MALTA’S DEADLY DILEMMA: EUTHANASIA AS A COST-CUTTING MEASURE?

by Maltese Canadian

A sinister shadow looms. Influential Maltese, under mounting pressure to legalise euthanasia, cloak their intentions in the soft language of compassion—a supposed lifeline for the suffering. But let’s not be deceived: this isn’t about mercy. It’s about money. With the state shelling out 70 euros per day for a bed in a private old people’s home and over 100 euros in government-run facilities, the elderly are no longer seen as lives to cherish but as burdens to shed. What a number of Maltese are contemplating is not a step towards dignity—it’s a plunge into a moral sewer, and the horror stories from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland prove it.

The financial strain is real. Caring for an ageing population costs a fortune, and the government’s accountants are clearly sweating. But the answer to this crisis isn’t to usher in a regime of state-sanctioned death; it’s to invest in care, not corpses. Legalising euthanasia in Malta would signal a chilling shift: the elderly, once the heart of family and faith, reduced to line items on a spreadsheet, their lives snuffed out to save a few euros. Three fourths of euthanized patients in Europe are women since they live longer than men. In a nation where we have long championed the sanctity of life and women’s rights, this is nothing short of blasphemy.

Let’s turn our eyes to the Netherlands, where euthanasia’s slippery slope has become a nightmare. Take the case of a woman with dementia: her advance directive hinted at wanting death if her condition worsened, but when push came to shove, she fought back. Her doctor’s response? Sedate her coffee, pin her down with family assistance, and inject the lethal dose. The courts shrugged it off. Is this the “choice” Malta wants to import, a system where consent is a mere suggestion, and the vulnerable are dispatched with clinical efficiency?

Belgium offers an equally grim warning. There, euthanasia has sprawled beyond terminal illness into the murky waters of mental health. A 44-year-old woman, tortured by depression after a failed sex-change operation, was euthanised for “unbearable psychological suffering.” Her despair was undeniable, but was death the only remedy? Belgium’s ever-widening criteria now scoop up the depressed, the anxious, the broken, raising a haunting question: when does “suffering” become a catch-all excuse for killing? This is a slope that ends in abyss.

Then there’s Switzerland, the poster child for “suicide tourism.” Its assisted dying clinics rake in cash from foreigners seeking a curated exit, often with scant oversight. In 2018, a 104-year-old Australian scientist flew in to die—not because he was dying, but because he felt life wasn’t fun anymore. Celebrated as autonomy by some, it laid bare a grotesque reality: death as a luxury service, peddled to the desperate with little scrutiny. Is Malta ready to join this macabre marketplace, where lives are traded like holiday packages?

The defenders of euthanasia will bleat about compassion, about giving people control over their fate. But this is a hollow lie. Where euthanasia reigns, coercion lurks. In the Netherlands, euthanasia deaths have tripled since 2002, with dementia and psychiatric cases soaring. In Belgium, non-terminal cases multiply unchecked. In Switzerland, the safeguards are a joke. The pattern is clear: once the door cracks open, it swings wide, and the vulnerable—elderly, disabled, depressed—are the first to fall through.

What kind of Malta do we want? One that treasures every soul, or one that tallies their worth in coins? The island’s roots cry out against this: life is sacred, the elderly a duty to protect, not discard. Yet the liberal press dangles “dignity” as bait, hoping we’ll ignore the truth: euthanasia isn’t empowerment; it’s abandonment. True dignity lies in bolstering palliative care, in lifting the elderly up, not laying them down for the final count.

Malta stands at a crossroads. Legalise euthanasia, and it risks becoming a graveyard for its values and mostly old women, a place where the proverbial “iż-żgħir” is culled to balance the books. The people must roar back: reject this deathly ploy. Demand care, not killing. Protect the soul of a nation that has always known life’s worth. The horror stories of the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada aren’t just cautionary tales; they’re a klaxon, screaming at us Maltese to turn back before it’s too late.