Glenn Beck took the bull by the horns. Beck is saving Jolene Van Alstine from making an understandable though awful decision. Beck’s act of charity is about alleviating suffering and giving hope. Everyone needs hope.

Van Alstine’s case spotlights an ongoing, dark trend in the West: the devaluing of human life. The U.S. is most certainly not exempt. The West is increasingly in the grips of a killing cult, whose champions mask terminating human life from prebirth to old age and everywhere in-between in the language of compassion and right.

Desperate, Van Alstine, a resident of Saskatchewan, Canada, applied to enter Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program. That means a physician or nurse practitioner can be enlisted to kill. Van Alstine was scheduled to be killed in January 2026.

Van Alstine requires surgery. Thanks to Beck, she’s going to get it. Her body is racked with pain. Beck’s generosity is giving her access to American surgeons. A Tampa area hospital stands ready. If successful, the surgery and treatments will improve Van Alstine’s health and quality of life.

Van Alstine is 30 years old. She has a rare condition. It’s called neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2). It’s an acutely debilitating and painful disease. She’s suffered for eight long years. Per her own report, her affliction has isolated her. Canadian healthcare has failed her. Desperation drove her to choose assisted suicide.

Canada’s bureaucrat-run healthcare is snarled with red tape. Worse, it’s resource strapped. Alternatives were denied Van Alstine.

Per The Hub, November 7:

By 2029, the compounding federal debt is forecasted to cause interest payments to surpass Ottawa’s combined transfer payments to the provinces for health care and child care. That fiscal year, the federal government projects public debt charges will hit $76.1 billion, while the Canada Health Transfer ($65 billion) and Canada-wide early learning and child care ($8.5 billion) will cost taxpayers a combined $73.5 billion -- or $2.6 billion less.

Get that? Servicing national debt because of the spendthrift Trudeau and Carney governments is outstripping expenditures for medicine and related healthcare. Carney has priorities other than his citizens’ medical care, anyway. Government-run healthcare pledged ease of access, timely care, and quality service. Overall, Canada’s “Medicare” system has struck out.

Delays, long waits, and denials aren’t uncommon. That’s not just for rare conditions. Reports the Fraser Institute, December 9:

In 2025, physicians across Canada reported a median wait time of 28.6 weeks between a referral from a GP and receipt of treatment; down from 30.0 weeks in 2024.

That’s over seven months to see a general practitioner. You know, just for routine concerns. Further, according to the Fraser Institute, there’s a backlog of 1.4 million medical procedures across Canada’s ten provinces. What’s endemic in Canada must be boundless frustration.

The point isn’t merely another recitation of Canada’s stumbling government-run health system. It’s to give context. We can see why Van Alstine finally decided to throw in the towel. Without good options, the system funneled her to assisted suicide. MAID became her last resort. MAID, it seems, increasingly functions as a safety value for a resource-starved system. Assisted suicide is Canada’s fifth highest cause of death.

How was Van Alstine directed? Canadian national healthcare required Van Alstine to seek a referral for surgery from a specialist in Saskatchewan. Fair enough, you say? The kicker is that in-province specialists were no longer taking new patients. Their patient loads are full. Since there are no surgeons in Saskatchewan capable of performing the operation, the referral would be for out-of-province care, anyway. And who knows what wait lists look like for surgery in other provinces?

Of course, bureaucrats being bureaucrats and politicians being politicians, they’ll talk around Van Alstine’s dilemma. An outlier, they’ll declare. No system is perfect. Are you claiming that U.S. healthcare doesn’t have problems, they’ll counter?

Yes, indeed, U.S. healthcare needs overhauling -- as in greater consumer empowerment and reducing government control. But that’s another topic for another day. Assisted suicide is a feature of Canadian national healthcare. U.S. Medicare and Medicaid have no equivalent.

Advocates declare that assisted suicide is about compassion for the terminally ill. Its goal is humanely ending suffering. A group in the U.S. called “Death with Dignity” is pushing legislation in the states to legalize medically assisted suicide. To date, 12 states have passed legislation authorizing the practice. Illinois governor J.D. Pritzker just signed legislation adding his state to the list. Seven other states are considering laws. You can bet these advocates want a U.S. version of MAID.

MAID is a disposal system. Here’s why. Van Alstine isn’t terminally ill, i.e., without treatment options. She didn’t want to die. Surgery gives her a shot. Killing her under the circumstances is compassionate? She’s the victim of a failing system.

Does Canadian national healthcare track the number of people who elect assisted suicide because they gave up, people who have been stymied by the system? How many Van Alstines are there?

CBN provides information from Health Canada's Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying, December 5:

Nearly one-fifth of the 23,000 people who requested MAID, had a "grievous and irremediable medical condition," such as diabetes, autoimmune conditions, and chronic pain, and were denied assisted suicide.

But about 4% of people who were approved for assisted suicide did not have a terminal diagnosis or reasonably foreseeable death. 

Nearly 23% of people overall reported "isolation or loneliness" as a reason for seeking euthanasia. Medical practitioners reported that about 50% of people requested it because of being a "perceived burden on family, friends, or caregivers."

MAID was intended only for people with terminal illnesses? Maybe initially. But since its inception in 2015, the program’s reach is expanding.

First, it was limited to competent adults suffering acutely from terminal illness. Then in 2016, rules were loosened to permit euthanasia for those whose natural death was foreseeable. In 2021, the program included nonterminal cases (natural death not reasonably foreseeable). Implementation of a suicide proviso for mental illness has been postponed until March 2027. That’s "postponed," not scuttled. Finally, parliamentary reviews are underway of a Quebec study that would allow “mature minors” to elect assisted suicide.

Mission creep doesn’t describe this. It’s more like “gallows gallop.” Whatever its first intentions, MAID is looking more and more like a safety value for woefully inadequate healthcare.

Will the gallows gallop stop? Remember when Bill Clinton claimed he just wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare?” Abortion rare? Not today. Abortion is a woman’s right, abortion champs boldly proclaim. No compelling reason needed. Access is easy. Can a baby’s life be valued even less? Yep. Today, pro-abortion forces push killing babies up to the moment of birth, if the mother chooses.

I’ll ask again: Will it stop? Or when will prominent persons begin speaking out about a duty to die? When will it be positioned as a societal obligation to have oneself killed when one’s productive life ceased? When will we hear the argument that those born with serious congenital defects drain precious resources? As Malthus would argue, the pie is only so big; there’s only so much to go around. Maybe Scrooge was right about a need to “decrease the surplus population?” Or undesirable populations, as was the case with eugenicist Margret Sanger and Planned Parenthood.

As Glenn Beck said on his Monday show, the West’s greatest epiphany has been that every human being has inherent worth. Life is precious. Careful not to fall prey to sophists, whose chief occupation is twisting words. Taking life isn’t valuing life. Killing isn’t creating. Nurturing and sustaining life is paramount.

Said G.K. Chesterton:

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.

Image: AT via Magic Studio