Life Holds Value at Every Stage - A Canadian Horror Story

“They’re going to kill me?”

Those words should stop us cold.

According to her family, 83-year-old Brigitte Stegemann asked that question after her granddaughter explained what Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program would do. Brigitte suffered from advanced stomach cancer. She was elderly. She was vulnerable. And on July 10, 2026, a medical professional intentionally ended her life by lethal injection.

Her family says Brigitte had earlier rejected physician-assisted killing because of her Christian faith. They say she later became confused and frightened, cried that she had made a mistake, and never gave the final verbal consent they understood would precede her death. Those allegations deserve careful investigation before conclusions are reached about the conduct of any particular individual. But the most important question reaches far beyond whether every procedural box was checked. The deeper question is what kind of society gives government and medical professionals the legal power intentionally to end an innocent human life?

For Christians, the starting point is clear. Human beings are made in the image of God. Our lives therefore possess inherent value—not because we are young, healthy, productive, independent, or free from suffering, but because of who created us.

Life holds value at every stage.

A grandmother does not become less valuable when she can no longer care for herself. A person facing cancer does not lose dignity when her body begins to fail. A frightened patient does not become expendable because caring for her is difficult, costly, or emotionally exhausting. Indeed, the moment when a person becomes weakest is precisely the moment when a civilized society should become strongest in her defense.

Canada’s euthanasia regime turns that principle on its head. It places in the hands of fallible human authorities the power to decide when intentionally causing death becomes an acceptable form of medical care. Beyond healthcare, that is an extraordinary delegation of governmental power over human life. And human beings are fallible. Doctors can misunderstand. Patients can become depressed. Families can disagree. Communication can fail. Diagnoses can be wrong. Institutional pressures can influence judgment. Governments can expand exceptions. Standards that once appeared narrow can change over time.

None of this should surprise us here in the USA. Our entire constitutional tradition rests upon the recognition that human beings cannot safely be trusted with unchecked power. James Madison famously observed that if men were angels, no government would be necessary—and if angels governed men, no controls on government would be necessary. We are not governed by angels. Yet physician-assisted killing entrusts government-authorized actors with the one decision for which no later correction is possible. A wrongful arrest can be reversed. An erroneous judgment can sometimes be appealed. A mistaken regulation can be repealed. Even grave governmental errors may occasionally be remedied. Death cannot. If an elderly woman is misunderstood, if her despair is temporary, if her consent is uncertain, or if someone simply gets it wrong, there is no appellate court capable of restoring her life. That should matter enormously in any system of good governance.

But there is an even deeper problem. Even perfect compliance with an immoral law does not make the underlying act moral. The issue is not ultimately whether euthanasia is administered carefully. The issue is whether intentionally killing the innocent should ever become a lawful function of medicine or government.

Compassion cannot mean eliminating the person who suffers. True compassion comes alongside the suffering person. It treats pain. It provides hospice and palliative care. It assists overwhelmed families. It sits beside the lonely. It holds the trembling hand. It reminds the frightened elderly woman that she is not a burden and that her life retains meaning even when she can no longer see it herself. Jesus taught this kind of compassion in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The wounded man was not evaluated for usefulness. He was not abandoned because caring for him was inconvenient. His vulnerability created an obligation in his neighbor to draw nearer. That is the moral vision a humane society should recover.

We should also be honest about language. “Medical Assistance in Dying” is a deceptively benign phrase. Where a physician administers a lethal substance for the purpose of causing death, the government is authorizing the intentional taking of human life. Sanitized terminology does not obscure moral reality.

Brigitte Stegemann was more than a case file, a diagnosis, or an assessment of eligibility. She was a woman loved by children and grandchildren. She was a human being made in the image of God. Her illness did not diminish her worth. Her dependence did not diminish her worth. Her fear did not diminish her worth. And her life did not cease to have value because death was drawing near. A just society does not measure human worth by strength, autonomy, or usefulness. It protects life precisely when life is most vulnerable.

That is compassion. That is good governance. And that is why life must be cherished at every stage. From its beginning until natural death.