When Healthcare Becomes Homicide

When Healthcare Becomes Homicide

April 17, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Patricia Engler

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 4/17/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today. And it’s also our monthly emphasis on creation, Christian apologetics and biblical worldview. Now today joining me and Pastor Matt Recker, he’s the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Manhattan, New York City, and I hope that you are finding him to be a friend as he’s new to this program, but will be with us increasingly as we move into the future. With us today is a recurring guest, Patricia Engler. She’s an apologetic speaker for answers and Genesis. She’s a host of her own podcast, Zero Compromise and author already of two young books, even though she’s a young lady, she’s been very prolific to books Prepare to Thrive, a Survival Guide for Christian Students and Modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. Now, according to history, Benjamin Franklin, we all know who he is.

He’s attributed with this little truism where he said, in life there are only two things which are certain death and taxes, right? And of course, as God-fearing people, we know that Benjamin Franklin was not the first one to make that observation. In fact, the word of God makes it clear that he has not only authorized a civil authority to impose taxes, but even throughout scripture, it was very clearly what government did when it came to taxes. But of course, God makes it clear that those in government are to only use those taxes for a limited number of core functions of government. But that’s not the focus of our program today. It’s the other part of Franklin’s observation about which God makes clear. In Hebrews 9 :27, that ties directly to our focus today in that verse says, and it is appointed unto man once to die. But after this, the judgment as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden, death became a certainty in life.

As a result, death is unavoidable regardless of how arrogantly, modern transhumanist technology envisions the day that they can overcome the certainty of death. And they really are trying to do that. And because of this unavoidable reality and because of the infused use of drugs and humanistic philosophies of life that drive easy murder in our day, be that through abortion or the atrocity of euthanasia or the so-called mercy killing approach, such considerations of death, how death can be easily achieved when death particular of the elderly and the sick should occur. And that’s how they think should occur. It’s become a major issue for which those seeking of a biblical worldview is needed. We need to bring biblical worldview to bear. In other words, it’s the issue of the end of life decisions. That is our focus today. The title I’ve chosen to frame our conversation is also the title of a recent editorial published by our guest today, Patricia Engr entitled When Healthcare Becomes Homicide, when Healthcare Becomes Homicide. And with that, I welcome to the program Patricia Engr. Patricia, thanks for being back with us.

Patricia Engler:

Thanks so much. Great to be back.

Sam Rohrer:

Patricia, being born and raised in Canada right across the border, you’re much more aware of policy changes there than most Americans are. And because you are, you’ve chosen to bring to light certain changes in Canada of which all Americans and all who value life I think should be aware. In your recent article, you had an abstract that was there. You always write your articles very, very well. This is what you said. You said lessons from euthanasia policies in Canada reveal how assisted death legalization harms societies and contradicts God’s word. How does scripture point us toward alternative end of life practices that better protect the good of humanity? So here’s my initial question. Could you briefly state the problem in canid about which you wrote your editorial?

Patricia Engler:

Absolutely. So sadly, since 2016, the Canadian Medical has killed enough patients to populate an entire city through euthanasia and assisted suicide. So these practices were decriminalized in 2016, and the latest data we have is from 2023. And that data said that in total now over 60,300 Canadians have been killed by or three doctors. So originally that law was just supposed to be for terminally ill patients. If you’re an adult incompetent and suffering and you’re going to die anyway really soon, but not anymore. All that just kind of slowly went away. So now as of last year, or sorry, 2023, six hundred and twenty two of the Canadians killed, didn’t even have a foreseeable death. So by now, Canada’s just embraced this mentality that sees state sanctioned killing as a viable solution to suffering. And this is changing the landscape of healthcare. So before this, the mentality is that, oh, you’re hurting. Let’s offer you the best care we can to help you live as well as possible given the circumstances. But the new mentality is, oh, we see you’re hurting. Have you thought about taking your life? Let us take it for you.

