MAID’s Slippery Slope

I received information recently from a friend sharing the news that a friend of hers had ended her life through the Canadian program of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID).  As advised by my friend, her friend had decided to end her life because she was faced with a future where she would be blind due to macular degeneration.  I was shocked by this and the whole MAID program of MAID has been in my thoughts ever since.

When MAID was made legal in Canada 2016, I was generally in support of this move.  There had been many examples reported at the time of people suffering from incurable illnesses who had no prospect of relief and whose death was imminent.  It seemed to be a compassionate response to such a situation.  I did not and do not believe there is any virtue in people suffering in such situations.  It seemed to be a compassionate response to intolerable circumstances.   

The law was brought in by the Federal Government of the day in response to the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada which found the previous Criminal Code provisions against assisted suicide to be unconstitutional.  The law allows a person to end their life through assistance of a medical professional if the person has a grievous and irremediable condition and experiences unbearable physical or mental suffering from an illness, disease, disability, or state of decline that cannot be relieved under conditions that the person considers acceptable. (information from Dying with Dignity Canada https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/)

There were warnings at the time of the law being a slippery slope to increase access to MAID for people in less severe conditions and in non-terminal circumstances.  It would appear there are significant indications that Canada is well on the way down that slippery slope.  If the circumstance described by my friend whose friend used MAID because of macular degeneration, and the prospect of blindness is accurate it is truly a dangerous sign.  Coincidentally, I received information recently from another friend who shared concerns about where MAID is heading and shared this site with me, from Inclusion Canada https://www.inclusioncanada.ca/post/do-better-inclusion-canada-welcomes-un-committee-s-concluding-observations-on-canada-s-disabilit.

The site notes that Canada has received a critical review from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities regarding MAID.  Among the key recommendations, the UN Committee has urged Canada to:

Repeal Track 2 Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), including the planned 2027 expansion to persons whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness,” and reject proposals to expand MAiD to “mature minors” and through advance requests.  

These are serious indications that the slippery slope is definitely engaged and becoming steeper.  I believe the intentions behind MAID are worthwhile and commendable.  However, the application of MAID and the direction it is heading needs serious reconsideration.  There need to be ways and means of ensuring that the law as it stands is applied by medical professionals as is intended i.e.  people suffering from grievous and irremediable condition and experience unbearable physical or mental suffering as noted above. 

To find God’s will in this is a challenge which should not be taken lightly.  It is a matter of life and death on our journey.

Seeing Around the Corner

 

Last time, I wrote about giving thanks in all things.  This was in contrast to giving thanks for all things.  There are, of course, many things that I cannot give thanks for, but I can still give thanks to God in all things.  It is all a matter of perspective – of how we look at the world.  In this regard, there is an approach proposed by author Charles Williams, a contemporary of C. S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, who proposed that we sometimes see good as evil in our limited perspective.  This seems counter intuitive and raises the question why we would ever see good as evil. 

On reflection, I can think of the ultimate example for Christians when we consider that the followers of Jesus must have viewed Jesus’ crucifixion as the ultimate evil and the defeat of all their hopes and dreams.  We can often, given the perspective of time, look back on events and see the good which came out of some event that seemed very bad at the time.   We can think of people who were not able to be at work in the twin towers on 9-11 or someone who was delayed getting a flight to a vacation in an exotic location only later to be informed the plan crashed and none on board survived.  We don’t see the bigger picture at the time. 

Charles Williams understood "seeing the good as evil" as the human predicament of experiencing good things in a way that makes them seem evil, primarily because of our divided consciousness and our ego centered understanding of things. The solution, for Williams, was not to simply separate good from evil, but to transform evil into an "occasion for love" by understanding it as an opportunity for good and love, thereby integrating both into a higher understanding of God. 

I don’t want to be Pollyannaish about this and be like Dr. Pangloss of the novel Candide, "all is for the best" in "the best of all possible worlds."  There is such a thing as evil and there are many manifestations of evil in the world.  However, with our limited understanding and perspective, there are times when we can’t see what the outcome of an event will be.  I believe that we should keep an open mind about the possibility of a good outcome of a bad event.  After all you we can’t see what is around every corner all the time.  It does put things into perspective.

 

Giving Thanks In All Things

For the non-Canadians who may read this, today is Canadian Thanksgiving.  I won’t discuss if this is the better Thanksgiving than the other one celebrated south of us.  Giving thanks, whenever you do it, is always a good thing.  The question I pose today is, what do we give thanks for?  There is the usual giving thanks for all the good things in our lives – for health and happiness; for abundant, if expensive, food; for a safe place to live; perhaps, for Canadians, giving thanks that the Liberal’s led by Mark Carney was elected rather than the other one who wanted to eliminate funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – but I won’t go there. 

What I actually want to discuss is, can we give thanks for things that we normally don’t give thanks for?   Drawing on St. Julian of Norwich who said, “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” It is hard to believe that we can give thanks, even in our darkest hour that things shall be well.  It certainly doesn’t look like this these days, and yet this morning there is, if not peace in Gaza, at least a cease fire and a release of hostages and prisoners on both sides.  That is definitely something to give thanks for. 

It may be helpful to draw on another saying, this one by St. Paul, ‘give thanks in all things.’  This is different from giving thanks for all things.  There are things which I cannot give thanks for - so giving thanks in all things does ring true.  As much as I find many things in this modern world frustrating and   annoying and stupid, I can give thanks that I am able to get frustrated by them.  I am part of the modern world with all its challenges and complicated devices, and glad I can benefit from the many modern conveniences in this world that I benefit from.

I do sometimes think that with all the “smart” things I must deal with e.g. smart phones, smart thermostats, smart internet, the only thing in my life that is not smart is me, as they can make me feel really unsmart.  But I shouldn’t rant in a missive about giving thanks.  So, I will remind myself to give thanks in all things – and remember that it is God to whom I am giving thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends - and even to the non-Canadians.