Apparently, forward-looking doctors are comfortable with the idea of euthanizing monstrous-birth infants up to the age of one year.Yes, you read that right. It’s in the parliamentary record. We’ll come to that, but first the background.In 2015, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the ban on assisted suicide in Carter v. Canada, proponents promised a narrow path: mercy for competent adults enduring intolerable suffering from terminal illness.So it began, but ten years later, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) now accounts for over five percent of deaths in Canada – 16,499 cases in 2024 alone, and more than 76,000 since legalization. That’s more than diabetes, Parkinson’s, and old-fashioned unassisted suicide put together. (Although as it’s all a bit embarrassing, StatsCan doesn’t list it as separate line item.)What began then, as a compassionate endpoint for people in terrible pain with a week to go, has metastasized into a regime that ensnares the poor, the disabled, and now, shockingly, the unborn and unborn-like. The progressive extensions – to non-imminent deaths already and possibly soon to the mentally ill, "mature minors" – and the casual offering of MAiD to those merely exhausted by bureaucracy, is a picture of the classic ‘slippery slope.’You know, the ‘slippery slope’ that the clever folk, and the worldly-wise who are sometimes wrong but never in doubt, say isn’t real.Bad ideas, as history warns, start small..Consider the trajectory.In 1993 the Supreme Court of Canada considered the case of Sue Rodriguez. Suffering from ALS, Ms. Rodriguez had sued for the right to commit suicide with the help of a doctor.(It should be recognized that ALS is a miserable way to go; those of us strongly oppose MAiD must at least understand why some people want it.) Nevertheless, the Court thought that however sympathetic Canadians might be to Ms. Rodriguez, they weren’t ready for where this would take them. It ruled 5-4 that the need to protect the vulnerable outweighed Ms. Rodriguez’s Charter rights to security of the person. (Yes, you didn’t misread that: the right to commit suicide is considered the right to security of the person.).But then, in the 2015 Carter decision, Canada’s top justices decided Canadians were ready for assisted suicide after all – as long as people were suffering and didn’t have long. Why make them wait?And so in 2016, Bill C-14 was passed for people suffering from grievous, irremediable conditions where death was "reasonably foreseeable."In 2021, we all took another step down the slope, just like so many predicted. Bill C-7 opened up “Track 2” to those experiencing chronic suffering, but without imminence. Suddenly, MAiD wasn't just for the dying but also for the desperate. It took off. Health Canada reports that in 2023, nearly 15,000 chose assisted suicide with demographics skewing toward the elderly and disabled, but increasingly including the socioeconomically marginalized..Last year, a 51-year-old woman was killed not for cancer, but because her allergies rendered her housing unliveable — a mercy killing born of failed social supports, not fate.This isn't anomaly; it's momentum. The government's 2022 delay of MAiD solely for mental illness (now deferred to 2027) was sold as caution, yet advocates like Dying with Dignity Canada press on, framing safeguards as paternalistic barriers.Now, these people campaign for "mature minors" — children as young as 12 deemed capable of consent – to be allowed to choose death. The organization argues it's "unfair" to let a 70-year-old with terminal cancer choose death while denying a 17-year-old in identical straits.They cite polls, such as 7% of Canadians support it, with eligibility limited to Track 1, excluding mental illness. They insist safeguards abound.But where's the brake? If a teen with leukemia can opt out, why not a twelve-year-old? Consent, they claim, follows the "mature minor doctrine" already allowing kids to refuse chemo.This is the ‘slope,’ the constant extension of eligibility. Where does it stop?.It’s hard to say how far down the slope goes, but critic Anna Farrow writes in C2C Journal (quoting The Atlantic) that in October 2022 a Quebec doctor briefed Parliament's Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, and floated several ideas to extend assisted suicide, all of course for the good of all concerned.Dr. Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec (CMQ) endorsed advance requests for dementia patients and MAiD for those with intractable mental illness after exhaustive treatment. He then pivoted to emancipated minors aged 14–17, recommending they apply "in conjunction with their parental authority or guardian" when suffering turns "intolerable."Then, he thoughtfully added: "The same is true for babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes for which the chances of survival are virtually nil, and which will cause so much pain that a decision must be made to not allow the child to suffer."Read his words, here..This wasn't hyperbole; it was policy flirtation – the idea that society might one day kill people who couldn’t consent.But the committee took it in splendid stride, and in an interview with the London Daily Mail a few years later, CMQ's president, Mauril Gaudreault, said once more that MAiD could be "appropriate" for infants with "extreme pain" or "severe malformations," framing it as parental mercy.Farrow likens this to Nazi Germany's 1939 infant euthanasia law, born of Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche's 1920 screed on "lives unworthy of life."Quebec's autonomy exacerbates the peril. The province has flouted federal MAiD rules before –implementing advance directives despite Ottawa's veto. If CMQ pushes infant MAiD, it could proceed unchecked, prosecuting no one. Farrow's clarion call: "Unless Canadians wake from their slumber and finally say, 'No. Don't do it.'" Disability Minister Carla Qualtrough echoed this in 2022, "shocked" by Roy's words, calling it a "slippery slope."The irony? MAiD's victims often prefer life, if only resources flowed as freely as death. In 2023, a veteran chose MAiD over subpar housing; the poor now comprise a growing share, per Health Canada data. Vulnerable populations – 96% white among tracked cases, but disproportionately indigenous and low-income – face not choice, but coercion. Extending to minors, then infants, erodes consent's sanctity. If babies can't speak for themselves, who decides? Parents burdened by care? Doctors rationing beds? Once we cross to non-consenting neonates, euthanizing consenting adults becomes trivial – and dissenters, perhaps, next.Canada's heritage prized life inviolable. MAiD was meant to affirm dignity in dying, not hasten it for the inconvenient. Roy's "avenue" and Dying with Dignity's minors push signal we've veered into eugenics' shadow. Citizens, not committees, must halt this: demand repeal of Track 2, reject minor expansions, and fund palliative care over protocols.Otherwise, mercy's slope ends not in compassion, but in a nation where the vulnerable whisper, "Not yet" – and no one hears.
