What It Really Means to Choose Life

Canada’s expanding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program and new advances in embryo genetic testing raise the same troubling question: how do we decide whose lives are worth living?

In Canada, one in 20 deaths now comes through MAID, and many who chose it said they felt like a burden. Some were not terminally ill but struggling with loneliness or frailty. On the other end of life, technologies like Orchid’s embryo testing give parents data to select which embryos to implant, often based on health risks, adding to a culture that already leads to near-universal abortion of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in some countries.

Both trends reflect a desire for control over suffering. But pain, weakness, and dependence are part of the human condition. Our value does not come from productivity or independence but from our shared humanity. Isolation drives people toward despair, while love and community can restore hope. A decent society must resist discarding the vulnerable and instead embrace them as lives of immeasurable worth.

For more information see David French “What It Really Means to Choose Life,” The New York Times, August 24, 2025. 

Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.  

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/trusts_estates_prof/2025/08/what-it-really-means-to-choose-life.html