OPINION:
This phrase should strike terror into the hearts of decent people: “Life unworthy of life.” That is how the Nazis justified their euthanasia program, which started with disabled children and was later expanded to other classes of undesirables.
It became a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust. Now, Germany’s past could be our future.
Driven by demographic decline and rising costs of caring for the elderly, creeping fascism is advancing in Western medicine. Medical aid in dying is the latest euphemism; “assisted dying” is another.
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Two cases highlight the growing horror. The Netherlands, where 5.4% of all mortalities in 2023 were because of medical death squads, had its first case of a 1-year-old said to be severely disabled put to death under rules introduced in 2024. The decision was made by the child’s parents and physician, much like abortion decisions made between a mother and her doctor.
In the land of tulips, no one is safe.
In 2023, an autistic teenager was given a lethal injection by a physician. The teenager was described as “oversensitive to stimuli” in a National Post story and had reportedly called his own life “joyless.” In other words, according to the Dutch medical establishment, his life was unworthy of life.
In Canada, on July 10, an 83-year-old grandmother was put to death. She had stomach cancer but nevertheless had a good appetite. Medical personnel at her nursing home talked her into the procedure.
According to her granddaughter, the octogenarian changed her mind at the last minute and cried out to be saved, but the healers went ahead with the hit.
In Canada, an estimated 4.7% of all deaths are a result of medical aid in dying. The victims are usually elderly, vulnerable and unproductive.
In Belgium, 1 in 50 deaths is a result of medical aid in dying or euthanasia. Spain reported a 27.5% increase in euthanasia deaths from 2023 to 2024.
The common denominator in all these cases is low fertility.
A nation’s total fertility rate is the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime. A total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed just to replace the current population. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the total fertility rate is 1.44. In Canada, it is 1.25 and in Spain, 1.10.
Countries with low fertility are marked by an aging population and a shrinking pool of taxpayers to care for them. In the United States, per capita healthcare spending for those 65 and older is, on average, 2.5 times higher than for working-age adults.
An article in the British medical journal Lancet explains that what it calls “assisted dying” will become “a component of universal health care … available … to all people with unbearable suffering, those developing dementia and those who are tired of life.”
Do not tell a medical professional you are tired of life, especially if he is holding a syringe.
In some countries, it is projected that up to a quarter of the elderly will die in this way. Naturally, it will be sold as compassion. As we move deeper into the wasteland of demographic winter, there will be a growing incentive to get the elderly and infirm out of the way.
Both medical aid in dying and euthanasia are a rejection of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which values all life, not just the young and healthy.
For the National Socialists, euthanasia was utilitarian. When Germany’s eugenics law was enacted in 1933, Adolf Hitler was already planning a world war and did not want the nation burdened by individuals suffering from such disorders as cognitive impairment, schizophrenia, manic depression, epilepsy and physical deformity.
Stage 1 was to sterilize them. This was shown in the 1961 movie “Judgment at Nuremberg,” which concerned judging the German judges who helped facilitate Nazi atrocities.
Stage 2 was to eliminate those viewed as burdens on the state.
In the climactic scene of the movie, one of the German judges asks to see the American judge who served on the tribunal. Referring to a film taken at Dachau shown during the trial, the German, played by Burt Lancaster, declares: “I never knew it would come to that! You must believe it!”
The American, played with great effect by Spencer Tracy, replies: “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
Now we are following in the bloody footsteps of these monsters. It will seem compassionate to some — until the day they come for their aged grandmother or autistic son.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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