Of course, we don’t call it that anymore. Now it’s Medical Assistance in Dying. The problem with this new name is that physicians, and nurses, and other medical professionals having been giving assistance to people who were dying for thousands of years. We’ve been giving comfort, care, treatment and sometimes hope. We were not always trying to cure—often we knew that was not possible—but we were never causing the death.

That’s what this is about. It’s not assistance in dying—it’s assistance to die. There is a big difference. The former is called palliative medicine, and, though it is woefully underfunded, the medical professional involved in this do everything possible to ease pain, to give comfort, and to bring peace to a terminal illness. They do not kill.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canadians have the right to commit suicide and have the right to ask for medical help…