Con

MAID is a slippery slope to legal euthanasia and worse.

Describing legal MAID as a “moral cliff” rather than a slippery slope, John Stonestreet and Shane Morris, both of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, highlight the fact that the “patient may request to die, but the doctor is still the one who determines whether the patient is competent and eligible. Small wonder that wherever medical aid in dying has been legalized, doctors and lawmakers have quickly begun asking why they need [a] patient’s permission before exercising ‘compassion’…. Once death is a treatment option, patients can no longer trust their doctors, their insurance companies, or even their families to have their best interests at heart. ‘Terminal illness’ quickly broadens to include ‘intolerable suffering’ which soon broadens to include ‘mental suffering.’” [35]

While the laws may be written with good intent, time chips away at the restrictions that might protect people. For example, in 2022, Oregon eliminated the requirement that patients requesting MAID be state residents. [36]

In 2021, Canada, which legalized MAID and euthanasia simultaneously, removed the criterion that the patient be dying or have a terminal illness; now any patient with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” may request MAID or euthanasia. [37]

In 2002, Belgium extended euthanasia to children over 12, and recent health ministers have even tried to extend the law to all children. [38] [39] [40]

“As the world’s pioneer, the Netherlands has also discovered that although legalising euthanasia might resolve one ethical conundrum, it opens a can of others – most importantly, where the limits of the practice should be drawn,” says journalist Christopher de Bellaigue. Specifically, “the idea that a measure introduced to provide relief to late-stage cancer patients has expanded to include people who might otherwise live for many years, from sufferers of diseases such as muscular dystrophy to sexagenarians with dementia and even mentally ill young people.” [41]

As MAID becomes more common globally, the ethical and moral concern we should have over issues as serious as doctoring, death, and euthanasia is dangerously weakened.

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