Audio only:
In this episode, Trent reveals how assisted suicide advocates reach new lows in demanding state-sanctioned killing.
Transcription:
Trent:
Back in May, the Dutch government helped a physically healthy 29-year-old autistic woman kill herself.
CLIP :
Hello, my name is Soha and I’m 28 years old. I live in the Netherlands and recently my euthanasia requests for my mental suffering got approved.
Trent:
Canada also has assisted suicide and it accounted in 2019 for one out of every 50 deaths, but in 2022, that number doubled to one out of every 25 deaths making assisted suicide, one of Canada’s leading causes of death, surpassing car accidents, and even diseases like influenza or pneumonia. And in today’s episode, I’m going to show just how bad it’s gotten and what you should say to people who claim. So-called Death with Dignity ought to be legal first. When people ask me about assisted suicide, I pose a question. Nobody who defends this practice can consistently answer, where do you draw the line? Normally when people are suicidal, we do everything we can to help them out of that decision. In fact, these episodes of my podcast today will probably be downgraded in the search results and algorithm because I use words like suicide or kill yourself. When you search out words like suicide on Google, you immediately get advertisements for help out of this decision, we recognize that people who even look into this topic ought to be helped out of this decision. And when someone is about to take his or her own life, we will use physical force to stop the person from doing that. As happened here in this news clip,
CLIP :
The woman in her mid twenties suffering from depression intent on making a 150 foot jump.
What’s your name?
It doesn’t matter.
It does matter. Matter.
Everybody wants me, so I’ll just,
No one wants that.
I’m scared.
Please get down after a tense. 80 seconds the officers bring her down to safety. Please
Get down. Get down.
Trent:
We instinctively recognize this person was about to make the worst mistake of her life because it would be the last mistake or decision she ever made. It would be the end of her life, and normally it should not matter where someone says they’re going to kill themselves. We stop them, be it standing on a ledge or a bridge or in a hospital. But if assisted suicide is legal, that means society says that some lives are worth saving from suicide, but others are not. We are saying that some lives are not worth living. In Nazi Germany, there was a name for this Libin life, unworthy of life. In 1941, the Nazi propaganda film EI accuse in English, depicted a doctor who helped his disabled wife kill herself, and he’s hailed as a hero who accuses others of not serving public, so to speak. Initially, when assisted suicide is legalized, people are told it’s only going to be for those who are in horrible pain who only have a few months left to live and are dying.
But you cannot consistently make that the point where the line is drawn. If the reason these people are allowed to kill themselves is because you want to reduce their suffering, then what about other people who will suffer even more than them? What about people in chronic pain who are not terminally ill, who might have pain for years or decades? What about people who just don’t want to live in a wheelchair, for example, or people who feel depressed all the time and simply hate life? Once again, there’s no objective way to determine that. Some of these reasons to kill oneself are supposedly rational and others are irrational under the assisted suicide regime. And at the time we were told, oh, well, this is just a slippery slope argument. That’s not going to happen. Nobody’s just going to start killing people because they say they’re sad and they don’t want to live anymore. Well, here’s a few more examples of how we are careening in a suicidal bobsled down this slippery slope.
CLIP :
My God, you’re 47. You have your whole still a whole life ahead of you. You can change. You can do this, and I personally, I am too tired. I am not going to change. I don’t want to recover, meaning I don’t want to gain weight.
Imagine choosing death over homelessness. That’s what one saying. Catherine’s man is contemplating. Tonight on City News, we continue to delve into medically assisted dying and how some believe it is their only option to living in poverty. Are you afraid to die?
Who isn’t? Yeah, it
Amir Far has applied for medically assisted dying, known as maid. He lives in constant agony due to a back injury, but has started the process for end of life because his rooming house is up for sale and he can’t find anywhere else to live that he can afford. He barely survives on Ontario disability support payments, which are just over $1,200 a month. He doesn’t want to die, but being homeless is not an option.
I know in my present health condition, I would survive it anyway.
Far sued meets the criteria for maid physical suffering due to disability that cannot be relieved. His doctor who knows FARs. Real reason for maid is his fear of being homeless. Signed off on the application in August. Faried needs a second to do the same,
Trent:
And the lack of respect shown to the suicidal in these systems is absolutely astounding. Switzerland just approved suicide pods that use nitrogen to asphyxiate people to death.
CLIP :
Switzerland has done the unthinkable. It has introduced a machine for painless, a coffin lag device made with a 3D printer. It can be transported to a delete locations for people wanting to end their life. Once inside the pod, the user will have to start the fatal process themselves. They will have to press a button, which will reduce internal oxygen levels. The pod, which is biodegradable, can then be detached to be used as a coffin.
Trent:
But these same liberal activists would probably say that forms of capital punishment that use nitrogen to execute murderers constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and should not be inflicted on anyone. In fact, here’s one account of an inmate who was executed via nitrogen asphyxiation.
CLIP :
Smith’s spiritual advisor, Reverend Jeff Hood, who was at Smith’s side for the execution, gave his own account.
