Imagine one day you discover that your adult daughter, who still lives with you, wants to be euthanised. As far as you are aware, she is healthy. She suffers from autism and ADHD, but no physical illnesses or disabilities that you know of. You know that she has faced many difficulties in her life, but you love her and desperately want to prevent her death. You are left fighting against her doctors, who encourage her decision and are perfectly happy to help her go through with this. To make this nightmare even worse, no one will even tell you why your daughter has been approved to die.

This is the awful reality facing one father in Alberta, Canada. A judge issued a ruling this week that clears the way for a 27-year-old woman, known to the court only as MV, to be accepted into Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme. Despite the attempts by her father – known as WV – to prevent this, there was really very little that could have been done. Under Canadian law, the court had no choice but to allow his daughter to be killed. According to the twisted logic of assisted-dying campaigners, this is the ‘compassionate’ option.