Canada greenlights doctor-assisted suicide for minors

Kiano Vafaeian wanted a doctor to kill him.

He wasn’t terminally ill. Nor was he suffering from excruciating pain.

The 23-year-old Canadian man was diabetic, had lost vision in his left eye, and didn’t have a girlfriend.

His depression about life prompted him to reach out to Dr. Joshua Tepper who agreed to kill him.  It’s all perfectly legal.   And perfectly heart-breaking!

A mother’s fight to save her son

Thankfully, Kiano’s 46-year-old mother, Margaret Marsilla, who lives outside Toronto, sensed something was amiss.  And, with the help of Kiano’s sister, who had access to his email account, discovered, to her horror, that a Canadian doctor had agreed to kill her beloved son on September 22nd.

Dr. Tepper’s cold September 7th email description of Kiano’s planned demise was especially poignant.

Tepper wrote, “I am confirming the following timing: Please arrive at 8:30 am. I will ask for the nurse at 8:45 am and I will start the procedure at around 9:00 am. Procedure will be completed a few minutes after it starts.”

If you read that email with no knowledge of what Tepper was describing, it sounds like Kiano could be getting a blood draw or a shot. It hardly sounds like murder.

To her credit, his mother launched a major social media campaign, pleading for Dr. Tepper to spare the life of her son.  Dr. Death was inundated with so many emails, phone calls, and texts urging that he call off Kiano’s slated execution, that he chose to withdraw his ghoulish services.

Sadly, despite the fact that Kiano’s life has been momentarily spared, he is actively searching for a second doctor who will kill him. (Listen to my conversation with Adam McManus on Time for Courage about Kiano and Canada’s disturbing euthanasia policies.)

The slippery slope of Canadian euthanasia

Since 2015, Canada has been on an ethical slippery slope, reports the European Times.

That was the year that its Supreme Court overturned criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide in Carter v. Canada. Shortly afterward, parliament passed Bill C-14 in 2016, which legalized so-called “medical aid in dying” for adults with “enduring and intolerable suffering” and a “reasonably foreseeable death.” In 2017, the first full year of doctor-assisted killing, 2,838 people opted for assisted suicide, according to a government report.

In 2021, Bill C-7 was passed, which legalized doctor-assisted killing for those struggling with mental illness. That’s the year the figure had jumped to 10,064—accounting for more than 3 percent of all deaths in Canada that year.

Why the dramatic increase? Over the past few years, Canadian doctors have taken an increasingly liberal view when it comes to defining “reasonably foreseeable” death.  Ah yes. The slippery slope strikes again!

Tragically, there have been a total of 31,664 doctor-assisted killings and the large majority of those people were 65 to 80 when they died, reports CommonSense.news. In fact, there is a shortage of Grim Reapers to kill the Canadian citizens wanting to end their lives prematurely.

In 2017, 34 of the dead were in the 18- to 45-year-old category, like Kiano. But that figure is growing. In 2018, 49 young people met their demise. In 2019, it was 103; in 2020,118; and in 2021, 139.

31,664 dead bodies!

Tucker Carlson of Fox News rightly said that Canada has embraced euthanasia because it’s “a way of cutting down on healthcare costs.”  After all, when the patient is dead, no more health care is necessary.  In one of his most dramatic understatements, he said, “This seems like a very big change in Western civilization.”

Mt. Sinai vs. Mt. Logan

31,664 Canadian souls, created in God’s image, have met their Maker.  A total disregard for the truth of Job 12:10 which says, “In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.”

But Canada’s civil magistrates have clearly rejected a Christian worldview, rejecting the Ten Commandments revealed on Mt. Sinai.  These Canadian Creeps have become their own gods, crafting a new and deplorable set of man-centered commandments which they’ve figuratively unveiled high atop Mt. Logan.

Just when you can’t imagine how Canadian standards could get any worse, they sink lower than the serpent’s belly in the Garden of Eden.

Canada’s kids will be allowed to seek their own deaths

Next March, the Canadian government is scheduled to enthusiastically expand the pool of eligible suicide-seekers to include “mature minors.”   That’s right.  Children below the age of 18, who are deemed “sufficiently mature to make their own treatment decisions,” will have some bizarre authority to rubber stamp their own death warrant.

Let me get this straight. 

Canadian law prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from enlisting in the military or purchasing booze or cigarettes. But these fools are okay with so-called “mature minors” wanting to end their own lives?

Under this policy, parents may just receive a nightmarish call from a hospital or a doctor’s office where their child has just been killed.  How has Western Civilization fallen so far, so fast?

Think about the minor who would be most tempted by this terrible legal seduction.

After a Canadian teen has experienced an especially painful romantic break-up or been the victim of merciless bullying, instead of talking to a parent, a pastor, or a counselor, death is being presented as a legitimate option on a silver tray.  Behind the parent’s back to boot!

After having just emerged from the COVID nightmare, with its attendant lockdowns and school closures that led to skyrocketing anxiety and depression among adolescents, this sounds like a good idea to Justin Trudeau?

Now, suicide is presented as health care!  Does it get any more Orwellian than this?

Hugh Scher, an attorney advising Margaret Marsilla, said, “While other countries have explored extending assisted suicide to minors, those governments have insisted on substantial safeguards, including parental notification and consent. Canada is poised to become the most permissive euthanasia regime in the world, including for minors and people with only psychiatric illness.”

Could America be far behind?

If Canada is an accurate crystal ball of America’s future, this horrific policy may be coming to America. 

Already, our beloved nation has legalized doctor-assisted killing in 10 states including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

According to Gallup, 72% of Americans support the idea of doctor-assisted killing for those with terminal illness.  Like Canada, don’t be surprised for our civil magistrates to sign off on this horrific policy for the mentally ill and then for children themselves.

The sanctity of life continuum

Euthanasia policy doesn’t occur in a moral vacuum.

Up until June 24th of this year, it had been the constitutional “right” in the United States to murder a preborn baby up until and including the ninth month of pregnancy for nearly half a century.  If this is not infanticide, then the word has no meaning. 

Even after the overturning of Roe, this so-called “right” goes on unimpeded in over half the states.  If America has allowed the wholesale slaughter of 62 million babies in the womb, then anything is possible. 

Plus, parental rights in Canada and America alike have been eviscerated.  Just look at the vaccine mandates for kids to attend school. Or the so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors that prohibit any parental objection to their child’s ingestion of hormone blockers or receiving mutilating surgeries to “transition” from one gender to the other.

Sure smells like neo-totalitarianism to me.

We as parents, grandparents, and professing Christians must fight all the harder against these godless purveyors of this satanic agenda.

A prayer for Kiano

One last thing.

Pray for God to reveal Himself to Kiano Vafaeian. He desperately needs to know the hope found only in a relationship with Jesus Christ. My prayer for this troubled 23-year-old Canadian young man comes right out of Paul’s epistle to the Church of Ephesus.

He wrote, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people.” (Ephesians 1:18)