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Euthanasia is becoming disturbingly ‘normal’ in Western culture

The mainstreaming of euthanasia – even for mental illness and for children – is simultaneously heartbreaking and disturbing to see.
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Jonathon
Van
Maren
Jonathon Van Maren
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Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide

(LifeSiteNews) — On January 27, 28-year-old Lauren Hoeve posted a meme to X (formerly Twitter), telling her followers that it was her last post. It was an excruciatingly sad one: 

On February 2, her parents posted a follow-up note to her feed, noting that Hoeve had died later that day by euthanasia. The autistic young woman, who also suffered from ADHD, had been posting publicly about her plans to die by lethal injection since 2022 after a 2019 diagnosis of ME or chronic fatigue syndrome. Her fatigue, she wrote, had kept her bedbound for much of the past five years.  

Her own doctor had told her that he would not euthanize her himself due to her psychological condition; Hoeve then contacted a euthanasia specialist, and in April of last year several doctors affirmed that she was mentally competent enough to make the decision for suicide. In her own blog post, her mother wrote: “Please know that we have done everything realistically possible to find a way out. She still wanted to get so much out of life, but she doesn’t want to live to be 30 years old like this, let alone 60 or 80 years old.”  

This story breaks as the Netherlands moves forward with their planned expansion of euthanasia to “terminally ill” children between one and 12 years old; infants with certain conditions can already be killed by infanticide under the 2004 Groningen Policy. Westerners who find the Dutch euthanasia regime appalling should realize that many governments are currently considering legalizing euthanasia; the Netherlands and Belgium have long been a source of gut-wrenching euthanasia stories, and since 2015, Canada has surged past them all in the scope and scale of medicalized killing.  

As Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reported recently: “Based on euthanasia data from Quebec, Ontario and Alberta, I predict that there were approximately 16,000 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2023 and more than 60,000 euthanasia deaths since legalization. There were 13,241 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2022.” That number is steadily rising, even though desperately needed and rare good news came with last month’s news that the Trudeau government is planning to once again delay expanding euthanasia to those with mental illness – although they insist that the long-term plan is still go ahead.  

The normalization and mainstreaming of euthanasia is simultaneously heartbreaking and disturbing to see. How could a 28-year-old girl post a flippant meme about her suicide-by-doctor? That is a reflection of our culture as much as her pain. That culture has been produced by a relentless stream of pro-euthanasia talking points not only from activists but also from the entertainment industry, which glamorized euthanasia in TV shows like House and movies like Million Dollar Baby, Me Before You, and Breathe, to name just a few. Suicide is presented as a noble sacrifice on the part of both the doctors and those opting to die; the underlying theological assumption (and it is theological) is that there is nothing after death.  

Almost daily, we see euthanasia reframed in ways that are grotesque and absurd. Dr. Stefanie Green, a prominent euthanasia activist and euthanasia “provider,” posted an article titled “How Planning My Death at 52 Helped Me Learn More About How I wanted To Live Recently” with this comment: “Well said: ‘instead of wondering how my disease and decompensation will progress… I’m thinking more about living for the first time in… well, at least four years.’” As Trudo Lemmens, a law and bioethics professor at the University of Toronto, responded: “So Dr Green and the expansion lobby are now creating a new quite original spin: #MAiD #euthanasia actually allows people to live. How did we not see that…?” 

Or as Amanda Achtman so eloquently noted: 

Some days, it’s difficult to even be angry at it all. It’s just very, very sad.  

Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.

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