Alan Nichols was “basically put to death” in a Toronto hospital, his brother Gary told the Associated Press. Nichols was 61 years old, with a history of depression. When he was hospitalized and put on suicide watch, he asked his brother to “bust him out” as soon as possible.
According to the AP story, “His application for euthanasia listed just one health condition as the reason for his request to die: hearing loss.”
In the report, the director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia — no right-wing think tank — was quoted saying that Canada’s current euthanasia law is “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”
If you have a disability under Canadian law, you can choose death. There have been news reports in recent months of Canadians who aren’t getting adequate health care or housing help instead seeking assisted suicide.
In a 2019 New Atlantis article titled “First, Take No Stand,” Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argued that medicine has paved the way to the current legalization of assisted suicide, as medical associations would often take “disingenuous” neutral positions when faced with state or national legislation. California and Canada are both examples. “The story is a growing scandal to the profession of medicine,” wrote Kheriaty. “But it is not too late to undo.”
“A neutral position,” he argues, “is not truly possible on the legal question about whether assisted suicide should be permitted. To say that some doctors can perform it if they wish while others may choose to abstain is to take a position in favor of permitting the practice.”
The Nichols story offers an opportunity for us to reconsider how we treat our most vulnerable. The debate about culture and law, though, cannot be distinct from the more widespread loneliness plaguing our culture. A study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2017 found that 56% of deaths by physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands had to do with loneliness.
Harold Braswell, in his book “The Crisis of U.S. Hospice Care: Family and Freedom at the End of Life,” wrote about the importance of doing more for people with terminal conditions. He argues that whatever one’s position on assisted suicide and euthanasia, there is room for common ground, especially in the care of dying patients who lack familial support.
He highlights Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home in Atlanta, which provides long-term in-patient care to people who are dying. It is run by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, a Catholic religious group and how it works with a secular hospice to care for patients who become too expensive for standard care. The two staffs “worked together because they had a common goal: providing dying people with the best care possible,” Braswell wrote. Such on-the-ground partnerships show how to truly increase freedom when caring for those who are dying, Braswell argues.
Assisted suicide is a divisive subject. But we shouldn’t let politics and economics drive these debates. Increased donations to the Dominican Sisters and institutions like them is one way to do this. The future of how we care for each other demands a renewal in the way we care for the dying, and a prioritization of that work in the family and in our systems of care. This is noble work.
The Nichols family were horrified that Alan’s death appeared to be approved based partly on his hearing loss. But the hospital, police and provincial government say nothing went wrong, according to the law. Rethinking and curtailing these laws needs to be a human, not partisan, priority.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book “A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living.” She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan’s pro-life commission in New York. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.