Matt Recker:

Yes, that’s so tragic, isn’t it? How, and in their minds with not having a biblical worldview, they think they’re expanding healthcare by committing more homicide. Oh boy. But thank you for your article, Patricia, and I want to thank Sam. Thank you Sam, for highlighting this subject today. It is truly tragic that people see killing as a means of problem solving and that now literally homicide has become a part of healthcare and is more normalizing murder. But in your article, you introduced an acronym and a term pronounced SHAM, SHAM. Could you define that term, Patricia, and share why you think it is an appropriate way to describe the Canadian euthanasia law?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, so briefly, it stands for sanctioned homicide actualized medically. So that’s where the SHAM comes from. And it is a sham because it’s being touted as medical care and compassion. But really as we’re going to see later, it totally changes the definition of healthcare to say that killing is a form of caring. That’s just not what health is. So it is homicide and things like abortion are also homicide that’s unfortunately state sanctioned, but I’m using this in terms of euthanasia and assisted suicide. And part of the reason for that is to strip away euphemisms. For example, in Canada, you’re going to hear the term made for medical assistance in death. But pro-life doctors will push back saying, well, we always assist dying people, so there’s always medical assistance in death. You can’t call it that. So it’s just more of a way to call it what it is to say things as they are and to help people understand what’s really going on here. These are doctors intentionally taking the lives of patients who are often going through all kinds of suffering that’s not just physical as we’ll get into later. So that’s kind of the basis of that terminology,

Sam Rohrer:

And I think that’s very creative, Patricia, and I’m going to give that ladies and gentlemen again in the next segment here where we’re going to go again, the theme today and our focus is when healthcare becomes homicide, we’re talking about euthanasia commonly referred to or mercy killing other names that are given to it. We talked about the problem here using Canada as an example to the north or guest Patricia Engr from Answers and Genesis, Christian apologists there is with us. She wrote an article we’re building off of that editorial, but it comes from her experience from Canada. When we come back, we’re going to talk about this process of Canada, what it is, what it’s not. Then we’re going to look at the history of euthanasia from way back till now, and then we’ll proceed through and end up with biblical alternatives. Well, if you’re just joining us today, thank you for being on board.

This is our monthly focus. We do it monthly, obviously once a month, generally sometimes every three weeks depending. But on the theme creation, Christian apologetics and biblical worldview. Now we talk about biblical worldview in this program, obviously all the time, and we do it from multiple perspectives because the primary issue here, we try to do bring headline news and events, but apply to it a biblical worldview of analysis. This is a focus because of its recurring nature. And so broad decided, and we have been now for years dedicating at least a day a month to that. Our guest today is Patricia Engler. She’s a Christian apologetics and is a speaker for answers. And Genesis told us today, Patricia, you’re actually calling in from a new building there for offices at the Arc in Kentucky. So it’s a great thing to have you on board. But anyways, ladies and gentlemen, if you didn’t catch the first segment, you need to go back, listen to the program, pick it up.

The balance of the program will build on this theme, the title When healthcare Becomes Homicide. I’m talking end of life decisions and in reality using what’s happening in Canada as a reference point, and from which Patricia has just written a very, very excellent article to which we are looking and going to it right now. And I think you can find that on the Answers in Genesis.org website. Now, Patricia, in your excellently, that’s my opinion. I think everybody would share it if they read it well-written editorial. You’ve divided into five basic parts and just for the sake of logical progression in our conversation today, we’re kind of walking through that more or less listeners, if you’re listening and you get the article, you’ll have a way of comparing it. Now, in the last segment, Krisha, you defined, I’m going to say the accurately and creatively formed an acronym SHAM, HAM, which you said you made up, but it’s these words, sanctioned, homicide actualized, medically well phrased, but it describes the Canadian end of life policy. So here we go. In your article, you take a few paragraphs to explain what SHAM is and what SHAM is not. So could you just share briefly what is the difference?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, that’s super important. So a lot hinges on intention. So in SHAM, a healthcare worker intentionally ends or helps to end an individual’s life. So two forms of this are euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. So euthanasia, that’s when a medical worker personally kills another human. That’s what’s happening. And in physician assisted suicide, a doctor prescribes or some other healthcare worker prescribes lethal drugs for the person to take themselves. And usually people say, well, this only happens if the person is really grievously suffering or it’s a fatal condition, but that’s just not always the case. There’s a lot of data to back that up, as you can see from the article and just public policy both in Canada and the Netherlands. So that’s what it is. What it’s not is the refusal or withdrawal of futile or excessively burdensome medical treatment. So some scholars you might see, they argue, well, if you withdraw life-sustaining treatment from a dying person, that’s passive euthanasia.

