Josie Luetke:
Officially, in Canada, there were 326,571 deaths in 2023.
If you add the abortion volume for that year to that number, you’re looking at 428,124 recorded deaths.
Tallying up abortion (101,553), “MAiD” or “medical assistance in dying” (15,427), (legally recognized) homicide (778), and suicide (approximately 4,447), 28.5 per cent of deaths were not tragic accidents or the sad succumbence to disease, but rather deliberately caused. (And that’s not even factoring in drug overdoses.)
Surely, this substantial share reflects a culture of death and a country obsessed with killing.
Life is not ours to take and yet we take and we take and we take. Do you think God blesses or curses such a nation?
Consider also that of these intentionally inflicted deaths (murder, in other words, whether of self or others, whether the law recognizes it or not), more than 95 per cent of them are committed by a health care professional, either directly or indirectly (e.g., through the prescription of lethal drugs).
Our healers, the ones to whom you will almost inevitably entrust your life at some point or another, will almost just as willingly turn their knives on you.
To be fair, there were a reported 2,266 “unique MAiD practitioners” in 2024, of which 2,112 were physicians. With 99,555 physicians in Canada, that means slightly more than 2 per cent intentionally killed someone in 2024 … definitely not a reassuring thought, but also not an overwhelming majority either.
Still, this statistic doesn’t represent the 10-year “lifetime” of “MAiD” in Canada—nor does it reflect the number of physicians aborting babies. We don’t have that information, because data on abortion is woefully lacking compared to data on euthanasia.
Also, interesting (always interesting!) is the data on some of the most prolific killers (again, putting aside abortionists, who have the title on lock thanks to exciting streamlining). 102 “MAiD practitioners” each killed 31 or more patients in 2024 alone — 6,185 in total, or 37.5 per cent of all euthanized in Canada. They’re on a roll. What does copious killing do to their psyches?
Canadian social scientist Christopher Lyon, who lost his own father to euthanasia, has asked a similar question—“what happens to a person when killing becomes a daily or weekly event?”—and commented, “Some providers have counts in the hundreds—this isn’t normal, for any occupation.” He added, “Even members of the military at war do not typically kill that frequently.”
In one study titled, “MAiD as human connection: Stories and metaphors of physician providers’ existential lived experience,” that appeared in the journal Death Studies in 2023, a “MAiD practitioner” described it as “almost an adrenaline rush.” Another said, “it puts me in a good mood.” The study’s authors, Rosanne Beuthin and Anne Bruce, connected these “weird” feelings to “a realization of the sacred, powerful control of the fates (the physicians) are encountering.”
One comment was startlingly on the nose: “Immediately I make sure to get chocolate – which sounds a bit bad but you need something. I think it comes from the Harry Potter books. It’s interesting – I don’t know how familiar you are with it – but if they see a Dementor which is a soul-sucking creature, they get chocolate afterwards just to revive their strength.”
To look at one doctor in particular: In 2024, the National Post did a profile on then 72-year-old Ellen Wiebe, who “devotes half her practice to medical aid in dying. It’s the last work she’s prepared to give up.” She has killed well over 400 (born) people—approximately 430 as of May 2022—but commented: “I know the exact number, but I don’t want to do that, no. It’s become a weird thing, people talking about their numbers, or criticizing people who talk about their numbers.” She is also an abortionist who helped bring chemical abortion to Canada. Abortions would surely help her numbers, if she counts them too. Serial killers could only dream, you know?
Speaking of, in 2024, 732 Canadians were euthanized under “Track 2,” meaning they had a grievous and irremediable medical condition, but their “natural deaths weren’t reasonably foreseeable.” As Track 2 deaths have been steadily increasing year after year, it’s probable that in 2025, a (born) individual who was not otherwise dying is more likely to have been killed through euthanasia than he or she was by (illegal) homicide. Medical professionals have become more productive (or destructive) than your run-of-the-mill murderers.
Again, that has already been the case for a while when you consider abortion, but these people being killed aren’t fetuses. They may be dehumanized, but not as systematically and formally as the pre-born have been. Undoubtedly, the negative perception of people with disabilities or illnesses contributes to the public acceptance of their deaths, but I also want to suggest another shift is at play: we have gotten so comfortable with killing that dehumanization is less critical, even unnecessary.
These deaths are not ones euthanasia advocates can just shrug off and claim were already coming—medical professionals just hurried them up. These are people who decided, whether “freely” or under much pressure, that their possibly very long lives weren’t worth living and the state just … agreed.
In 50 cases, they actually agreed in fewer than three months’ time. Officially, for Track 2, there’s supposed to be a “mandatory” assessment period of 90 days between first assessment and the commission of the deadly deed, but due to concerns around loss of capacity to consent, this requirement was waived 50 times in 2024.
Here’s my question: Where does it end, when we are getting better and better at killing? And more efficient? And we kill more people and different people? In more and different places, like funeral homes and hotels? Is the blood lust satisfied at some point?
On March 17, 2027, unless MP Tamara Jansen’s Bill C-218 passes before then, euthanasia will, as scheduled, be extended to those suffering solely from mental illness. More people will be killed. We will kill and kill and kill until our maws and paws are soaked red, except actually the procedure is bloodless, and that probably contributes to the ease of it. A kill count of 31 or more is impressive even in a video game.
It’s well-established that suicide can be a contagion. When a community member, especially one in a small, close-knit community like an Indigenous reserve, kills himself or herself, other members are far more likely to kill themselves too.
So, what will be the ripple effect, I wonder?
Even if people don’t kill themselves over a family member or other loved one getting euthanized, how much more depressed will we all be? How many more will live with a grief they can’t process because this catastrophic loss was not inescapable, but rather, a state-sanctioned choice?
Who thought this one out? Did anyone spend but a minute considering the advisability of helping people kill themselves instead of investing solely in preventing just that out of the recognition that suicide is an immense social ill (and evil)? What is more anti-social than this, really?
I think about Margaret Marsilla, who just lost her 26-year-old son Kiano Vafaeian, who was depressed and had gone partially blind due to his diabetes, to euthanasia—to the aforementioned Wiebe, actually. Please pray for her repentance.
I think about another mother, Rose Finlay, who is quadriplegic and could have left behind her three young sons had she been euthanized as she requested in 2023. She is, blessedly, still alive.
Even as I cite these examples, I think about which stories resonate in us as more compelling than others—and what horrible, horrible judgments we are making about people.
The Death Studies article describes how “An intimacy is established (with the ‘MAiD provider’), as the person living with a grievous and irremediable medical condition is at their most vulnerable, sharing the story of their health and indeed their life in thoughtful detail, hoping for an affirmation of their wish to end this life as they know it.”
The Hippocratic Oath states “…do no harm or injustice to (patients). Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
How noble the profession. How great the fall.
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