(LifeSiteNews) — On a recent panel discussion on Chris Williams’ Modern Wisdom podcast, pronatalist Simone Collins gave a ringing endorsement of euthanasia.
“I want people to be happy,” Collins said. “I believe, for example, in euthanasia. I love euthanasia.”
“I think it’s terrible,” another guest, Stephen Shaw, interrupted.
“It’s beautiful!” Collins shot back. “MAiD [Canada’s euthanasia program] is the smartest thing Canada ever did, and that’s going to be the solution to healthcare in the future.”
Shaw noted that it creates a society fueled by ageism – that in Japan, for example, some young people already look at older people and say: “Why are they still here?”
“No, really,” she said. “We need MAiD in Japan. We need MAiD here. All of it.” When a third guest interjected that meaning rather than suffering is the problem for despairing elderly people, Collins got right to the point.
“Then let the ones who lack meaning get out of the way,” she said. “I will die by my own hand if I’m lucky enough to live long enough. When I am no longer useful, I will end myself.”
READ: Grieving mother dies in Swiss assisted suicide clinic
I know I have cited this quote before, but as the debate on euthanasia ramps up across the developed world, I keep on coming back to Stanley Hauerwas’s prescient but grim observation: “I say in a hundred years, if Christians are known as a strange group of people who don’t kill their children and don’t kill the elderly, we will have done a great thing.”
Consider the fact that Simone Collins’ euthanasia advocacy came in the context of a discussion on how to respond to the impending demographic collapse that looms over the Western world. Collins and her husband Malcolm host the Based Camp podcast and advocate for higher birthrates and a pragmatic approach to the challenges that will inevitably arrive as societies become increasingly childless.
The pronatalists, as I have noted before, are not pro-lifers – and they are certainly not Christian. Like Elon Musk, Simone and Malcolm are eager to utilize technology in their crusade to boost the birthrate, including IVF, genetic screening to “select” human embryos with the most desirable traits (including IQ), and what has been referred to as “hipster eugenics.” The couple also supports abortion up until 12 weeks.
The fact that a couple described by most media outlets as “conservative” – having children, it turns out, is now right wing-coded – has also embraced some of the most dehumanizing and dystopian eugenic trends available to civilized society thus far reveals much about where the pronatalist movement will go. The pronatalist movement is not about the natural family, it is about more children, at any cost – even at the cost of other children.
It is worth noting that Simone Collins’ comments on euthanasia neatly summarize what I suspect will be the conclusion developed societies with collapsing birthrates will come to in the post-Christian era:
- When the social welfare system premised on a replacement level birthrate implodes, euthanasia will replace healthcare out of utilitarian necessity.
- The suffering and despair of elderly people who are too weak to find meaning in their lives should “get out of the way,” and society has no obligation to these vulnerable men and women.
- Canada’s euthanasia regime – which the Collins’ have criticized in the past on their podcast – is not a tragedy, but cutting-edge.
These views may sound jarring, but they are not fringe. Many euthanasia advocates have already expressed them as bluntly as Simone; former Tory MP Matthew Parris noted in the Spectator over a decade ago that, “Soon we will accept that useless lives must end.” Christians should be prepared for what is coming. It won’t be pretty.
