I saw this posted on Facebook today from the official account of the US Department of Health and Human Services:
Canada has a program called Medical Assistance in Dying which allows people in chronic insufferable pain or with a terminal prognosis to go out at a time of their choosing. Canada, like virtually all modern societies, supports organ donation through a registration system to indicate a personal choice to donate organs or not.
In my opinion, there is not a single reason to not donate your organs once they are of no use. I’m proudly registered as an organ donor and have been since I got my drivers licence at 16.
Now HHS is using this as another wedge issue against socialized medicine. I’m not sure how long until they invade to liberate us from forced organ donation!
I had not seen this but it absolutely typifies the ways that the right-wing lunatic-sphere distorts facts to fit their own concept of reality and their own agenda. You must of course be absolutely free to buy a gun and shoot your neighbour and/or shoot yourself in the head, but a dignified medically assisted end to a painful terminal illness is absolutely a no-no in their crazy perverted minds!
Of course, judge as you will, but from the cited article:
O’Neill, who says he has opposed physician-assisted suicide for his entire career, told the Washington Examiner that HHS will continue to pay attention to “everything that touches or affects the supply of organs or the integrity or pressure that could be put on patients and families,” including pressure to remove life support.
So the HHS official walked into this with a long-held axe to grind.
Thanks for the link. O’Neill conveniently ignore the fact that more organs are available precisely because the deaths are under medical supervision resulting in more organs being viable for transplant.
If an assisted suicide involves the use of drugs, doesn’t that contaminate the organs? Also, I was under the impression that transplants had to be done while the patient was still living, i.e., brain dead. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Googling this a bit, it depends on the organ. This was published in November 2025:
I oppose Canada’s MAiD being adopted where I live for reasons in this link that now seems mostly behind a pay wall:
However, organ transplantation is a poor argument against MAiD. I also do not think it is the role of the U.S. government to criticize Canadian internal affairs, and especially not in such a ugly manner.
As I’m fond of saying, I’m far less appalled by the blithe way in which MAGA lies to its constituency than I am about how ready the constituency is to declare every MAGA lie – no matter how flagrant, consequential, destructive, egregious, or asinine – to be The Unerring Word of the Lord.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
― George Carlin
[Yes, median would be the more accurate descriptor here, but I love Carlin and would be grateful if we’d collectively give him a Mulligan here]
The Right wing has always believed that suffering is a moral good (especially when it’s someone else). It’s a given that they think that people they’d categorize as “godless unAmerican liberal pedophiles” should die as slowly and agonizingly as possible.
And both of them are the free choice of the person involved. If I don’t want to donate my organs, and I want to drag out my death kicking and screaming all the way, I’m allowed to do that.
Opposition to these options just reduces my freedom of choice, it doesn’t protect me in any way.
It’s a weird attack, because MAiD is legal in 12 U.S. states plus D.C. And Oregon ruled a few years ago that it is unconstitutional to refuse assisted suicide to people from other states who travel to Oregon, which effectively makes it legal for any US resident with the means to travel.
I don’t think it’s weird - I think it’s very much a part of the ongoing efforts in the USA to make Christianity (or rather, a very American version of it) the de jure religion which is very close to the hearts of a lot of the Religious Right.
Suicide isn’t just a choice after all, it’s evil from their POV.
I just mean it’s weird to attack Canada for it when there are already plenty of godless commies doing it right here in the U.S.
And not that it’s weird they’d attack Canada – of course they’re going to throw shit at any target they can, whether it makes sense or not. It’s just weird for any thinking person.
If they were the usual sort of thinking person, sure. If they’re thinking about another pretext to annex Canada though… Who knows.
I occasionally try to wrap my mind around things from the POV of MAGA, but since our visions of reality have diverged so much, that I increasingly can’t (or, often, won’t) manage it.