Canadian propaganda campaign paints euthanasia as ‘beautiful’ and ‘natural’

As Canadian doctors are instructed to offer assisted suicide to their patients, La Maison Simons, a fashion retailer based in Canada, has released a pro-euthanasia propaganda campaign, exploiting and glorifying the assisted death of a young artist. In the video, a 37-year-old woman, whose name is only given as Jennyfer, presents euthanasia as “the most beautiful exit.”

The video opens with a dark, cold image of a hospital room, before transitioning to Jennyfer, looking serene and happy, surrounded by friends at a beach and in a forest. “Dying in a hospital is not what’s natural, that’s not what’s soft. In these kinds of moments you need softness,” she said. “It can take dying to figure out what living is actually like. I spent my life filling my heart with beauty, with nature, with connection. So I choose to fill my final moments with the same.”

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She continued, “Last breaths are sacred. When I imagine my final days, I see music. I see the ocean. I see cheesecake. Even now, as I seek help to end my life, with all the pain, and in these final moments, there is still so much beauty. You just have to be brave enough to see it. And seeing the rhythms of what’s gonna keep going after I’m gone, bring a lot of comfort.”

The video closes with a text reading, For Jennyfer, 1985-2022.

The campaign, titled “All is Beauty,” presents euthanasia, or medical aid in dying (MAiD), as a happier, easier way to die. But the reality couldn’t be more different. Though the video presents dying in a hospital as unnatural and full of pain and hardship, what isn’t acknowledged is that palliative care can often address those issues, allowing a person to die naturally, in peace, and even in their own home.

Despite common belief, assisted suicide offers no guarantee of a peaceful death. The drugs used in assisted suicide are known to cause incredible pain and suffering that goes undetected by family and friends because a paralytic drug is given to the person first. And according to one expert, Dr. Joel Zivot, the person may actually “end up drowning.”

The pro-euthanasia ad also fails to mention how many people in Canada are resorting to euthanasia — not to lessen physical pain due to terminal illness, but because they are struggling with poverty, mental illness, or disability. The most recent annual report in Oregon found that the vast majority of people choose assisted suicide not due to pain or illness, but due to fears of losing autonomy, and not being able to enjoy the same activities as before.

People in Canada have sought assisted suicide because of the fear of homelessness, financial concerns, and the inability to get proper medical care. Romanticizing taking a vulnerable life is exploitative.