One of my own secular ethics professors argued that saying that if you’re withdrawing treatment, you’re initiating this chain of events that is going to result in the patient’s death. So why not just kill them now? But other scholars point out that these are not the same. There are different causes of death like legal injection causing it versus the terminal illness causing it. And also intentions aren’t the same here. So I mean if doctor or patient is intending to die, then it might be similar. But if there’s a dying patient who would prefer living, that recognizes that it’s futile to keep doing medical treatment or who requests painkillers to die comfortably, even if this is going to shorten their life, that’s not the same as aiming to die. But SHAM always aims at killing. And as both biblical and modern laws that distinguish murder from manslaughter, show intentions really matter. So that’s the main difference there.

Matt Recker:

Very good. Thank you for sharing that difference there. And as the scripture says, there’s nothing new under the sun. And so like abortion or the murder of babies is as old as the worship of Baal at the Tower of Babel. I would imagine that euthanasia as well, or the murder of the elderly or affirmed has a history as well. And in the excellent article that you did write, and I also encourage our listeners to go to the answers in Genesis website and find this article by Patricia, when Healthcare Becomes Homicide, you point out how social Darwinism and evolutionary thinking as well has affected the sanctioning of homicide. Can you highlight as well as I ask this question? The question is, can you share some of the pertinent history of this sanctioned homicide, this SHAM from its beginnings to the current days of what’s going on in Canada?

Patricia Engler:

Sure thing can go pretty fast here, but it starts, I mean it starts all the way back in the Garden of Eden with people rejecting God’s authority. But the history of it properly in the Western culture would start back in ancient Greece where you have physicians being asked to give patients poison if they want to commit suicide. So then the Hippocratic Oath comes along and forbids doctors from doing that. And then that policy of protecting life got more popularity as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. But then fast forward to 1859, you have Darwin coming along, publishing origin of species that Popularizes evolution. Then a few years later in 1870, an English teacher named Samuel Williams draws on those Darwinian concepts to write an essay that defends mercy killing, and that’s what really sparks the modern euthanasia controversy. So then a few years later, Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, launched that term eugenics, which is about trying to improve humans, the human gene pool, whether that’s by preventing the births of babies with favorable, sorry, with unfavorable traits or encouraging the births of babies with favorable traits.

You’re trying to improve humanity with a sort of artificial survival of the fittest artificial selection basically. So then that of course was most famously popular in Nazi Germany, though a lot of other countries, including America and Canada were doing eugenics too. So it’s really interesting how this started because in the thirties, Hitler called for extending the rights of incurably ill patients by allowing mercy killing. Then later, soon after that, Nazis launched their action T four involuntary euthanasia program just going on and killing disabled people. And then to garner support for that, they released a film that promoted the right to die telling a story about a physician who killed his wife because she was looking for euthanasia for multiple sclerosis. These are the same sorts of arguments that we have today that we’re actually backing the Nazi eugenics and euthanasia program. So because of all those Nazi atrocities, thankfully euthanasia fell out of favor for a while, but then just before 1970, it started up again in the Netherlands.

