Earlier today, I wrote an article about Cory Booker foolishly arguing Canada is “out-Americaning” America (here). I think this aptly shuts down that claim.

In Ontario, bioethicists for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children have outlined a position on killing little ones. Published September 21st in the British Medical Journal, the paper states that parents will not be notified of the child’s wish to die until he or she is dead:

“Usually, the family is intimately involved in this (end-of-life) decision-making process. If, however, a capable patient explicitly indicates that they do not want their family members involved in their decision-making, although health care providers may encourage the patient to reconsider and involve their family, ultimately the wishes of capable patients with respect to confidentiality must be respected.”

At present time, Canada’s assisted suicide law only applies to those over 17. Yet, the hospital is preparing for what they obviously view as an impending application to minors — concerning a practice from which they hope to remove any stigma:

“We will…as an institution, publicly discuss the provision of MAID in an effort to normalise this procedure and reduce social stigma for everyone involved. It is right and appropriate for this duty to fall to a well-resourced institution rather than rest on the shoulders of individual patients and providers.”

Their article in the BMJ is titled “Medical Assistance in Dying at a Paediatric Hospital.”

HSC has good reason to believe such ethical considerations will soon be relevant: after Canada’s Supreme Court authorized assisted suicide in June of 2016, the government asked the Council of Canadian Academies to produce a report — due by December 2018 — considering three issues left unsettled by the ruling: euthanasia for the mentally ill, advance requests for euthanasia, and euthanasia for “mature minors” (defined as minors “who have the capacity to understand and appreciate the consequences of the specific decision in front of them.”

As Monica Burke — research assistant at the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society — noted to CBN News, the dark industry of death-on-demand brutalizes the most vulnerable among us, including those who’ve been weakened emotionally:

“It is not difficult to imagine how such a protocol could wreak havoc on society. When a culture differentiates between lives worth living and lives worth ending, the consequences to vulnerable populations—the young, the old, the sick, and disabled—are disastrous. … Those who most require our compassion and protection become the most likely to be pressured to prematurely end their lives.”

Burke also pointed out that the hospital’s proposed guidelines fail to clearly denote what certifies someone as being fit for death:

“[There’s] no natural, logical limit to who qualifies for physician-assisted suicide.”

Furthermore, according to a report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, only 15% of Canadians with life-limiting conditions have access to proper medical and nursing care. The message? When it comes to healthcare, Canada’s less interested in sustaining and improving life than it is in destroying it.

Canada isn’t alone with regard to assisted suicide in general or the potential execution of kids. The slippery-slope-ready debate on euthanasia rages in Australia (here); the Netherlands permits extinguishing children over 12. In 2014, Belgium changed its law to allow the medical destruction of a child at any age, if he or she requests it; two months ago, that directive killed a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old — the planet’s youngest lives to be snuffed out by “medical care.”

The world is a scary place. Though many liberals point to Canada as a model for medical reform, such macabre legislation and its potential (if not likely) future — which has allowed for even the discussion of killing children — is something not seen to this degree (including the evil of the other countries mentioned), to my knowledge, since 1940’s Germany. Not, that is, unless you count a galvanizing issue in the U.S. which — just two years ago — put upon the stage Hillary Clinton, who defended partial birth abortion.

Cory Booker said Canada is out-Americaning us; America is a place founded on “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” No one is out-Americaning us. But we could stand to leave the Left behind, and become so American that the most innocent and vulnerable among us are wholly beyond their grasp.

Relevant RedState links in this article: here and here.

See 3 more pieces from me: returning a Nazi, Jimmy Carter against impeachment, and abolishing ICE.

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