What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,
Five journalists who are allowed to watch the execution said that after the nitrogen began to flow, Smith shook his head and rised on the gurney for about two minutes.
Trent:
So we treat suicidal people in a way we’d never treat other people because our culture worships autonomy and personal choice like it’s some kind of pagan god or idol. But there are a few standard arguments that they make in favor of this death cult. So let’s take a look at them. Number one, we put animals out of their misery when they’re suffering. Shouldn’t we show human beings who want to die the same mercy? We don’t euthanize suffering human beings precisely because we do show them more mercy than we show cats and dogs, not less. Most animals in this country are euthanized not because they’re dying of a terminal illness, but simply because they’re unwanted and we don’t want stray animals running around. But a human being’s value does not change based on who wants or desires them because human beings have intrinsic value and dignity that no one can take away. Also, the availability of assisted suicide creates a sinful social pressure for people to choose it so they won’t be a burden to their friends and family. I mean, look at this advertisement from a fashion company in Canada glorifying suicide.
CLIP :
Last breaths are sacred. When I imagine my final days I see bubbles, I see the ocean, I see music. Even now as I seek help to end my life, there is still so much beauty. You just have to be brave enough to see it,
Trent:
And it creates a pressure on providers to perform it, which has resulted in Catholic hospitals being sued for not helping patients commit suicide.
CLIP :
Providence Healthcare, the religious health agency, which oversees St. Paul’s, opposes made and requires patients to transfer out of their facility if they want to end their life. That’s what happened to O’Neill in April, 2023, and it’s why her parents have launched the court challenge. BC’s health minister says his ministry is setting up a clinical space next to St. Paul’s where maid can be provided.
Vancouver Coastal Health will is organizing and building that hospice care end of life care on that site in order to ensure that everyone has access on that site without going somewhere else. To maid
O’Neill’s father says, that’s not good enough.
Trent:
Legal suicide in euthanasia also creates a perverse incentive for healthcare providers to recommend suicide as a less costly treatment for many health conditions. Consider what happened to this veteran who wanted treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
CLIP :
When a Canadian veteran picked up the phone and called Veterans Affairs Canada to get treatment for his combat related PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, he expected help getting better and getting his life back. Instead, he got an unexpected and unwanted offer to help him end it through medically assisted death
Trent:
Or this woman who is denied cancer treatment but offered suicide instead. I’m
CLIP :
Not ready. I’m not ready to die. I’ve got things I’d still like to do.
Her doctor offered hope in this bottle. The new chemotherapy drug Tarceva,
Like my doctor said, maybe this can put the lid on it and stop it.
That hope shattered with this letter from the Oregon Health Plan telling her we were unable to approve the cancer treatment. It will pay for comfort care, including physician aid in dying, better known as assisted suicide.
I told him, I said, who do you guys think you are to say that you’ll pay for my dying, but you won’t pay to help me possibly live longer?
Trent:
An animal’s life is not worth the cost of many expensive medical treatments, but a human’s life is worth it. We should give human beings effective pain management and respectful care as their bodily functions begin to cease at the end of life, but we should not give them the old yeller treatment. Number two, people should have the right to die with dignity. Dying in a dignified manner relates to how one confronts death, not the manner in which one dies or chooses to die. History recounts many situations of individuals who were forced to endure degrading deaths, but faced those deaths in a dignified way. Also, losing control of one’s bowels, bodily functions or being in pain at the end of life does not mean a person has lost his dignity. We would never say that a person in that condition who chose to live or to die naturally had therefore chosen an undignified way to end his life.
A person should be able to choose where they die, who will be present at their death, or how much medication to take that may postpone death. They can even take pain medication that as a side effect, hastens death. The catechism puts it this way, the use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity. If death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable. However, human dignity is not dependent in any way on an ability to commit suicide. Suicide rather is an offense to human dignity. Number three, do you just want people to suffer first? This objection also goes against people who only defend limited cases of assisted suicide. Like for those who have a terminal illness, those people usually do not support suicide for clinical depression or for someone who’s in a wheelchair, but they wouldn’t say they just want people who are in wheelchairs or of clinical depression to suffer.
They would say, I’m not saying that I want them to suffer. I just don’t want them to commit suicide. Well, that’s what I’m saying about everybody else. Number two, the church teaches that a person does not have to do everything possible to stay alive. Once again, the catechism puts it this way. Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate. It is the refusal of overzealous treatment here one does not will to cause death. One’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. Finally, Pope St. John Paul ii, who bore publicly much physical suffering at the end of his life said the following in his apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering in bringing about the redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the redemption. Thus, each man in his suffering can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.
When we suffer in this life, we are able to take that suffering and endure it for a greater good. We are able to know our suffering is not pointless. Just as Paul said, his sufferings made up for what was lacking in Christ’s sacrifice. Colossians 1 24. Our sufferings during this life or at its end, can be united to Christ’s sufferings on the cross and secure spiritual graces for other people. If you’d like to learn more about this topic, I recommend Stephanie Gray Connor’s book Start With What, 10 Principles for Thinking About assisted Suicide. Thank you all so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day. A day.