They enabled some forms of it around 1985, then just more policies started coming out. So Oregon of course allowed physician-assisted suicide in 1997. Belgium allowed it in some euthanasia in 2002, and then things really started escalating in Canada. So there was a Supreme Court case back in 1990 where a lady with ALS wanted SHAM. She didn’t end up getting it, but a doctor did a few years later kill her without prosecution. So she got it just without legal sanction. And then 2015, a really important Supreme court case in Canada called Carter versus Canada 2015, that asked parliament to open the door for some kind of assisted dying, and they said, well, this won’t lead to a slippery slope because we’re going to have safeguards so that only competent uncoerced adults with an incurable terminal illness can request this. That’s how the law got started. But as we’ll talk about later, the internal logic of the main arguments for SHAM contradicted being able to leave those safeguards in place. So as we saw in 2021, that requirement for an actual terminal illness was dropped, and there’s even been a bill passed to extend SHAM to people who suffering isn’t just physical but mental. So thankfully that’s been postponed to 2027. So that’s a really quick crash course on the history behind euthanasia.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, and you did a great job on that, Patricia. Lemme come back into that. A lot of places that we could go, obviously we know from scripture says, thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not kill that six commandment, yet we see it happening and increasing. We’ve already referred to it killing babies, abortion, 65 million in this country, but now we’re talking older. Just had a question here for you, because in the appeal of abortion, you have people who are willing to kill their babies as a coverup for something that they did that maybe they were involved appropriately sexually, perhaps, or who knows, whatever. But for them it’s a coverup of something that’s there to allow them. So there’s a selfish orientation, but when it comes to euthanasia or killing of the old one, what is the incentive for the person who is about to die? Seems like this is now more of a case to justify flat out murder without necessarily a selfish interest on the part of the person who is going to be killed. What are your thoughts on that?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, it certainly can be. I mean, we have data from the Netherlands. The last I saw. There’s a total of 517 cases unless new data has come out where people were just killed without consent being on the record for them. So it is just full on happening like that in some places. As far as the data for why people want euthanasia, some of it is loss of independence, not wanting to be a burden on others. Some of it’s just flat out loneliness as well. Of the people who weren’t terminally ill in Canada in 2023, almost half of them cited loneliness as one of the causes that they requested euthanasia. So there are those types of issues as well. If it’s concerned about being a burden on others, some of that might be selfishly motivated by the other people. The idea is that you’re supposed to make sure that people aren’t being coerced into this decision, but that’s really hard to make sure about. And sometimes it could be things like you’re afraid of suffering or maybe it is just a flat out rebellion of God’s will for you. You want to seek your own life into your own hands and you just want to die when you want to die. And that perhaps we could see us being more of just a selfish motivation for that. But yeah, it’s complex and very sad.

Sam Rohrer:

It is ladies and gentlemen, and you can obviously see already at this point, worldview makes all the difference. If we come from God, life has value. There’s one direction. If we came out of the slimed evolution and there’s no value, well then there’s another. In the next segment, we’re going to look at the primary reasons for euthanasia and consider it from a biblical worldview and a humanist worldview. Well, Patricia, as you do, and our friends there at Entre and Genesis, we emphasize here all the time and has from our inception on Stand at a Gap radio and TV is the inescapable reality of world views. The fact that everyone has a worldview, the question is which worldview? And at the same time, the apologetic side of the equation is to always exalt and elevate the very clear superiority of a biblical worldview. Now, since a biblical worldview is simply, and it’s defined many different ways, but I’m just going to give it this flavor, biblical worldview is just simply agreeing with God and God’s word in its entirety, not pieces of it, but its entirety and obeying it fully.

Not part of it, but all of it in regard to all areas of life, not some areas, all areas of life in living, adding nothing to it nor taking away anything from it. Now that’s how I’m just going to define biblical worldview, a true one at this point. And so I’m going to ask you now to do a little bit of compare contrast, so to speak, by taking the worldview of those who are, again, we’re using Canada as a reference, but it’s not any different than anywhere else around the world. But going there of those who are leading the fight, leading the argumentation for greater and greater usage of, we’re calling it healthcare homicide, actually killing of people who are elderly or some reason infirmed perhaps, but compare that against a biblical worldview. So let’s just start here and just do this. We’ll go as far as we can, but take maybe the top two. Could you identify what you would consider to be the primary justification for the homicide of innocent people? And then give the biblical worldview counterpoint for that argument?

Patricia Engler:

Sure thing. So from the secular perspective, something you’re going to see a lot in these arguments is that it mainly comes down to this idea of what we might call radical autonomy or just the freedom of self-determination like you define you. So this freedom isn’t under God, it’s the freedom for people to act as their own gods with their own absolute rights to define their own truth, their own identity and life and death. And then along the way, the standard for truth isn’t God’s word, but the thinking and feeling of autonomous individuals who can make their own choices. Feelings are the authority, and this is a mindset, kind of a mouthful, but some people call it expressive individualism. And different people point out that it leads to a ton of social and ethical problems like abortion because then people who cannot make their own choices as autonomous free beings are treated as just objects that are expendable for the benefit of people who can make their own free choices.

