In this article, I write about suicide and abortion. I have tried to write both clearly and carefully on a difficult and important topic, but it is possible that my words may still cause hurt to some readers.
Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. – Luke chapter 12 verse 7
With none to heed their crying
For life and love and light,
Unnumbered souls are dying
And pass into the night.
From Facing a Task Unfinished, by Frank Houghton
In 2021, Canadian physicians intentionally killed over 10,000 people, permitted by law as so-called Medical Assistance in Dying. Of these, about 1700 had chosen to die in part because of ‘isolation or loneliness’ [1].
The Wikipedia article on euthanasia in Canada helpfully sets out the procedure used to kill these people [2]. There are four steps, carefully timed, with carefully measured injections. It concludes with a pair of brackets:
(cardiac arrest after Rocuronium injection usually occurs within 5 minutes of respiratory arrest).
I am not a medic, but I assume that this closing bracket means the person is now dead. One wonders what happens next. Presumably, a record is made of time of death alongside any other necessary details. In this way, the dead are numbered. Those 1700 people who together wrote that word, loneliness, now take their place together as a number. The cold record-keeping of mass-murder is nothing new in human history, but there is a bitter irony about the deaths of these 1700 lonely people.
The word numbered can have a sense very different from that of dispassionate calculation. We think of God numbering the hairs on our head, not from afar, but delicately lifting each strand and letting it settle again. We see the Good Shepherd – who knows His sheep – jostling amongst ninety-nine of them, trying to count and not double-count. It speaks of a love which notices and cares for the least, for the one. For the lonely.
And here we have 1700 lonely people, who have gone too long without being numbered. They feel that they have not been noticed amongst the inhabitants of this world, and so they conclude that they should take their leave. But their cry ‘for life and love and light’ does not echo into a void. Instead, they write it down on a piece of paper, which is then handed to a doctor.
Whenever one travels by train in England, one message is repeated over and over again on every station platform. In essence, it says: ‘If you are about to commit suicide, talk to someone; talk to us. They will help. We will help.’ Its necessity is tragic, but the message is worthy, and I would assume that the message is the same in Canada. But if it is, then it is not said in complete truth. For speak the correct words to your doctor, and you will not be noticed, or loved, or cared for. They will simply agree, and begin preparations to kill you.
Perhaps each of those 1700 people had additional reasons for wanting to die. Regardless, to hear a man or woman confess their absolute isolation, then to commit them to the darkest isolation – to allow them to pass by into the night of death, with no staying hand – is a unique evil. There are other and more fundamental arguments against euthanasia. But this callousness should make us rage especially. And we should ask whether it is coming to our shores.
Already, we see persistent calls for euthanasia to be allowed in England. For decades, we have had doctors killing unborn babies in their millions; babies who are eagerly awaiting, straining towards the ‘life and love and light’ of birth, but are not deemed worthy of it. They are too small, too dependent on their mother; they do not count. Unnumbered souls are dying, and pass into the night.
Let us beseech God our Heavenly Father, that He might number those whom no-one else will number. Those who have died, that He might wreak justice for them. Those who would die, that He might stay the hands of their killers, whether government ministers or physicians. And those whom He places around us, that we may imitate Him in tender care for the poor, the weak, the unnumbered.
The Second Discourseman
[1] Third annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2021. Health Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assistance-dying/annual-report-2021.html
The Four Discoursemen 