O Canada, OMG Canada, why are you pushing suicide as the final solution to disability?
Assisted suicide was the 7th most common cause of death in 2021, and is projected to rank 6th in 2022, and rank 3rd by 2024
Assisted suicide is now a common cause of death in Canada. Since it was fully legalized in 2016, the rate of assisted suicide has increased enormously. The numbers are astonishing:
2016 1,018
2017 2,838
2018 4,480
2019 5,661
2020 7,603
2021 10,064
If you look at the statistics for "causes of death", the 2021 number of 10,064 deaths would almost certainly have ranked assisted suicide as the seventh most common cause of death. The latest available stats are for 2020, and there were only six other causes that killed more than 10,000 Canadians that year.
If the increase in 2022 was equal to the increase of 2461 more deaths in 2021, then there would have been 12,525 deaths from assisted suicide, which would place it as the sixth most common cause of death last year.
If that rate of increase, of 2461 more deaths per year, continues for two more years, then assisted suicide will kill 17,447 Canadians in 2024, making it the third most common cause of death by next year, if the rates of other common causes remain roughly the same.
A constant rate of increase of 2461 deaths per year is most likely an underestimate. From the point of view of mathematics, that is projecting a straight line with a constant slope. The rate of change is probably greater than that. The graph of the numbers from 2016 to 2021 would look more like a parabola, with a geometric rate of increase.
There are proposals to expand the criteria for assisted suicide, such as to allow mental illness to be used as a medical excuse for assisted suicide. This would tend to increase the numbers even more.
An even more pernicious trend than the push to widen the legally acceptable conditions that qualify for medically assisted suicide is the push to use suicide as a cost reduction measure to minimize government expenditures on health care for the disabled. Cost reduction has always been a factor in the push for more suicides, but now it affects the advice given to disabled persons who require intensive care.
The tension between individual survival and governmental policy has become so great that disability advocate groups have found it necessary to proclaim that
This organization will not recommend, suggest or refer anyone to Medical Assistance in Dying as an alternative to assisting in obtaining necessary supports and services you require.
and that
We know, as do you, that the existing law is not working and has not worked, and that people with disabilities have been dying due to their life circumstances and oppression.
America should beware of the new version of "bioethics" that not only permits but actually promotes assisted suicide. The waning of the sanctity of life in Canada shows that many "bioethicists" are really nothing more than priests of a modern death cult.
They just wear lab coats instead of robes.