A decent society should do all it reasonably can to reduce human suffering. It should not, however, do so by extinguishing the lives of those who suffer or the lives of those who we believe might suffer in the future.
Last week, I read two stories that I found chilling. The first came from Elaina Plott Calabro, a reporter at The Atlantic. She wrote about how Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) laws have led to the emergence of a euthanasia industry.
As Calabro writes, “MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada — more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined — surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.” Between 2016 and 2023 (the last year for which we have data), roughly 60,300 Canadians died by MAID. Tragically, according to Calabro, “Nearly half of all Canadians who have died by MAID viewed themselves as a burden on family and friends.”
Every one of those lives was precious, but some of the stories are almost too heartbreaking for words.
There’s the young man who was diagnosed with what was probably a curable cancer who chose to end his life because he didn’t want to seek treatment.
There’s the older woman who fractured her hip and simply chose to die, with Canadian officials approving euthanasia on the basis of frailty.
And while there are stories of people designing what they see as ideal deaths — choosing to end their lives at the late stages of terminal cancer, surrounded by friends and family, there are much darker stories as well. The most poignant, at least for me, was of a person who gave final consent all alone, lying on a mattress on the floor of an apartment.
Right after I read Calabro’s story, I opened the transcript of my colleague Ross Douthat’s interview with Noor Siddiqui, the founder of Orchid, a company that provides genetic testing for IVF embryos and claims it can determine which specific embryos are at greater risk for a range of debilitating or potentially fatal health conditions.
Well before Orchid, prenatal testing was already leading to the large-scale termination of Down syndrome babies, to the point where — in some countries — between 90% and 100% of unborn babies that test positive for Down syndrome are aborted.
As Siddiqui makes clear in her interview, Orchid’s technology doesn’t necessarily tell you with certainty if an embryo will develop a particular health condition, but rather which embryos have a greater chance of facing such challenges.
Orchid doesn’t encourage destroying embryos, but the information it provides facilitates the picking and choosing of human lives through projections of their future health. We are not quite at the level of designer babies as envisioned by science fiction, but we are rapidly approaching the point at which technology is giving parents an incentive to destroy even potentially healthy embryos, based entirely on mathematical probabilities.
To think about the culture we’re creating
I fully recognize that many, if not most, readers don’t share my view that each embryo — and each unborn child with Down syndrome — is a human life worthy of protection under the law. But I would ask you to put aside thoughts of the law for just a moment and think carefully about the culture we’re creating, from the beginning to the end of life.
What happens when we make a transition from understanding that suffering is an inevitable part of the human condition, one that rallies people to love and care for the people they love (or even to love and care for people they don’t know), to it being somebody’s fault — perhaps it’s the parents who wrongly brought you into this world or your own fault for hanging on too long?
It is understandable and deeply human to want to bring all aspects of our health as much into our control as possible. Terminally ill patients often face horrifying levels of pain. We should try to treat that pain as best we can. Vulnerability is terrifying, but it is also inescapable. In our quest for health and fitness, we are fighting a delaying action. There is no earthly victory over decay and death.
Yet at each stage of life, we can fool ourselves into believing we possess more control than we really do. If we test to control the beginning of life and die by suicide to control the end of life, the negative side of movements like what has come to be known as MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is to teach you that your health is under your control throughout your life.
You see this sentiment online often. A person announces a grave diagnosis, and the questions, suggestions and cures come in like a flood. “Were you vaxxed?” someone asks. Another opines authoritatively about the power of alternative medicines or unusual diets. Whether it’s explicit or implicit, the message is always the same: Your suffering, too, is under your control.
Perhaps this mindset is the inevitable byproduct of workism — the idea that we are defined more by our jobs and careers than by our faith, our families or our friendships — which has our culture by the throat. Parents, for example, find it far more important that their children be financially independent and have productive careers than that they marry or have children.
But if your value is determined by your productive work, then it’s easy to see how people perceive that they lose their value when they are no longer productive or when their vulnerability limits their success.
Our commitment to individual liberty can also create the illusion of individual autonomy, a sense that I am the captain of my own fate. Taken together, workism and individual autonomy tell us that we are defined by our status and that our status is largely within our control.
Our value is defined by our humanity, not our productivity, and when we live in close community, vulnerability and suffering pull us together. It can trigger a feeling of love and care so powerful and painful that it changes us forever. It softens us. It humbles us. It awakens awareness of the needs of other people.
Who will care as we walk this difficult path?
I’ve never seen this more clearly than when my wife was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2023. I watched how caring for their mother changed my kids. I grew in love and admiration for friends who rallied to our side. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we were not alone.
If cherishing the suffering can make a nation kind, then discarding the suffering makes it cruel. It can breed a sense of contempt — why should we care for this hopeless cause? — and, when our own sense of control is shattered by our own inevitable frailty, it can breed panic and fear.
Who will care for me as I walk this difficult path?
I’m haunted by one of the anecdotes in Calabro’s story. A man sought euthanasia after he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident. He couldn’t walk, he was blind and he lived in a long-term care facility and rarely had visitors.
He made a request to die and the state approved.
Calabro tells us what happened next: “When his family learned that he’d applied and been approved, they started visiting him again. ‘And it changed everything,’ his doctor said.”
Calabro continues:
He was in contact with his children again. He was in contact with his ex-wife again. He decided, “No, I still have pleasure in life, because the family, the kids are coming; even if I can’t see them, I can touch them, and I can talk to them, so I’m changing my mind.”
The lesson is clear. Isolation brings death; community brings life. And we build community in part by recognizing that we are not in control and that each of us will one day desperately need someone else to love us, care for us and cherish us.
This is not because we’re successful or capable or living a life that others deem to be worth living, but because we’re human beings of incalculable worth — no matter our vulnerability or our pain.
David French writes a column for the New York Times.
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