This article was published by Bioedge on September 6, 2022.

By Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet

As the cartoon above suggests, disability activists fear that euthanasia could become a cheaper option for medical care. In a position paper published by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, in the UK, a Canadian expert in disability studies contends that “While the expansion of [euthanasia and assisted suicide] has been motivated by a desire to end suffering and respect autonomy, in doing so we have created significant risk to disabled persons in a world which largely sees their lives as less valuable, as ones of inevitable suffering and as not worth living.”

Gordon Friesen reponds to an article by Dr Douglas Heinrichs titled: The Case for Medical Aid in Dying (Part 3). Friesen is a disabled man who has closely followed the euthanasia debate and is now President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

By Gordon Friesen

From the very beginning of the assisted suicide debate, the elephant in the room has always been the so-called “disability community”, because this very diverse group contains large numbers of people who would logically be eligible for MAID; many of whom have followed the question closely; who understand first-hand the reality of medical suffering; and who are, in an overwhelming majority, opposed to the legalization of assisted death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Tristin Hopper wrote an insightful article that was published in the National Post on August 15 titled: Canada is getting comfortable with killing its disabled.

Roger Foley

Hopper focuses on several stories concerning people with disabilities who have been pressured to die or have died by euthanasia. Many of these people have disabilities and were also living in poverty.

Hopper writes about Roger Foley of London, Ontario, who did not ask for euthanasia but was urged to ask for it. Hopper writes:

This week, a feature by the Associated Press quoted secretly recorded audio from a London, Ont.

The DutchNews.nl reported today that Dutch Health Minister Ernst Kuipers announced the intention to extend euthanasia to children, but without changing the law. Kuipers intends to extend the Groningen Protocol, which currently applies to babies, to include children under the age of 12.

An article by Peter McLaren Kennedy for EuroWeekly stated:

The proposed protocol contains seven criteria for euthanasia for those between one and 12. Doctors will have to be convinced the child’s suffering is unbearable and there is no possibility of a cure or a treatment to alleviate the pain.

The following article was published by the Epoch Times on June 22, 2022.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Frederico Carboni made international news recently when he died in Italy’s first legal assisted suicide. Carboni was not terminally ill. He was paralyzed from an auto accident. He wanted suicide because he had no autonomy, saying in an interview, “I am like a boat adrift in the ocean.”

How tragic. Quadriplegia need not be the end of all good things. People who have experienced such catastrophic accidents often pick up the pieces and get on with life—when they receive life-affirming care and are not merely “warehoused” in a nursing home.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Recently articles about concerning approvals and deaths by euthanasia (known as MAiD) in Canada have opened the question of have we gone too far in Canada?

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition opposes all MAiD deaths, but sadly, we accurately predicted that once the line in the sand that gives doctors and nurses the right in law to kill their patients was crossed, the rules and reasons for approving medical killing (MAiD) would expand. This is what Canada has experienced.

Dr Ramona Coelho, a family physician who specializes in caring for marginalized people, recently wrote about two cases of premature deaths by MAiD in Ontario.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Brian Bird

Brian Bird, who is an assistant professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of B.C. wrote a Special article that was published by the National Post on May 4, 2022. Bird explains why the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD), that is currently holding hearings on further expanding Canada’s euthanasia (MAiD), should instead stop any further expansions of the law. Bird writes:

By next year, Canada may have journeyed — in only seven years — from a total prohibition on euthanasia to euthanasia at an adult’s deathbed to euthanasia for mental and physical illness at any moment of an adult’s life.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Jurgen Hecker wrote a film review of the Japanese dystopian euthanasia film “Plan 75” that was published by Japan Today on May 22. “Plan 75” reportedly shook audiences to the core at the Cannes film festival.

“Plan 75” responds to the aging demographic of Japan with a dystopian vision of a government program that would encourage people to die by euthanasia at the age of 75. Hecker wrote:

In the movie, anybody over 75 is encouraged to sign up for a deal with the government by which they receive a sum of money in return for agreeing to be euthanised.

Dr. Ebru Kaya is an associate professor of medicine and the president of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians (CSPCP) and Dr. Leonie Herx is division chair and associate professor of palliative medicine at Queen’s University and a past president of the CSPCP wrote an opinion article that was published by the Globe and Mail on May 9, titled: Assisted dying must not be confused with palliative care.

The context for the article is the government committee that is examining the expansion of MAID to children (mature minors) and incompetent people who requested death in their advanced directive.

By Dr Paul Saba is co-founder of Physicians for Social Justice and is the author of a book entitled “Made to Live.” 

The proposed Bill 38 being debated in the Québec National Assembly is dangerous. Cognitively impaired people will be allowed to decide by advanced directives the ending of their lives via lethal injection by euthanasia. This should not happen. Quebec parliamentarians must vote no to Bill 38. (Link to Bill 38).

Henriette is a woman in her 70s who has been experiencing slow cognitive decline and has been my patient.

Her daughter is a busy real estate agent who until recently was able to help care for her mother who lived downstairs in a duplex they shared.

By Michalina Ratajczak
Assistant to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Executive Director

Dr Coelho’s presentation to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (Link). (Facebook Link).

On May 13th, 2022, the Canadian government’s expert panel on MAiD and Mental Illness released its final report, which recommended no added legislative safeguards to Bill C-7 for those living with mental illness. Dr. Ramona Coelho (blog link), who recently presented at a meeting of the federal Special Joint Committee examining the provisions of the Criminal Code relating to medical assistance in dying, noted that the expert panel’s report:

“…is more dangerous than I could have anticipated.

By Nic Steenhout, Disability rights advocate and the former Director of Vivre dans la Dignité

Nic Steenhout

It is with great sadness and a fair bit of distress that I learned about two recent cases of so-called “Medical Aid In Dying” (euthanasia by any other name). The stories of two disabled women who were pushed to apply for MAID because their circumstances didn’t allow them the choice of living would be distressing for most of us.