than others; but only one, the President of the Association for Palliative Medicine, gave a really detailed and informed answer:
8. The experience of other jurisdictions is not exactly reassuring.
9. The bill falls short of NICE guidelines for patients at risk of self-harm or suicide. Prof Allan House made the point succinctly:
10. How would it work in practice? All very vague so far. The lawyers cast doubt on the court safeguard, the GPs said they didn’t want it incorporated into their normal work, and Baroness Falkner pointed out that the PMB process leaves us in the dark:
And of course this only scratches the surface, because almost every expert who might have given the bill a hard time was carefully excluded."
Meme - Aleph @woke8yearold: "They are trying to legalize suicide in Britain and the ads they’re running on the metro look like something out of a satirical video game"
"My dying wish is my family won't see me suffer and I won't have to"
The vile assisted suicide bill is on its last legs. Now let’s kill it off - "If you’re still undecided about assisted suicide – or, as its supporters prefer to call it, “assisted dying” – I invite you to consider the following quote. It comes from a newspaper interview conducted in 2017 with Henry Marsh, a leading brain surgeon and author of a bestselling medical memoir entitled Do No Harm. The interviewer, from The Sunday Times, asked Dr Marsh about his support for “assisted dying”. And here’s the most extraordinary section of his reply: “So much of [the opposition to it] is all bloody Christians,” complained Marsh. “They argue that grannies will be made to commit suicide. Even if a few grannies get bullied into it, isn’t that a price worth paying for all the people who could die with dignity?”... let’s face it: this is what the campaign for “assisted dying” really amounts to. To support it, you have to believe that “a few grannies” getting “bullied into it” is “a price worth paying” – even if you wouldn’t dare to put it in such blunt terms. I only wish that other supporters of assisted suicide – especially the MPs among them – could be as frank, open and honest as Marsh was in that 2017 interview. Not least because, if they were, the wider public would surely be so horrified, the Bill wouldn’t stand a chance of becoming law... This latest setback follows weeks of chaos, criticism and controversy. The committee of MPs overseeing the Bill removed what had previously been cited as a key judicial safeguard: the need for a High Court judge to approve each request. Meanwhile, eating disorder charities expressed their fear that anorexics would be able to choose “assisted dying”, after MPs refused to close a loophole in the Bill."
This is very telling. Euthanasia is good because Christians think it's bad. And it's alright to pressure people into killing themselves