So in contrast, a biblical view says God is the creator and authority for truth. We are not God. We’re creatures who are morally accountable to God. God made us in his image. So taking the life of any innocent image bearer, whether that’s ourself as someone else is a serious affront to God, then so we don’t have absolute rights over our own lives and deaths, we belong to our creator. And interestingly, this view actually fits a lot better with objective reality because really nobody is completely independent or in control of their own lives, even if they think they are right, because we’re finite in body beings in this fallen world. Were inescapably dependent on others throughout our whole lifespan. And the secular view therefore is just based on these illusions of autonomy and control, and it has a lot of practical consequences for ethics, but God’s word in contrast actually lives helps us live well in the real world in the light of reality. So there’s that first argument.

Matt Recker:

Thank you, Patricia, and well stated. And Sam, thank you for sharing your of a biblical worldview. That was fantastic. And to me, I’m amazed how worldly wisdom, they use these terms that make themselves sound so reasonable and compassionate. Even Hitler said he wanted to extend the rights, as you said earlier, that’s just almost incomprehensible. He wanted to extend the rights of those who actually want to end their life. He wanted to extend their rights by giving them the right to end their life. So this is such wicked devilish wisdom. So you gave us one example and reason of a humanist justification for medically induced homicides counterpoint with a biblical worldview. So Patricia, could you share a second justification why they would commit homicide in such cases?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, sure thing. So the second main argument you’re going to find for euthanasia is that it’s just this idea that, well, if people are really suffering, you don’t want them to have to suffer. So you should give them the right to die. They should be able to choose death if they want to. One issue is it’s hard to know how many people are actually choosing euthanasia due to physical suffering, at least in Canada, because the government data about the reasons for euthanasia actually lumps together inadequate pain control with the fear of future inadequate pain control. So that’s one reason patients need to know. Today’s pain control and management techniques are more advanced than ever. We can control most pain, and besides a secular view, doesn’t even have a final moral foundation for calling suffering a problem in the first place. But a biblical worldview does, and God’s word lets us recognize that suffering is sadly this grievous part of our fallen sin broken world.

But what’s amazing is that God’s son, Jesus voluntarily took on extreme suffering, took on human flesh and suffered and died to pay that death penalty for sin so we can live with him in the new creation where there won’t be suffering and death anymore. He wipes away every tear from our eyes and he’s promised to be with us until then. Meanwhile, he calls us to lovingly care for people who like Job did suffer in our fallen world. And Galatians six, two, I believe calls us to bury each other’s burdens and fulfill Jesus’s law, which he said love one another. So to address another human’s burden by killing the human rather than sharing the burden is not only to miss that mark of love, but also ultimately to dehumanize ourselves and others, which is a major problem for society. So following God’s commands about caring does not permit breaking God’s commands about killing, and that would be a biblical response to that second argument.

Sam Rohrer:

That’s great. Patricia, actually, I wrote down this as well, this thinking about suffering, you didn’t actually say these exact words, but I know this is what they say. Why should people be forced to suffer? That’s how they look at it. You mentioned job and so forth, but all through the scripture, suffering is hard. But from a biblical perspective, suffering is never without value or purpose. And that’s an interesting thing, and this is not the focus of the discussion here. I want to ask you another question here, but I have often thought about, even as you said, the advancement of pain medication to allow someone in final stages of death not to be subjected to the normal pains that could be associated with it. I’m just going to also raise here, I have struggled with that from the standpoint of I’ve witnessed family members that have passed into eternity.

And one thing I have thought is that there’s a downside to that pain medication, and that is unlike so many in the scripture like Abraham or others who call their children around them at the time of dying, and then they say their final words and then they pass away. I think far too many times right now we can get so opposed to any kind of thought of pain that we just get loaded up with whatever pain killer it is, and we leave this life without any ability to be able to encounter and even see as a believer does the entrance into heaven with oftentimes that happens. So anyway, I just throw that out there. You can comment if you want. And there just the other question I had then out of curiosity, what is the attitude of the citizens of Canada to what this is? And you’ve already said it’s been progressing regressing even further. Is there any opposition? What about the church?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, all great questions. So unfortunately, many citizens have fully bought into that idea that people should be able to control their own lives and deaths through euthanasia. So there was a survey of a thousand Canadians that found that almost a third would support SHAM actually over a third I believe would support SHAM even for homelessness and poverty. And that one in five say that any reason would be okay. So unfortunately just in the broader culture, this is very much being embraced within the church. Thankfully, the evangelical fellowship of Canada does take a strong pro-life stance and has statements and materials on their website about it. For Canadians, I know of people who are speaking against it in whatever context they can. Generally, the evangelical churches tend to be more pro-life than the mainline Protestant churches in Canada, which sometimes unfortunately do buy into that right to die narrative a little more saying it’s compassion and compassion is good or that type of thing.

