Hey, Halloween is coming up. What better time for an article about that most ghoulish of subjects, Canada's "Medical Assistance In Dying" (MAID) assisted suicide law?
Like most such laws - sometimes referred to as "death with dignity" laws - the initial sell is based on giving terminally ill people with no hope of recovery and a dubious quality of life to punch their ticket out of this life with a little help from their doctor. It seems pretty gauzy on the "brochure" version:
Medical assistance in dying (MAID) is a complex and deeply personal issue. The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring our laws reflect Canadians’ needs, protect those who may be vulnerable, and support autonomy and freedom of choice.
Of course, the Canadian definition of "terminal illness" encompassed mental illness - leading to a series of Kafkaesque cases of therapy culture run amok:
April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year.
She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada's increasingly liberal laws...April plans to be in a "big comfy bed" for what she calls a "celebratory" moment when a medical professional will inject a lethal dose into her bloodstream.
"I want to be surrounded by the people I love and just have everybody hold me in a giant cuddle puddle and get to take my last breath, surrounded by love and support," she says.
The program has been...er, successful, I suppose, after a fashion:
Since legalization, the number of euthanasia deaths in Canada has steadily grown every year and showed little sign of slowing down. Between 2016 and 2023, over 60,000 Canadians have been euthanized, with over 15,000 in 2023 alone. Euthanasia now accounts for 4.7% of all deaths in the country, a rate second only to the Netherlands. Euthanasia is now the fifth most common cause of death in Canada. Compare these numbers with Oregon, the first American state to legalize assisted suicide in 1997. In 2023, 367 people died by assisted suicide in Oregon, or just 0.8% of all deaths in the state.
Social conservatives, attitudes stiffened by being proven right at every step of the way by the degeneration of similar programs in Europe, had two major concerns:
- That the practice would cheapen and commoditize human life
- That the cheapening would be manifested in the practices of national healthcare systems, and morph over from "death with dignity" - dare we say, "safe, legal and rare" - into "a replacement for nursing homes and long term care of the elderly".
It's not often that I get tired of being right all the time. But here we are; in this case, two women with non-lethal but expensive chronic conditions have been approved for the MAID program:
In February, a 51-year-old Ontario woman known as Sophia was granted physician-assisted death after her chronic condition became intolerable and her meagre disability stipend left her little to survive on, according to CTV News.
“The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the ass,” she said in a video obtained by the network. For two years, she and friends had pleaded without success for better living conditions, she said.
Now a second case has emerged with several parallels: another woman, known as Denise, has also applied to end her life after being unable to find suitable housing and struggling to survive on disability payments.
And if there's a disease more frustrating than dementia - which claimed my mother three years ago - I'm not aware of one. And it'd appear Canadian "health" authorities don't deal with frustration well:
A frail women in her late 80s with dementia received MAID after a family member brought forward a request for an assisted death, a new report reveals.
The woman’s life was ended after a MAID provider deemed the woman had given her final expressed consent to proceed, based on her ability to repeat a question and squeeze the provider’s hand.
Criminy - by the end, many dementia patents can't do anything but repeat phrases and squeeze hands. Taking that as consent for assisted suicde would be like killing "Rain Main" for watching Judge Wapner.
Heather Hancock suffers from cerebral palsy, a condition that has afflicted her since birth. The 56-year-old Canadian contends with debilitating muscle spasms which go from her toes through her back and can cause temporary paralysis.
Hancock, a devout Christian who recently published a faith-based novel, “Sister Lost,” told The Post she has a lot to live for.
Recalling a rough morning while being treated at a hospital in Alberta, Canada, Hancock told The Post, “I wasn’t moving very well and the nurse on my ward looked at me and said, ‘You really should consider MAID. You’re not living. You’re just existing.’ “
Canada appears to be turning "death with dignity" into "death with a deadline".
Brings new meaning to the term "gaslighting", doesn't it?
And so, inevitably, what was once "safe, legal and rare" is in danger of becoming the first option of the lazy and underfunded:
