Should Society Grant Citizens the Right to be Killed? Wesley J. Smith

in Canada in 2023 more than 15,000 people were euthanized it's become one of the top causes of death in that country once you say that killing is an acceptable and indeed a splendid answer to human suffering how do you limit the quote suffering that would qualify for killing actually you can't it's a continual process of expansion Wesley Smith is a lawyer author and chair of The Discovery Institute Center on human exceptionalism he has been following the rise of euthanasia also known as medically assisted suicide and medical assistance in dying made for over three decades you've seen articles in the Canadian press saying look at the many millions of dollars we've saved for the Health Care system because of euthanasia another example of objectifying people who want to be dead this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kell Wesley J Smith such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders thank you there's been a lot of talk about maid or medical assistance in dying as I understand is what it means this is something that very quickly over past years has become I guess you could even say commonplace in Canada it's a significant cause of death in Canada today how did this happen what is the reality of that even well first maid is a euphemism for euthanasia or assisted suicide in Canada it's lethal injection euthanasia in other words it's homicide it's not murder because it's legal but it is homicide one human being killing another human being in the United States it's so far assisted suicide where a doctor will prescribe poison an overdose of opiates to a patient uh to kill themselves with so maid is something to try to uh deflect from the harsh darkness of that reality it isn't dying because they don't use the term they just say It's Made in capital letters so what you're talking about is is uh mercy killing or uh assisted suicide or euthanasia uh this began the push push for this uh began in Earnest in in the modern times uh in the late 80s uh back in uh uh 1989 1990 uh there was only one jurisdiction in the world that had legalized assisted suicide and that was Switzerland Switzerland had done it in the' 40s and it wasn't so much part of a right to die issue because there there isn't there wasn't such a movement back in the 40s in 1992 Oregon uh voters passed and assisted suicide law 51 to 49% and since then uh jurisdictions throughout the world have legalized either euth Asia assisted suicide it's now legal in I believe 10 states in the United States Canada which you mentioned uh Netherlands Belgium Luxembourg Colombia uh often legal uh throughout most of Australia and uh uh various places Spain and so forth so this is actually spread like a cancer and I use that term precisely because it is about death promotion it is about suicide promotion in fact seems to me that when a country or a state legalizes assisted suicide or euthanasia it can no longer call itself anti-suicide because it specifically approves some suicides and uh it's a very dangerous movement that is normalizing this kind of approach to dying as opposed to Natural death well so I want to look at it uh maybe Through The Eyes Of You Know actually some of the people I've read about in your book people people who have some sort of severe disability later in life they're in incredible pain um and they believe that this would be a compassionate way out a painless way out right instead of promoting this sort of suffering and that I mean kind of makes some sense right only on the surface because that's how it's sold uh euthanasia assisted suicide is sold as a means of uh eliminating suffering when nothing else can accomplish that uh a that's mostly a misnomer suffering can be alleviated and B if you take a look whether it's in the Netherlands Canada Oregon and other jurisdictions the reason people actually ask for euthanasia or assisted suicide isn't pain it's existential issues such as fears of being a burden fears of losing the ability to engage in enjoyable activities fears of not having dignity and these are important issues but we can intervene in help people through those difficulties rather than kill them uh it and and the thing that that strikes me is um it's cruel it's abandonment even though that's not the intent so somebody is going to jump off a bridge and we run up and say no no don't jump off a bridge and the person says oh but I have cancer oh well let us hold your coat you're telling the person with cancer that their life isn't worth living and even if that person doesn't believe it's worth living when you uh affirm that for them or when you actually start applauding them for that you end up in with a different culture than I think we uh would want to have so you know I'm thinking about Germany which I think as I understand it has the most sort of permissive law which is you know essentially if you wish to die commit suicide the medical system is to help you do I understand right that's not quite right what what what Germany uh German's highest court legalized was created a fundamental right to Suicide it didn't create a right for doctors to kill you but it did say that you can commit suicide for any purpose it's as a fundamental right it doesn't have to be related to health that you have an ancillary right to assistance if that's what you want and uh that anybody who wants to assist if asked hasn't a fundamental constitutional right to do so in essence what the German uh High Court the Constitutional Court legalized was death on demand and and Yan that's where this whole movement leads even though that may not be the intent because once you say that killing is an acceptable and indeed a splendid answer to human suffering how do you limit the quote suffering that's would uh qualify for killing actually you can't and so if you take a look at jurisdiction where this has been legalized outside of Germany which is mostly health related or disability related what you find is that it's a continual process of expansion so let's look at Canada as just a a a good example which I think is good for people in the United States because Canada is our closest cultural cousin so in Canada the reason euthanasia became legalized was a Supreme Court ruling that said that it was unconstitutional to Outlaw the parliament the national Parliament then passed a legalization that's that said death had to be reasonably foreseeable now that's a wide enough uh definition that you could drive a hearse through it and this is in the mid 2010s we're talking no this would be about 2015 2016 2017 uh I believe the Supreme Court ruling was in 15 might have been 14 but I think it was 15 and so the parliament passed a law that said people can ask to be euthanized and doctors can lethally inject them commit homicide uh but legally um if death was reasonably foreseeable uh which is a hugely open definition well the euthanasia activists don't want it to be limited to people where death is reasonably foreseeable lawsuits were filed again and and today in Canada you can have euthanasia if you're uh terminally ill if you're chronically ill if you have a disability if you're an elderly person who says they suffering based on let's say debilitation is such that you don't want to live um they were supposed to legalize it for the mentally ill uh it's been put off till 2027 not because it's wrong which it is but because they need to prepare the psychiatric community be to be able to do that and I would point out that in the Netherlands menal people are euthanized as in Belgium and uh then what happens is a instrumentalization of people an objectification of people because once you're killable then there's ways we can actually make good use of you so in Belgium in the Netherlands and in Canada you now see euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting and in Ontario uh Canada if somebody goes to a doctor and says I want to be killed uh the doctor says okay I'll kill you then the doctor contacts the organ uh procurement uh organization that will contact the patient and say well since you're going to die can we have your liver and I would point out that in in this whole process this patient is almost never given Suicide Prevention so what we've done is we have said yes you're killable oh yes we would like to make good use of your body parts and there's been no real attempt made to try to keep that person get them through the darkness that makes them want to die so that they can remain in life Wesley just one sec we're going to take a quick break break and we'll be right back and we're back with Wesley J Smith chairman of The Discovery Institute Center on human exceptionalism you mentioned something earlier um this term right to die shouldn't we have that fundamental right as human beings we have the power uh but a right to die implies that the government will make it happen for you uh and that's what I don't believe we have and no government should be in the business of authorizing private killing um euthanasia is not the same thing as refusing unwanted medical treatment uh that is a right so if you get cancer and the doctor says well the only way we can keep you going is with a extreme chemotherapy that might cause you to be really sick you can say no I don't want the chemotherapy uh if you are in a Intensive Care Unit where you're hooked up to respirators and kidney dialysis you can actually say no I don't want that even though it's likely to cause your death um you can write an advanced directive saying in terms of if I'm ever incapacitated and can't make my own medical decisions here's what I do want and here's what I don't want often the right to refuse medical treatment is conflated with euthanasia they're not the same thing at all and I would point out that in the United States there was actually a Supreme Court case called vov V quill back in 97 in which euthanasia activist assistant suicide activist said well since a patient can refuse intensive care that will likely cause their death that's no different than assisted suicide and nine to zero the Supreme Court said no that's not true uh because one is a natural death the other isn't and when you uh refuse unwanted medical treatment the outcome is uncertain you might be expected to die but you don't necessarily die and there's certainly plenty of examples of oh absolutely and there are people uh who uh art book Wald the humorist was in a hospice uh because of kidney disease and and in in the United States to enter hospice the rules are I think they should be changed but the rules are you have to have reasonably believe six months or less to live well he was brought into hospice with kidney failure and after a long time he actually didn't die and he left the hospice to write his last book so you never know it's never certain there have been people people who uh have been given lethal prescriptions for example in Oregon which has a six months to live requirement who 3 years later died a natural death we don't die by the Numbers unless you're really close to death you can't actually predict it with Assurance uh and again we cannot have a SI a system in which some people oh we want you in life and other people well of course you should die because that leads to a two-tiered system of of moral value and I would say destroys human equality this is this whole IDE ideology of bioethics that you describe as sort of central to your book culture of death which I've been reading kind of with wrapped Fascination well actually you know you mentioned the hosp the Hospice and you have an amazing just little story I'm just going to get you to recount it because I love I love this moment in the book like H how did the concept of hospice come about in in the first place it was very interesting the uh modern hospice movement was created by a tremendous medical humanitarian named cesal Saunders from England uh she's now Dame cesal uh she has since passed away uh she was a medical nurse uh in World War II and after World War II uh she was caring for a Polish patient who had actually escaped the Holocaust uh and and was Jewish and but was dying in in uh uh in the hospital in the UK and she went to visit him every day and she was asking him what's the experience you're experiencing and and she said I came up with a concept called total pain that often people who are terminally ill will have physical issues you know symptoms of course but also um existential issues fear uh often isolation too often we let people you know oh I don't know what I'd say and we let people be alone and isolated and so she came up with this idea of becoming a doctor she was a nurse she became a medical doctor back at the time when that wasn't done that often to promote this new idea of setting up hospices so that people could actually die with inclusion and uh in I believe it was the 60s she created St Christopher's Hospice in London I visited uh St Christopher's I had the great honor of interviewing Dame cesal uh who gave me a half hour of her time and one of the things Dame cesy in insisted on in creating modern hospice was that it would CL include Suicide Prevention because I asked her I said well you know there's this assistant Su she said that destroys the equal Dignity of my patients she became quite animated about that and the whole hospice philosophy was hospice is not about dying it's about living it's about helping people get the most out of life in the time they have remaining uh and a natural death she was once asked how do you want to die by the New York Times and amazingly she said well I would like to die of cancer and you go what and she said the reason is because I know that my symptoms could be alleviated I'd have the time to make uh uh you know say goodbye to my friends and so forth and that's actually what happened uh Dame cesal passed away in her own Hospice in peace and in uh dignity and this whole idea that assisted SU suicide is death With Dignity is really insulting because that means my father who died with the care of hospice in 1984 didn't die with dignity it means that my mother who died in my home with my wife and I caring for her in hospice with a hospice help of Alzheimer's disease didn't die in dignity and we have to reject that out of hand i'm I I'm not clear why why would that be The Logical because we're being told that death With Dignity is assisted suicide well but I mean it's not the only death With Dignity is it I mean of course not in fact I would say it's the opposite but the implication is that dying with dignity means you've been given the pills or you've had a lethal injection and while people so you're kind of you you've done it on your own terms right exactly so that people dying naturally somehow that's not death With Dignity I reject that what did she mean when she said that providing this assisted suicide would VI at my patient equal dignity what does that mean exactly well because let's we we talked about this with the uh example I give of the man on the bridge Okay who wants to jump mhm and we say no no no life is worth living while I have cancer oh that's different let us hold your coat she is saying that when you uh do not give Suicide Prevention to a suicidal terminal person which often can make them not want to commit suicide Studies have shown that m then what you're saying is that their life doesn't have the same value as will say the veteran with PTSD who wants to commit suicide no no what we have to do is try to prevent suicide not only in the patient with PTSD which of course we do but also the person with a serious illness because people can get through that darkness and be very happy to live I I have an example I was a a hospice volunteer for a while MH and my last patient was a man named Bob salanka the reason I can name him is because he wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how much he resented the assisted suicide movement because it was telling him his life wasn't worth living Bob had L Garrick's disease ALS which is a a terrible a devastating diagnosis and Bob told me that at that time it was in the 90s uh Jack Koran who used to commit assisted suicide in Michigan was active and Bob when he got this devast stating diagnosis was so shook and so worried about being a burden to his families that he wanted to go to kavorkian his family said absolutely not we're not going to participate in that and Bob put it this way he said after a while the fog lifted those were his terms and he was so glad to be alive so because Bob was given the time to adjust to this very difficult circumstance and I'm not saying his life was just peaches and Keen thereafter it was a struggle often but he was glad to be alive and he lived until he died a natural peaceful death from L Garrick's disease but if he had been taken to gavorin or if at that time in California which is where this happened assisted suicide had been legal which it wasn't at the time and it is now I'm telling you he would have taken those pills and he would have missed out what he said was some of the best time of his life so as we finish up something you've written and spoken a lot about is this idea of human exceptionalism perhaps the opposite of what Peter Singer believes and correct explain to me how that fits into this whole discussion human exceptionalism is more than the sanctity of human life uh part of it is intrinsic human dignity which is essential if we're going to have human rights Universal human rights because if you don't have rights based on human equality as an objective and intrinsic uh category for people then you have to earn your rights and at that point that leads to oppression so the first part of human exceptionalism is we are all equal and dignified in life and it's based on being human no no subjective thing such as quality of brain power or or you know quality of life the second aspect and the reason it's not just called human dignity but human exceptionalism is we are the only known species in the universe with moral duties we know right from wrong so we have duties to each other we have duties to our posterity people who we will never meet in fact the founders of the United States talked often about their posterity that's us we have duties to treat animals humanly as an example we have duties to uh treat the environment in a proper way so you've got the two aspects of of human life our rights our value and our duties and moral requirement another way to talk about the duties aspect it seems to me is that it's about love about loving each other and sometimes love means you value somebody even more than they value themselves so in the context of assisted suicide and euth an Asian of course human exceptionalism goes Way Beyond this particular issue that we've been discussing we have to see the incredible worth of each and every patient even when they're in extremists and to suffer with them which is what compassion means and to mitigate their suffering uh and let them know they're still us there's no such thing as them there's only us and if we can do that and if we can find ways to renew our mutual cohesion as a society I think a lot of this nalism that we were discussing at the end of the interview here will begin to fade it'll never go away completely because there's no such thing as a perfect Society but if we yield to our worst angels of our nature to kind of borrow from Lincoln then the kind of trauma we're seeing throughout Society now will only get worse and I don't know where the bottom is if if that's the way we go well Wesley J Smith it's such a pleasure to have had you on well thank you Yan I appreciate the opportunity thank you all for joining Wesley J Smith and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host y k [Music]