But again, like we talked about, caring for people doesn’t mean breaking God’s commands. You can’t follow one of God’s commands by breaking another one. The Catholics would be more active in speaking up similar to the abortion issue right now. So there’s a lot evangelicals can do. And to go back to what you were saying about suffering as well, it reminded me, you mentioned how there’s this idea that no one should suffer. And biblically we’d recognize that yes, suffering is a problem, but it also reminded me the flip side of our culture is that everybody should be happy. You have a right to happiness and any kind of a frontier wellbeing, any kind of discomfort should be absolutely unthinkable. So it kind of goes into that what some people call the therapeutics culture, seeing that life’s priority should be happy and comfortable and convenient and anything else is terrible. And unfortunately that does cause a lot of issues. So it’s just interesting to see how all that fits together.

Sam Rohrer:

It sure does fit together, Patricia and ladies and gentlemen, I’ve dealt with that issue of being happy. A lot of people say follow your heart. The goal is to be happy. Alright, well what is from biblical perspective, well fear God and keep his commandments far better to fear God and obey him. And from that comes joy. There’s a difference, isn’t there? All these things that we’re talking about do fit together. We’re going to come back. We’re going to look now at some biblical alternatives to SHAM. Well, when we started this program, I cited if you were with us at the beginning, that reference from Ben Franklin about taxes and death being certain, right? But to that degree, he only picked that up from what scripture says, death is a certainty and nobody avoids it. In the scripture in Psalm 90, in verse 10, God actually established there, the average life now is three score years and 10 right, approximately 70 years.

We’re also informed by God that every life is sacred. Those are two facts, God’s established, but he’s also said, until natural death occurs, we are to protect life. And when that time comes, when death is imminent, be it before age 70 or by reason of strength or of God’s mercy, 80 years or beyond, death is certain for all people. Now at that time when death comes, and it won’t be to all of us, the sovereignty of God then comes to bear. But scripture does give plenty of instruction. It does instruction for not only living life and how we protect and nourish life of all that we can, but it also provides biblical alternatives to that which we’re calling today health sanctioned homicide or SHAM. So the Bible does speak as we know to all issues of life, and it does to this one as well.

Now, Trisha, before Pastor Matt asked you to identify some guiding principles. Here’s just more of a quick one for you. There’s also a verse in Eccles eight, verse 11 says, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of men is fully set to do evil. That’s a reality we’ve seen. I was in the Pennsylvania legislature, people know for about 20 years, and I’ll say that when the lawmakers actually begin to make laws that encourage evil, just not punishing the evil doer, but actually become an evil doer themselves and sanction it by law, it only gets not only worse, but more creatively worse. You’ve already given a little bit of indication, but as you’ve seen in Canada, what is the trend? Is it getting worse and more creatively worse when it comes to killing? And do you see anything right now that would suggest that the movement is a turning against this increasing sanction of homicide?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, good question. I did look back at the data. So again, it was sanctioned in 2016, or at least decriminalized. And then I was looking at the data from every year since then, and sure enough, the numbers have steadily increased every year by at least 15 more cases with the average increase if my math is right, being about 2000 cases per year in addition to the year before. So it’s continually growing upwards. And what I thought was really interesting is that the government used to show a chart in its annual report about euthanasia, showing how it had risen every year, and it just kept going up and up and up. And then last year they didn’t show that chart anymore. They had the data, but they didn’t have a visualization for it anymore. So that kind of stood out to me. And the number of non terminal cases, of course, has also been steadily increasing.

