Canada’s euthanasia program described as ‘dystopian’, a ‘form of eugenics’

By Michael Cook

Internationally, there is growing consternation at the rapid take-up of euthanasia in Canada.

In Jacobin magazine, “a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture,” a former supporter of medical assistance in dying now says that he has reservations.

Jeremy Appel, a journalist from Calgary, describes MAiD as “dystopian”:

I’ve come to realize that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning within the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life, demand you pay back pandemic aid you applied for in good faith, and if you don’t like it, well, why don’t you just kill yourself?

The problem with my previous perspective was that it held individual choices as sacrosanct. But people don’t make individual decisions in a vacuum. They’re the product of social circumstances, which are often out of their control …

Combined with COVID policies that have consigned disabled and immunocompromised people to a life of perpetual self-isolation, a lack of funding for people on disability assistance makes MAiD an increasingly palatable solution to ending their suffering. In this context, the cavalier way in which MAiD has been implemented in Canada serves as a form of eugenics, where only the able-bodied survive.

Editor’s note. This appears at BioEdge and is reposted with permission.