Are patients urged to die in Canada for organ harvesting?

By Hope Catalano –

Canada now leads the world in organ donation from assisted suicide.

This may appear to be a good thing since there are terminally-ill patients who are desperate for an organ, and other humans who believe that their life is not worth living and want to make the decision to end it all.

But a new investigative study in Canada raises a horrifying specter: Are patients being urged to resort to suicide so doctors can harvest their organs?

One hospitalized woman said she was “pestered, pressured and discouraged at a time when she needed all her strength to recover,” as reported by Live Action. They based their report on an investigation conducted by the Vancouver-based Catholic newspaper “The B.C. Catholic.”

Dr. Willard Johnson, head of the British Columbia branch of Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, accuses the Fraser Hospital system of “pushing euthanasia quite aggressively in every corner.”

Euthanasia, the name given to assisted suicide, was legalized in Canada in 2016. The euthanasia movement purports to offer a merciful exit from life to people who are miserable.

But the lines can be blurred between “helping” a chronically ill patient in pain during the final dying months of life and overzealously pressuring people at a moment when they are vulnerable.

By contrast, Christians generally hold life to be sacred – more sacred than “choice,” whether the choice be abortion or assisted suicide. Christians see a disturbing similarity to the dark history of governments deciding which people are better off dead for the supposed “good of society,” whether the Nazis, Soviets, or the killing fields of Cambodia.

When does a doctor essentially working for the Canadian government in socialized medicine represent his own good judgment or that of his government? Facing the staggering costs of medical attention with chronic patients, socialized medicine often allows patients to die instead of helping them recover.

The American Journal of Transplantation up to the year 2021 documented 286 ODE (organ donation after euthanasia) in Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Spain. According to the study 1131 organs were donated to 837 recipient patients. Almost half of those donations were made by Canadians.

Legalizing euthanasia in Canada has led to dramatic rise of suicide, according to a National Catholic Register report. In 2020, 7,595 Canadians took their lives with the help of doctors, according to Abby Hoffman, assistant deputy minister of Health Canada.

The law doesn’t allow medical professionals to talk about organ donation until after a person has decided to end his life in Canada, but sometimes under the guise of “making patients aware of their options,” the guidelines get pushed to the side.

A nurse quoted anonymously by the B.C. Catholic alleged nurses were banned from informing patients of alternatives to assisted suicide. One alternative for a dying patient is palliative care, which seeks to mitigate pain and make a patient as comfortable as possible in his last days.

Euthanasia is illegal in all 50 states in America. But the hair-split distinction of “medically assisted suicide” – when a doctor sets up meds for the patient to “pull the trigger” – is allowed in nine states and Washington D.C.

Ben Mattlin was quoted in USA Today about his own distress while suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. His prognosis, he says, made him feel devalued as a person.

“You can’t truly conceive the many subtle forces (pressuring you to die) – invariably well-meaning, kindhearted, even gentle, yet as persuasive as a tsunami – that emerge when your physical autonomy is hopelessly compromised,” he wrote.

In other words, go ahead and die.

There’s only a “thin and porous border between coercion and free choice,” he adds.

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About the writer of this article: Hope Catalano studies at Lighthouse Christian Academy near Culver City, CA.