What’s super interesting is this is actually partially due to just the logic of the arguments we talked about for euthanasia. So different ISTs have pointed out how logically, if you start with those main two arguments of the right to die, autonomy and suffering, you have to end up expanding the people that you offer euthanasia to because if there’s a right to die, then why should it only apply to people who meet certain criteria? If autonomy and freedom and choice matters more than life itself, which that one branch of the argument says, then people should be free to choose death regardless of if they’re suffering and if really them suffering matters more than life. Then the other branch of the argument says then doctors should be able to kill suffering people even if they don’t say they want to be killed like we saw with the 517 cases in the Netherlands.

So either way, you have to expand access to death as a matter of redefined justice and rights. So then what used to be called safeguards are now called barriers to access of care, as one paper I mentioned says. So there’s also practical factors for why we see this expansion because it saves governments millions of dollars and helps meet the demand for transplant organs. So in Canada, unfortunately, we have an official report from 2020 that estimates that Shannon has already saved the government as of 20, 20, 86 $0.9 million in healthcare expenses. And Canada also, by the way, leads globally in rates of post euthanasia organ donations. So there’s some utilitarian factors here. Similarly, in the US there’s some research that suggests that health insurers can unduly influence patients to choose death, and it’s just really hard to make sure patients aren’t coerced when there’s so much concern about being a burden. So ultimately what ends up being, what starts being touted as a right to die turns into a duty to die. And we see ethicists arguing for that. So yes, unfortunately the trend is that it’s increasing.

Matt Recker:

Yeah, that’s sadly true. And we do have to be aware that once this door of sanctioning homicide opens, then the reasons to choose death are going to expand even to infants who are perhaps sick or those living in poverty and homelessness. You highlight that in your article as well, Patricia, and it will actually even cause some people to feel guilty if they choose to live when they could give their body and then they can use their organs and save the government money. That’s pragmatism at its worst, for sure. Well, friends, I would just like to say this if I may, Sam and Patricia, that if anyone is going through pain and suffering those listening, we must remember that God never wastes a hurt. And Jesus did say that in this world we will have tribulation, but in him we can have peace even in the midst of all our suffering. So Patricia, as we do bring this program to a close, rather than viewing life only as a function of how useful I can be or a function of utility as humanists do, and that’s related in the way they do embrace abortion and euthanasia laws, what are some of the key life biblical principles that are guided by a biblical worldview that you’ve identified that can really help us and instruct us in these end of life policies and laws?

Patricia Engler:

Yeah, for sure. Two biblical principles that come to mind. One, there’s the biblical mandate that you can’t take a life, and then there’s also the biblical mandate. On the positive side, you should bear other people’s burdens, how this might play out in policy and just in everyday Christian response. For one thing, those practical issues we talked about, the expansion of the criteria and stuff suggests that just from a policy perspective, the only responsible thing for governments to do is to prohibit SHAM. Just like the Bible says, don’t kill and legalizing. It just has serious consequences as well for the medical profession. So that can affect the mandate to care for people, and it’s just shown to be a Pandora’s box for society. So we don’t want to see other image bears being harmed, so we need to make sure that this is banned and that the policy doesn’t expand as multiple states are already looking into, by the way.

And you can find the citations for that on the article. So instead, governments and churches need to encourage that ethic of sharing burdens as we’re embodied creatures, this fallen world. So we want to promote good palliative care, good disability support, and pain management. Let patients know those options that are available for them. Patients who request euthanasia also sadly set high rates of loneliness, emotional distress, non-physical suffering. And this points to the need for Christians to get involved with spiritually caring for others. So whether that’s chaplains at hospitals or pastors local churches, Jesus said I was sick and he visited me in Matthew 25. So by living out this biblical view that affirms all image bearers have dignity, and we want to love the least of these as a result of that, we can help counter people’s concerns about losing dignity or being a burden that might make them want to get euthanasia. And then policy makers can also help by allocating resources to palliative care and pain control and spiritual care and disability support, helping the church in that way and just promoting better at-home care mechanisms like giving education and resources and tax benefits to caregivers. All of these types of things can help foster a culture that is centered around burden sharing rather than killing and does not see killing or homicide as the solution to suffering.

Sam Rohrer:

There you go, Patricia. There was an awful operator to say, we’re out of time. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, you can find her editorial when healthcare becomes homicide on their website answers in genesis.org, and then this program, go back and listen to it again. Look at the transcript. Stand in the gap.com.