Britain’s House of Commons recently passed a bill legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill adults expected to live less than six months. The vote was narrow (314 to 291) but the decision remains a cultural surrender. 

This isn’t just happening in Great Britain. A separate assisted dying bill received initial backing by the Scottish Parliament. Canada is broadening its euthanasia laws to include mental illness. And several U.S. states, including New York and Connecticut, are also continuing to expand assisted suicide access. 

In each case, policymakers claim to be promoting compassion. But what they’re advancing is a philosophy of quiet abandonment. The measure of care becomes whether someone wants to live, not whether they are worthy of life.

Liberal politicians and institutions promote these policies much like they do other lethal contagions. They concoct terms to make the atrocities sound palatable and even life-affirming. Sex change and disfigurement surgeries on minors become “gender transitions,” killing babies is supporting “choice” and “women’s rights.” And assisted suicide? It’s actually assisted dying, thank you very much. 

Euphemism is the opioid of conscience. The above is clever phrasing intended to soften the reality of killing babies or castrating boys, while simultaneously asserting that euthanasia increases autonomy, patient rights, and care options. It also has the consequence of obscuring the line between healing and harm until no one is sure what care even means anymore. 

In reality, assisted suicide policies can exploit the vulnerable, eroding justice and autonomy. Indeed, legislation in the Netherlands and Belgium has already demonstrated the dangerous elasticity of so-called safeguards. In Belgium, minors as young as 9 have been legally euthanized. In the Netherlands, patients suffering from depression or PTSD have been approved for assisted death without any terminal diagnosis.

Meanwhile, in Canada, patients are opting for euthanasia because they cannot access adequate housing, disability services, or mental health care. In these cases, death becomes a ghastly and sad option, facilitated by the Canadian government and immoral clinicians. When a culture of patients must accept death as a viable “care” option, it becomes too difficult to draw a moral line. As Joey once said to Chandler on Friends, “you’re so far past the line that you can’t even see the line.”

What’s more, in the Canadian system, medical assistance in dying (MAID) is increasingly offered as the most accessible and expedient option. Socioeconomically disadvantaged patients, and patients with chronic pain or psychiatric conditions, report feeling pressured to consider MAID due to long waitlists for treatment, lack of access to palliative care, and the high costs of ongoing support. Some have even been told by clinicians that they are “better off dead” or that continued care is not feasible. 

This stands in stark contrast to claims of assisted suicide proponents, who frequently frame it as a safeguard of personal autonomy. In reality, it’s patient abandonment dressed in a false binary: either endure unbearable conditions without medical intervention or choose a death that the state funds, expedites, and even encourages. 

Autonomy requires meaningful options. It can’t coexist with systems that starve patients of real care and then offer death as the way out. It’s widely accepted that, without access to true alternatives, “choice” is no more than consent under duress. I don’t understand why this precept isn’t applied to human euthanasia. 

I entered clinical rehabilitation to increase quality of life. Not to counsel an exit from it. My mandate is literally rooted in restoring independence, function, and dignity. This requires supporting the suffering even when it’s tempting for them to give in to utter despair. 

I’ve politely declined patient and care partner requests to discuss assisted suicide in light of their recent diagnoses or ongoing impairments. The role of a clinician as a learned counselor has solidified over millennia. I’ll let someone else recast this role into a mechanism of convenience or political expression. 

Once clinicians have death as a clinical armament, the sickening slide begins. People who are impaired or incurable are deemed inconvenient or expensive. I want no part of that.

Decisions by Britain and others to legalize assisted suicide stand in stark contrast to my training. When I’m asked to counsel lethal options, I become an agent of despair. And there’s already plenty of that in my profession among people with new strokes, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, and ongoing degenerative conditions.  

Legalizing assisted suicide may be politically expedient, but it confounds the very mission of health care. I won’t take part in that confusion.