America’s neighbor to the north is several years into an experiment with assisted suicide that has shocked its citizens—including many early supporters—with its ghastly consequences. Once a society embraces killing as care, there’s no limit to where that logic will lead. And we see the darkness spreading. The UK parliament is advancing a euthanasia bill approved by the Commons, now under scrutiny in the House of Lords, which has prompted a government committee review before a final vote. And momentum appears to be building faster than it has in countries that long ago sanctioned the practice.
Nearly a decade has passed since Canada’s parliament legalized euthanasia under the chilling Orwellian acronym MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying). Today, about one in twenty Canadians who die are euthanized.
An in-depth report in The Atlantic by Elaina Plott Calabro, “Canada Is Killing Itself,” painstakingly—and with as much fairness as possible—paints a picture of the culture surrounding assisted suicide, gleaning perspectives from participants, “providers,” and opponents. Reading it made me nauseous. Calabro traces the rapid expansion of euthanasia: at first limited to the sickest patients, who were already at the end of life, now broadened to anyone with serious medical conditions, with proposals to make the practice available to those with mental illness and even to minors.
Radical Autonomy at the Core
Why has Canada moved so quickly? Because patient autonomy lies at the heart of the philosophy. This is individualism at its most radical. This is where autonomous, atomized individualism leads—the “provider” injecting the lethal drug.
As Calabro demonstrates, once autonomy is enthroned as the highest good, nothing can slow the train barreling down the tracks. Words like “equality,” “access,” and “compassion” surround the supposed “right to die.” But as Calabro observes, Canada’s is the story of “an ideology in motion, of what happens when a nation enshrines a right before reckoning with the totality of its logic. If autonomy in death is sacrosanct, is there anyone who shouldn’t be helped to die?”
Exactly. Something will be sacrosanct. In a world that no longer considers life sacred, where God is no longer seen as the giver and taker of life, something else—another god, another ideology—will step in to take God’s place.
Here, it’s patient choice. It’s radical autonomy. To die with dignity means to die on your own terms, to decide when your life should end, redefining dignity as ultimate human control. And once that becomes the sacred belief that cannot be questioned, any obstacle to fulfilling someone’s desire for death becomes inherently unjust. Once autonomy is in the driver’s seat, any roadblock or speed limit seems arbitrary or cruel.
Why ‘Assistance’ Is Demanded
What’s most disturbing is not only the suicide itself but the assistance that sanctifies it. Doctors comply, but it’s the demand for societal approval of the act that most perniciously reshapes a culture’s moral intuitions.
As Matthew Burdette has argued in First Things, if someone wants to end their life, no doctor is needed. If someone wishes to commit suicide—someone who feels like a burden or suffers physical or emotional pain—no permission is required. Even where suicide is illegal, the person faces no legal consequences after the deed is done. So why demand a doctor to do the killing? Burdette believes it’s “a perverse expression of the need for recognition. People who wish to kill themselves also want their choice to be socially approved.” The assistance isn’t only for the patient but serves as a signal to society, so the decision carries social approval rather than social stigma.
After all, suicide still carries a stigma. It may not be as pronounced as in the past, when church graveyards would reject the burial of someone who committed suicide, but the shame and sorrow remain. Onlookers whisper, “Who was at fault?” “Why did this happen?” “Could it have been prevented?”
Legalizing assisted suicide takes what was once a tragedy—an offense against humanity—and recasts it as something worthy of support and affirmation. Assisted death is designed to signal the approval of the living. It is society’s way of conferring honor on the person who opts for suicide. And it changes the social dynamic around death so that pressure builds toward the “simpler” and “less burdensome” choice. The so-called right to die quickly mutates into a subtle expectation to die.
Prophetic Witness
Here’s where the church must speak with clarity and compassion. We lift our voices alongside the disabled, the suffering, the lonely, and the vulnerable—not with the false mercy that calls killing “compassion” but with the true compassion that bears burdens, relieves pain, and affirms the dignity of every image-bearer of God. We carry burdens; we don’t kill them.
For Christians, we know our only comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own but belong body and soul to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. Radical autonomy is a lie. The way of radical individualism leads to death.
The church’s role in this culture of death is to disciple believers to suffer faithfully, to prepare them with theological and spiritual resources for hardship and death, and to call on leaders to resist assisted suicide and protect freedom of conscience for healthcare workers. After all, laws teach. Legalizing assisted suicide erodes the truth of human dignity. It signals that human worth is conditional. Prohibiting the practice reaffirms the inherent dignity of every life and provides refuge for the vulnerable.
Stanley Hauerwas has painted a vision of how we might stand out in a world of spreading darkness: “I’d say, in 100 years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we would have been doing something right.” As nations enshrine autonomy unto death, the church must bear witness to the God who alone gives life, sustains it, and numbers our days.
If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.
