<\/p>\n
Eight years into a fight for her life, talk radio host Glenn Beck is stepping in to help Jolene Van Alstine.<\/p>\n
Beck, who hosts a three-hour radio show every weekday, told CBN News he learned about Van Alistine\u2019s story live on the air from his co-host, Stu Burguiere, who asked if he\u2019d heard about her case. Beck\u2019s offer to fund her care, \u201cjust kind of came out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Saskatchewan native has for nearly a decade battled a diagnosis with normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism, a rare \u2014 but treatable \u2014 parathyroid disease causing extreme bone pain, nausea, and vomiting. Now, all these years in, Van Alstine is trapped in a sinister catch-22.<\/p>\n
In late November,\u00a0she visited\u00a0the provincial legislature, where she pleaded for assistance to undergo surgery to remove her parathyroid gland, the treatment for her particular diagnosis. Instead, she was reportedly met with another offer: assistance in dying.<\/p>\n
There are currently no surgeons in Saskatchewan able to perform the procedure she needs. So, Van Alstine has said she would need to be referred to a practitioner outside of the province, though she can\u2019t obtain a referral for such a surgeon without first meeting with an endocrinologist in Saskatchewan, none of whom are reportedly willing to accept new patients.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Van Alstine said, her pain has become so consuming and unbearable that she applied for Canada\u2019s MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) program, for which she was seemingly swiftly approved. She is scheduled to see a provider on Jan. 7 of next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy friends have stopped visiting me,\u201d she said in November. \u201cI\u2019m isolated. I\u2019ve been alone, lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end. I go to bed at six at night because I can\u2019t stand to be awake anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Alstine and her husband, Miles Sundeen, are quickly losing hope after years of fighting and are near the point of giving up amidst an impossibly unfair choice: Continue to suffer indefinitely with no path to treatment or end your life.<\/p>\n
Kelsi Sheren, a combat veteran and euthanasia prevention advocate, has pointed out the options placed before Van Alstine hardly constitute a \u201cchoice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c[C]hoice is only real when the alternatives are viable,\u201d she\u00a0said of Van Alstine\u2019s case. \u201cIf your options are slow agony or assisted death, that\u2019s not autonomy \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s coercion with a friendly tone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck, for his part, is gobsmacked by the facts of Van Alstine\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you let a person die?\u201d he asked rhetorically. \u201cHow do the Canadians \u2014 how are they viewing this? How are they not standing up themselves and saying, \u2018That\u2019s unacceptable. She doesn\u2019t have to die?’\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck, at another point in the conversation, said the West has \u201cbecome this Malthusian society that puts no value on human life, and we\u2019re going along with it because there\u2019s no meaning to life anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to reference the Old Testament passage of Deuteronomy 30:19, when the Israelites were standing at the border of the Promised Land and the Lord said through Moses, \u201cToday, I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live (NLT).\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here because we\u2019ve lost what the Lord said to the Jewish people when they first entered the Promised Land: \u2018Choose life,’\u201d the radio host said, calling it the \u201cmost sacred\u201d principle of Western culture. \u201cIf we keep going down this road, we are going to make the Germans look like rookies.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it stands right now, medically-assisted suicide is legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia. The states that have legalized it are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont, with Delaware joining the list in January.<\/p>\n
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) is\u00a0currently considering legislation\u00a0to permit mentally capable, terminally ill adults with a prognosis of six months or less to request a prescription for life-ending medication.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can\u2019t happen, it can\u2019t happen,\u201d Beck said emphatically, specifically referring to the Illinois legislation, later urging Americans to band together to stand up against laws like these.<\/p>\n
Watch our full conversation with Beck in the video above.<\/p>\n
As the number of voices facing big-tech censorship continues to grow, please sign up for\u00a0Faithwire\u2019s daily newsletter\u00a0and download the\u00a0CBN News app\u00a0to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eight years into a fight for her life, talk radio host Glenn Beck is stepping in to help Jolene Van Alstine. Beck, who hosts a three-hour radio show every weekday, told CBN News he learned about Van Alistine\u2019s story live on the air from his co-host, Stu Burguiere, who asked if he\u2019d heard about her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[848,3291,3293,3292,3294,3290,2060,2277,849,2456,1113],"class_list":{"0":"post-12235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jesus","8":"tag-assisted","9":"tag-beck","10":"tag-canadian","11":"tag-chokes","12":"tag-forced","13":"tag-glenn","14":"tag-pay","15":"tag-save","16":"tag-suicide","17":"tag-tears","18":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}