(LifeSiteNews) — A Canadian Catholic woman shared her frustration with how her father’s new care home “pushed” residents to consider euthanasia as an option to end the life of their loved ones, saying that people of faith need to have a “voice” to speak out against the realities of the grim procedure.
A recent posting by the Archdiocese of Regina, Saskatchewan recalls how Linda Maddaford, the new head of the local Catholic Women’s League, had to endure pressure to have care home staff push Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) on her father.
“We as Catholics need to be able to have a voice,” Maddaford said about the experience, adding, “It’s so appalling and so egregious on so many levels. And we have to talk about it.”
Shortly after her mom died, Maddaford moved her dad into an old age care center in Saskatoon. She recounted how just a “day after” moving her dad into the facility, she got a “blanket email inviting us to come to a presentation in the dining room.”
She said that while it appears some families had “expressed interest” in MAiD, she was frustrated by the invite to the presentation regarding, as noted in the archdiocese’s report, “ending patient lives the day after entrusting her father into their care, offering that they could have simply given interested families a brochure.”
Maddaford noted how the whole ordeal was a “push from the top down,” adding that if “you don’t – if you aren’t open to the idea; you should be.”
“I worry for the people who feel the pressure of: ‘Well, my doctor advised it.’ Or ‘someone with a clipboard came around and kept asking,’” she observed.
Maddaford said that when it comes to caring for her father, her family “chose to not shy away from the hard parts of living.”
“Because it’s sacred space, I would say that faith is a gift. It’s a seed that has to be nourished. If you want to make space in your life for it, it will bloom. We made space in our life to care for our mom and our dad.”
Maddaford said that she believes MAiD should be “pushed back into the corner,” but added, “that is not what most of us will experience with our loved ones.”
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said regarding care for loved ones that “(Jesus) showed most fully what it means to love, to serve, and to be present to others. His response to the suffering of others was to suffer with them, not to kill them. He accepted suffering in his life as the pathway to giving, to generosity, to mercy.”
There has been strong pushback from many groups, even from those outside the Catholic Church, in fighting the current Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s planned expansion of MAiD in Canada.
As reported by LifeSiteNews earlier this month, a coalition of Canadian disability advocacy groups have banded together to file a “Charter Challenge” against the federal government for allowing euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill but suffer from chronic illness or disability.
In February, after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government delayed the mental illness expansion until 2027.
The number of Canadians killed by lethal injection under the nation’s MAiD program since 2016 stands at close to 65,000, with an estimated 16,000 deaths in 2023 alone. Many fear that because the official statistics are manipulated the number may be even higher.
Maddaford will be speaking about her family experience with MAiD on October 22-23 at the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan convention in Saskatoon.