A 61-year-old man with depression but good physical health was euthanized in Canada, provoking heightened criticism of the country’s assisted-suicide laws.
We’re at a necessary turning point.
A lan Nichols “was basically put to death” in a Toronto hospital, his brother Gary told the Associated Press. Nichols was 61 years old, with a history of depression. When he was hospitalized for the possibility of suicide, he asked his brother to “bust him out” as soon as possible. Within a month, he applied to be euthanized. “His application for euthanasia listed only one health condition as the reason for his request to die: hearing loss.”
The AP report may help usher in a turning point where the West pauses to consider what the push for medically assisted suicide has done to medicine.
Within days of the AP report, Global News in Canada interviewed a military veteran there who suffered brain injuries and post-traumatic-stress syndrome since his combat service. He was seeking help in recovering when it was suggested to him that he opt to die. Veterans Affairs Canada has since officially said it “deeply regrets what transpired.”
In the AP report, the director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia — no right-wing think tank — was quoted saying that Canada’s current euthanasia law is “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.” If you have a disability, under Canadian law you can choose death. There have been news reports in recent months of Canadians who, lacking adequate health care or housing help, are seeking assisted suicide.
In “First, Take No Stand,” an article in the New Atlantis in 2019, Aaron Kheriaty argued that medicine has paved the way to the current state of legalization of assisted suicide, as medical associations would often take “disingenuous” neutral positions when faced with state or national legislation. California and Canada are both examples. “The story is a growing scandal to the profession of medicine. But it is not too late to undo.”
Kheriarty, a psychiatrist and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argued, “A neutral position is not truly possible on the legal question about whether assisted suicide should be permitted. To take a position that says that doctors can perform it if they want while others may choose to abstain is to take a position in favor of permitting the practice. It is analogous to a position that says that some people can choose to steal if they want, while others who find it objectionable need not steal. Translated, this means stealing is permissible.”
The stories from Canada and elsewhere offer an opportunity for families and for policy-makers — certainly those in medicine and ethics — to reconsider how we treat our most vulnerable. The debate about culture and law, though, cannot be distinct from the more widespread loneliness that plagues our culture and leads to the suicides of teenagers and celebrities alike. In a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2017, 56 percent of deaths by physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands were found to be related to loneliness.
Just before the pandemic overwhelmed medicine and life as we know it, Johns Hopkins University Press published The Crisis of US Hospice Care: Family and Freedom at the End of Life, by Harold Braswell. He wrote about the importance of doing more for people with terminal conditions, arguing that, whatever one’s position on assisted suicide and euthanasia, there is room for urgent common ground, especially in the care of dying patients who lack familial support.
He highlights Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home in Atlanta. Providing long-term inpatient care to people who are dying, it is run by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Catholic religious sisters. He writes about one patient in particular who became too expensive for Amberview Hospice, which discharged her to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Braswell explains that because it runs on charity and does not accept payment from Medicare (or the patients themselves), they don’t have to abide by Medicare regulations that keep facilities from combining long-term and end-of-life care. “The home can thus offer two caregiving modalities that are normally kept separate and can care for patients who have nowhere else to turn.”
Braswell points out that the politics of the staff at the two facilities in Atlanta are quite obviously different. The sisters pray for an end to both abortion and euthanasia. At Amberview, though, he recounts, the morning after Barack Obama was reelected president, the home’s chaplain began a staff meeting by saying, “Well, I assume everyone’s happy, right.” They were. His interviews showed that there was a diversity of opinions on assisted suicide at the hospice. But the two of them, Amberview and Our Lady, working together for the care of a human life offer an example of how we need to get beyond polarized debates when it comes for caring for the dying. “Both the staffs of Amberview and Our Lady . . . worked together because they had a common goal: providing dying people with the best care possible.” Such on-the-ground partnerships show how to truly increase freedom in the work of caring for those who are dying, Braswell argues.
Assisted suicide is divisive. But some of these recent mainstream headlines from up north and beyond should make us insist on not letting politics and economics drive these debates. More vocations to religious life are one way to make sure homes like the ones the Dominican Sisters run continue. Increased donations to such institutions that run on the rigor of radical love. We have a rich history of such things. The future of how we care for one another demands a renewal in the way we care for the dying, and a prioritization of that work in the family and in our systems of care. This is noble work.
The Nichols family were horrified that Alan’s death appeared to be approved partly on the basis of his hearing loss from his combat days. But the hospital, police, and provincial government say that, according to the law, nothing went wrong. Rethinking and curtailing those laws needs to be a human, not partisan, priority.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.