MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Critics argue laws are being misused to punish the poor but experts say cases represent country’s failure to care for its most vulnerable citizens

After pleading unsuccessfully for affordable housing to help ease her chronic health condition, a Canadian woman ended her life in February under the country’s assisted-suicide laws. Another woman, suffering from the same condition and also living on disability payments, has nearly reached final approval to end her life.

The two high-profile cases have prompted disbelief and outrage, and shone a light on Canada’s right-to-die laws, which critics argue are being misused to punish the poor and infirm. In late April, the Spectator ran a story with the provocative headline: Why is Canada euthanising the poor?

But medical and legal experts caution that oversimplified media coverage of the cases fail to capture the realities of the system – and warn that sensationalist coverage of a handful of “extreme” cases ignores a larger crisis in the country’s healthcare systems.

Disabled people are opting for assisted suicide to escape grinding poverty.

Canada refers to ‘euthanasia’ and ‘assisted suicide’ by the friendlier-sounding term of ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID). The MAID programme was first introduced to end the suffering of terminally ill people, but its mission creep is now undeniable.

Denise (not her real name), a 31-year-old Toronto woman who uses a wheelchair, is nearing final approval for a medically assisted death. She only applied after her many attempts to move from her apartment, which she says worsens her severe sensitivities to household chemicals, all failed. She told Canada’s CTV News earlier this week that she was ‘relieved and elated’ by the likelihood of the approval. ‘I was scared that they weren’t going to say yes.’

Next year, Canadians suffering solely from mental illness may be eligible for medically assisted death. A parliamentary committee will release a report by June with recommendations on how this and other potential changes to Canada’s laws on euthanasia might be implemented. Rather than suggest how to go about these changes, this committee should recommend that we not go about them at all. Euthanasia should not be further expanded in Canada.

There is an endlessly repeated witticism by the poet Anatole France that ‘the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’ What France certainly did not foresee is that an entire country – and an ostentatiously progressive one at that – has decided to take his sarcasm at face value and to its natural conclusion.

Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves.

h/t NP

Police in Abbotsford, B.C. confirm they are investigating the medically-assisted death of a 61-year-old woman whose daughters say should not have been approved for the procedure based on the state of her mental health at the time.

The case involves Donna Duncan, a nurse and mother who died on Oct. 29, 2021. It appears to be among the first assisted-death cases being reviewed by a police unit in Canada, although federal officials don’t keep statistics on when such cases are reported to police.

A 51-year-old Ontario woman with severe sensitivities to chemicals chose medically-assisted death after her desperate search for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners failed, advocates say.

The woman’s assisted death appears to be a first in the world for someone diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), a chronic condition also referred to as an environmental illness or environmental allergies, say patient support groups and doctors familiar with her case.

… Environmental allergies are a condition clouded by controversy and disbelief, even in the medical community. MCS can occur either through a single exposure to high levels of chemicals or constant low-level proximity to them. Some people become hypersensitive to common chemicals used in perfumes, cleaners, pesticides and smokes.

Most people who seek a doctor’s help to die are already dying of cancer.

With terminal cancer, “there is something inside the body that can be seen,” says Dutch psychiatrist Dr. Sisco van Veen, tumours and tissues that can be measured or scanned or punctured, to identify the cells inside and help guide prognosis.

Slippery slopes? Never!

He left soon after breakfast on a July morning. The 26th was warm, with a few clouds drifting high. Alan Nichols, gaunt and bearded, wore a green hospital gown. His sister-in-law, Trish, remembers sun glinting off the room’s yellow walls. Through the billowing white curtains, they could see three storeys down to the parking lot of the Chilliwack General Hospital.

Alan was livid that morning in 2019, recalls his brother, Gary. He was yelling at the doctor, “This is my moment! If you can’t do it here, then get me to someplace that can!” Later, gesturing to Gary and Trish, he blew up again, shouting, “We’re not even the same blood!”