The 1970s are infamously known as the “Me Decade,” a term coined by writer Tom Wolfe, who described a cultural shift toward narcissism, self-fulfilment and hedonism among the Baby Boomer generation.

Theologian and sociologist Germain McKenzie says a similar self-centred worldview can help explain why legalized euthanasia has proven to be so popular in Canada and threatens to continue expanding in other Western nations. 

With Canada approaching the 10th anniversary of the legalization of MAiD on June 17, McKenzie, who teaches at Catholic Pacific College in Langley, B.C., said pro-life advocates need better strategies to loosen MAiD’s grip on the country. To do that, it’s important to understand how euthanasia has taken such a strong hold. 

Advertisement

McKenzie sees five major cultural trends over the past few centuries that have propelled this country to the precipitous place it is now. 

Primary are the Enlightenment’s emphasis on autonomous reasoning and Romanticism’s celebration of self-fulfillment. These ideologies thrive alongside capitalism’s utilitarian ethos, adverse impact of mass media and advances in medical technology allowing previously unimaginable procedures such as gender reassignment. Together they have eroded the Christian values on which Western civilization was built, McKenzie said.

The Enlightenment and Romantic ideals alone have “radicalized” our times, he said. Where once a Christian ethos balanced them and “put some limits in place,” all of that crumbled in the turbulent years following the Second World War amid the rapid secularization of society. Individuals now try to shape their own moral universe, as though society has reverted to an immature stage. 

The result is legalized medical killing, something unthinkable a generation ago outside of dystopian movies like Soylent Green (1973) and Logan’s Run (1976). 

It’s hard to predict just what future shocks will rock a society that has lost one of its core values — valuing the lives of the sick and the elderly. Medical deaths of willing patients have become commonplace to what St. Pope John Paul II called the culture of death.

 Life “has been devalued,” said Mathew Schmalz, professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass. “We need as a society to rethink our attitude to life,” being sensitive to “all its complexities,” joy as well as pain. 

Canada recorded 16,499 euthanasia deaths in 2024, thousands more than the Netherlands, which has the world’s second-highest annual total. More than five per cent of all Canadian deaths are now delivered by doctors and nurse practitioners, according to Health Canada’s Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying, released last November. 

An especially troubling aspect of Canada’s high MAiD numbers is that individuals with access to resources, care and support nonetheless seem to perceive their lives as no longer worth living, says Eoin Connolly, executive director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute. 

“This suggests a deeper cultural shift in how human dignity, suffering and dependency are understood,” Connolly said. The trend may reveal a culture that equates dependency with loss of worth. It’s “essential” that Canada address that issue to understand why people are lining up for MAiD and to understand “the collective moral consequences of choosing MAiD as a therapeutic solution.” 

Health Canada’s latest report says 4.4 per cent of MAiD deaths in 2024 were Track 2, which allows euthanasia even when death is not reasonably foreseeable. Connolly says many doctors report patients are opting for MAiD not only for suffering from illness but also the unavailability of specialized treatments and adequate community support. 

“Individuals are making end-of-life decisions within a context of unmet needs and systemic neglect,” he said. 

Ten years after Parliament legalized euthanasia, pro-death ideology has so permeated the Canadian health-care system that doctors and nurses routinely offer assisted death to patients in hospitals, and not just in palliative-care wards. 

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis has proposed a partial solution, introducing a private-member’s bill that would ban government bureaucrats from proposing MAiD to someone who isn’t asking for it. The bill, however, would not prevent doctors and nurses from initiating MAiD discussions, something MAiD opponents say can pressure the patient to accept a premature death. 

Denis Boyd, a Catholic psychologist based in Coquitlam, B.C., said MAiD can also ignite family turmoil. Boyd told of a man who decided on a MAiD death, “and his family, to a person, disagreed.” As related by the hospital chaplain, the family made their wishes known to hospital staff. When the MAiD death proceeded, “family members became quite upset and angry, which in turn traumatized the staff.“ 

Advertisement

To make matters worse, accounts of unrequested offers of MAiD, once considered shocking, now have become unremarkable. The situation has reached the point where Patricia Murphy, of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute in Toronto, fears that the option to have a MAiD death will become a duty. 

Schmalz agrees. 

“It can be a slippery slope when as a society we affirm the right to die and expand its context and justifications.” 

Murphy says MAiD poses a profound moral threat by sending a message, subtle or not, “that some lives are expendable.” That sustained message may have an increasing influence on the decision making of marginalized individuals.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, identifies other shifts and shocks to the country’s underlying moral foundation. 

“Too often, death is being presented as a solution, an escape from suffering,” Schadenberg said. “The very idea of life being so precious has been lost.”

Langley pro-life veteran John Hof said euthanasia, like abortion, has corrupted the character of medicine. 

“Look it up in the dictionary,” Hof said. “Nowhere will you find the definition of medicine having anything to do with killing. It’s supposed to be about care and healing.” 

Euthanasia has been so “sanitized and romanticized” by mainstream media that ending the lives of people with disabilities is falsely portrayed as compassionate and caring, says UBC law professor Isabel Grant. Media portrayals of MAiD as peaceful and just “going to sleep” might sound attractive to someone who has lived with significant hardship, Grant said. 

“I am concerned that the expansion of MAiD has changed the experience of living in Canada for people with disabilities,” Grant said. “Government has made into law the ableist notion that some people with disabilities are better off dead.” 

Health-care professionals with a pro-MAiD mentality are essentially asking the disabled, “Are you sure you want to stay alive despite your condition?” Such an approach, she said, “fundamentally changes” how people with disabilities interact with the medical profession and with others.

“Imagine going to a doctor’s office and disclosing that you are struggling, not able to make ends meet, not able to access necessary supports,” she said. “Your doctor raises the possibility of Track 2 MAiD.” 

The doctor’s message can be perceived as, “I’ve given up hope for you,” which can easily evolve into “there is no hope for you.” 

In the face of unavailable health-care services, death becomes the one “so-called treatment” that is always readily on offer, even by house call. Health Canada’s most recent MAiD report said more than 40 per cent of MAiD deaths in 2024 took place in a private residence. 

“People are choosing MAiD because they perceive themselves to be a burden on caregivers,” Grant said. “This quietly transforms MAiD into ‘the unselfish option’ that truly demonstrates love and concern for one’s family.” 

Advertisement

The very existence of MAiD is “coercive for people with disabilities,” she said, a conclusion also reached by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

In April 2025, committee chair Rosemary Kayess went so far as to ask whether Canada’s euthanasia regime had become a de facto eugenics program aimed at the disabled.