Proponents of legalized physician-assisted suicide often couch their arguments in the verbiage of pain and dignity. They say that people with terminal and agonizing conditions should be offered the option of “death with dignity” on their own terms. While there are counterpoints against this policy, free people tend to gravitate toward ideas that feature personal agency and consent. Even if one has moral qualms about a culture that blesses any form of suicide, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for people suffering terribly from incurable illnesses.

One of the most common concerns raised against “death with dignity” laws has always been some version of the slippery slope argument, which is often a logical fallacy. But not always. On this front, prescient warnings along these lines have been repeatedly vindicated by events. Our neighbors to the north are a case study in this terrifying and heartbreaking phenomenon.

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Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program started with all the usual appeals to compassion and dignity. It has since expanded rapidly and inexorably to make state-approved suicide as widely available and streamlined as possible. MAID has become one of the top five causes of death in all of Canada, rocketing up the list at a shocking rate. Writer T. Becket Adams recently placed the scope of Canada’s suicide machine into perspective by contrasting it with gun deaths in the United States, a common critique of America from abroad. This is startling:

“In 2023, there were approximately 15,500 MAID suicides. To put things into perspective, 2023’s recorded figure gives us a per capita rate of 37 MAID suicides per 100,000 people. During the same........

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