Stephen Karganovic
At both extremes of the life cycle, at birth and death, the spirit of Thanatos seems to have gained the upper hand.
Reverence for life is the litmus test for the authenticity of a society's adherence to humanistic values. Preaching abstract morality and agitating for "human rights" ring hollow when they originate from countries where in practice human life is treated as a cheap and disposable commodity, bereft of inherent value.
All who observe attentively trends in the Western world must have noticed that rather suddenly, over the last several decades, euthanasia, known also under the euphemism of "assisted death," has become a focal topic in many societies in the collective West. What in practice it comes down to is legally licenced, consensual suicide performed with the approval and logistical support of the state.
The euphemism "assisted death" was invented to soften the psychological impact of what is known in criminal law as being an accessory to murder. That is designated as a separate crime in the penal legislation of each of the countries that hold euthanasia to be legal and its facilitators not subject to criminal penalties when the act is performed not for private ends but under the auspices of the apparatus of the state.
This is analogous to the situation that prevailed in Nazi Germany. There, ordinary homicide and assistance in its commission were formally proscribed and punishable. But built into the legal framework there were some exceptions to that norm. Euthanasia was one of the categories of what otherwise would have been regarded as homicide that were specifically decriminalised because it was orchestrated by the state to serve its agenda. The lethal act was renamed in order to give it an innocuous appearance and those who engaged in it or assisted in its performance (the "accessories") were explicitly exempted from penal responsibility.
Euthanasia, or state-assisted suicide, in Nazi Germany was not just exempted from the ordinary operation of criminal law, but was elevated to institutional status since it furthered state policy objectives.
Without much debate, analysis, or significant controversy, the institutionalisation of state sponsored death is now making its comeback. The country that pioneered that development, if memory serves, was the Netherlands about twenty years ago, where legislation was introduced to facilitate a practice which was presented under the guise of another misleading euphemism, "mercy killing." As with most such initiatives, whose ultimate purpose is to overturn some established norm of traditional morality, the intrinsic evil was concealed under a benign appearance. According to the enticing narrative, the primary purpose of assisted death was not at all homicidal, as that might have been found objectionable. It was rather to ease the torments of terminally ill patients who could no longer endure the pain and suffering caused by their afflictions. A similarly misleading explanation was advanced to calm apprehensions and remove remaining psychological obstacles to abortion, by invoking the pretext of unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape.
In both instances, the Overton Window worked perfectly and with lethal efficacy. What began as "mercy killing," to ease unbearable suffering, has turned into state-approved death on demand, and often for the most frivolous of reasons. The legal termination of unwanted pregnancy for the exceptional but ostensibly plausible reason of rape gradually evolved into broad acceptance of infanticide on demand. In most countries of the collective West, it may now be performed at any time during pregnancy, and no compelling reason to justify the procedure is required up to the moment of delivery.
In February 2015, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that criminalisation of assisted dying is a violation of the citizens' and residents' constitutional rights. Thus the floodgates were opened. From then on a succession of legislative measures were enacted to set up the mechanism of the Medical Assistance in Dying [MAID] programme in Canada. Its "success" is reflected statistically in the fact that after only a few years of operation, the assisted dying programme now accounts for about five percent of the deaths occurring annually in Canada, or a total of 100,000 consumers of this morbid service since it was introduced in 2016. Following the usual pattern, the new legislation was misrepresented as a humanitarian initiative to spare terminally ill patients further suffering. Once the public became accustomed to the idea of assisted death, however, the constraints gradually started to be loosened. Initially the acceptable rationales for triggering legally assisted death were restricted to incurable terminal illness and unbearable pain. That was imperceptibly expanded to encompass almost any physical or other discomfort, whether treatable or not, and now practically any mental or emotional condition could be cited to solicit state assistance to legally terminate a human life. Canadian legislators are now considering giving underage children the "right" to opt out of life under the MAID system if they find living unacceptably burdensome. That is where things stand in Canada today.
It is not an exaggeration to say that with regard to assisted death in Canada the situation is alarming and raises grave ethnical issues. A parasitic euthanasia bureaucracy consisting of doctors, social workers, and related professions has sprung up to facilitate the implementation of this project. The personnel comprising that bureaucracy have a vested interest in the system and its expansion because their jobs depend on it. The Canadian government also has a keen financial take in the preservation and expansion of this lethal arrangement. For every individual who chooses or is persuaded by government personnel who administer the MAID system to end his life, the state saves the money it would have spent on medical treatment and, in the case of elderly persons, would have paid out in pension benefits. The funds not spent for the wellbeing of Canadian citizens can be redirected to worthier causes, such as propping up the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, for example.
Disturbing accounts abound of vulnerable individuals in Canada being pressured to submit to euthanasia ( here and here). There have been cases where the lethal procedure was even accelerated, denying the affected person a reasonable period of reflexion to reconsider or revoke their decision.
As George Galloway reports, Canada's deplorable example is now being copied in other countries. Scotland recently passed legislation very similar to Canada's which legalises assisted death, even for requesting teenagers, under a variety of frivolous pretexts, including anorexia. In England, the House of Lords will soon be voting on a bill to allow abortion up to the day of birth. The lords seem to be rather evenly divided on the issue, and whether or not the permissive abortion law will be adopted in Great Britain now hangs upon the vote of the seventeen lords who are ex officio members of that body in their capacity as bishops of the established Church of England. In more normal times one would have expected the proposed abortion legislation to fail because of the votes of these "Christian" bishops, but that is not necessarily the case. According to Galloway there is genuine apprehension that those woke "men of God" (which god ? Baal perhaps?) might join their secular colleagues in voting to allow the smothering, just before birth, of fully formed and viable human babies.
The precariousness of human life in the collective West is evident even in the few instances where something might have been done seemingly to protect it. Sometimes an abortion is botched and the resilient child survives the procedure. That raises the question of whether health care providers have an ethical obligation to give the same degree of care to children born alive during an abortion as to any other new-born. The issue was addressed in January of 2025 by the US House of Representatives when it passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 21) which requires medical personnel to render lifesaving care to the surviving infant.
But even that small victory for life has remained precarious and for the moment largely symbolic. For the bill to become federal law, it must also be passed in the Senate, which has not happened yet and there are no indications that it will be put on the Senate's legislative calendar anytime soon. The mood of the lawmakers, even in the House, on what should have been a non-controversial issue is graphically illustrated by the close vote, 217 to 204. Mandating lifesaving care for abortion surviving full-term infants made legal and moral sense to only a thin majority of legislators, but to an impressively large number of their colleagues it did not. With more effective lobbying by bill opponents, the vote could easily have gone the other way.
That is indirectly corroborated by political manoeuvring earlier this month in Oregon. The state of Oregon advertises with pride that abortion is legal up to birth within its borders, with minors as young as 15 not even needing parental consent. For the second time in less than a month legislation that would guarantee basic medical care to infants delivered alive after botched abortions was blocked in the state Legislature, disregarding the preferences of 80% of the state's citizens.
The promotion of assisted death and refusal of effective medical protection to infant abortion survivors is indicative of a climate of hostility to life that has gripped Western societies. At both extremes of the life cycle, at birth and death, the spirit of Thanatos seems to have gained the upper hand.