G3 Weekly—October 15, 2022

Ben Zeisloft

G3 Weekly 1920

Welcome to G3 Weekly—a summary of this week’s top news stories on Christianity and the public square.

This week, the government of Canada garnered controversy as officials extend assisted suicide to minors. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris assembled their task force on abortion for the second time. Meanwhile, data showed at least 120,000 children in the United States have been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” since 2017.

Canada Extends Euthanasia to Children

“The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any who go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17).

The nation of Canada is preparing to allow assisted suicide among minor children as euthanization rates become a leading cause of death.

According to a report from Common Sense, casualties from “medical assistance in dying” now account for 3% of the overall death toll in Canada—including a 4.7% rate in Quebec and a 4.8% rate in British Columbia. The number of assisted suicides among people between eighteen and forty-five years old is quickly rising.

Beyond amending the original euthanasia legislation such that citizens can apply for assisted suicide even without a “reasonably foreseeable” death, the Canadian government will soon allow “children who are sufficiently mature to make their own treatment decisions” in alignment with the “mature minor” doctrine.

Another report from the National Post detailed the rising debate over euthanizing babies who manifest handicaps or other developmental issues after they are born. Some parents have already asked for their children to be terminated.

An entire industry has now emerged around assisted suicide in Canada. While “death doulas” reassure patients approaching their euthanization, people curious about assisted suicide meet in “death cafés” to discuss the decision to kill themselves. There are more than 1,300 such businesses in Canada and 14,000 around the world.

Biden and Harris Talk Abortion with Top Advisers

“When the wicked rule, the people groan” (Proverbs 29:2).

President Biden and Vice President Harris called the second meeting of their “Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access” to discuss progress in federalizing abortion months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

As conservative states tighten abortion regulations and progressive states remove all restraints on the lethal procedure, the White House has pursued a number of policies to mobilize federal involvement in the slaughter of the preborn—such as providing abortions nationwide through the Department of Veterans Affairs and filing lawsuits through the Department of Justice.

Led by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and White House Gender Policy Council Director Jennifer Klein, the task force condemned efforts to enact criminal penalties upon those who provide abortion.

“One does not have to abandon their faith or beliefs to agree that the government should not be making these decisions for the women of America,” Harris remarked. “What we are seeing in laws around our country is the criminalization of doctors and healthcare providers. In some situations, up to five to six years in prison would be the penalty.”

Thousands of Children Diagnosed with ‘Gender Dysphoria’

“It would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

The number of children diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” has surged since 2017.

Data from health technology firm Komodo indicate that roughly 15,000 American children from ages six to seventeen received the diagnosis five years ago—a figure which surpassed 42,000 as of last year, according to an analysis from Reuters. The number of children receiving puberty blockers and the number receiving hormone therapy have each more than doubled over the same time horizon.

Though surgery is uncommon for children under the age of eighteen, such procedures are steadily becoming more prevalent. The number of minors who received top surgeries rose from 238 to 282 between 2019 and 2021.

“Some minors will continue to take hormones for many years well into adulthood, or they may stop if they achieve the physical traits they want,” the analysis said. “Hormone treatment may leave an adolescent infertile, especially if the child also took puberty blockers at an early age. That and other potential side effects are not well-studied.”

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Author G3 Weekly 1920

Ben Zeisloft

Ben Zeisloft is the editor of The Sentinel and a former staff writer for The Daily Wire. He and his wife, Neilee, are members at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.