Canadian doctors express 'guilt' over euthanizing patients for just being poor or fat

Canadian doctors find it “morally distressing” that the country’s euthanasia program, titled Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), is now available to people who are not just terminally ill but simply unhappy with their life circumstances. Physicians have expressed guilt over the program’s expansion and their participation in it, the Daily Mail reported.

In 2021, Canada allowed more people to be “eligible: for MAiD, including those with incurable but not necessarily terminal illnesses, leading to 30 percent more people requesting physician-assisted suicide."

But documents obtained by the Mail revealed that many doctors are not happy with the program’s continual escalation toward more death. An Ontario doctor shared how one of his patients had a severe lung disease but really requested euthanasia “mostly because he is homeless, in debt and cannot tolerate the idea of [long-term care] of any kind.”

Another doctor wondered if it was morally acceptable to offer MAiD to one woman who was fat and unhappy. Another woman was seeking assisted suicide because she was grieving the loss of her husband.

An Associated Press investigation revealed how doctors are sharing their questions in online posts that were both public and private. The private posts were submitted on the basis of confidentiality. The doctors who participated either delivered euthanasia or assessed requests for it. Many said they were facing a moral dilemma in helping people commit suicide who were not dying of a disease but merely feeling poorly about their weight.

One Ontario doctor told the AP that a patient was very obese and feeling so depressed about it that she described herself as a “useless body taking up space.” Another woman sought MAiD when she experienced the loss of her husband, sibling and cat over the course of six weeks, the Mail noted.

Her request was approved because MAiD authorities deemed her grief to be permanent because she had no one left in her life to help her cope.

Canada has become the assisted suicide capital of the world and continues to set new records for euthanasia. MAiD was responsible for the deaths of 15,280 people in 2023, 15 percent more than the previous year. Over 60,000 people have been euthanized in Canada since the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started the program in 2016.

The AP investigation revealed how a classified report written by Ontario's Ministry of the Solicitor General admitted to making mistakes with the program as it grew. One of the “lessons learned” in the report was the case of a 74-year-old blind patient with high blood pressure, and a history of strokes. The man sought MAiD because of his failing eyesight and his concern that it would not improve.

The official report says the MAiD team violated legal standards by not consulting specialists, having little discussion about alternatives to euthanasia and the scheduling of the assisted suicide in accordance with the wife’s schedule.

Canadian abortionist and euthanasia provider Dr. Ellen Wiebe, who feels no such pangs of guilt, recently told a BBC documentary, “I love my job” because “there’s nobody more grateful than my patients and their families.”

In March, Canada opted to extend the "eligibility" of its euthanasia program to the mentally ill, a category that could also include drug addicts and alcoholics. Critics argue that this step would put the program in the realm of eugenics. But Health Minister Mark Holland announced tat the proposed program expansion will proceed in 2027. "On February 29, 2024, legislation to extend the temporary exclusion of eligibility to receive MAID in circumstances where a person's sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness received royal assent and immediately came into effect. The eligibility date for persons suffering solely from a mental illness is now March 17, 2027," the Canadian government states.

The eligibility for MAiD is stated as: 

• be 18 years of age or older and have decision-making capacity
• be eligible for publicly funded health care services
• make a voluntary request that is not the result of external pressure
• give informed consent to receive MAID, meaning that the person has consented to receiving MAID after they have received all information needed to make this decision
• have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability (excluding a mental illness until March 17, 2027)
• be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability
• have enduring and intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated under conditions the person considers acceptable