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MAiD

Even Canadian leftists are starting to recognize the ‘dystopian’ nature of MAiD

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From LifeSiteNews

By Alex Schadenberg

Euthanasia based on poverty or disability is rarely based on personal choice and autonomy, it is horrifying, it is profane, it is the outcome of a failed social welfare system, and it is indefensible.

David Moscrop wrote an excellent article that was published by Jacobin Magazine on May 2, 2024. Jacobin is an ideologically left magazine, which is concerned about Canada killing people with disabilities and the poor by euthanasia, known as MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying).

The article begins with this quote:

Canada boasts one of the world’s highest assisted-death rates, supposedly enabling the terminally ill to die with dignity. However, this suicide program increasingly resembles a dystopian replacement for care services, exchanging social welfare for euthanasia.

Moscrop tells the story of Normand Meunier, the quadriplegic man in Québec who died by euthanasia after suffering from horrific neglect. Moscrop writes:

For want of a mattress, a man is dead. That’s the story, in sum, of a quadriplegic man who chose to end his life in January through medically assisted death. Normand Meunier’s story, as reported by the CBC, began with a visit to a Quebec hospital due to a respiratory virus. Meunier subsequently developed a painful bedsore after being left without access to a mattress to accommodate his needs. Thereafter, he applied to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.

As Rachel Watts writes in her report, Meunier spent ninety-five hours on a stretcher in the emergency room – just hours short of four days. The bedsore he developed ‘eventually worsened to the point where bone and muscle were exposed and visible – making his recovery and prognosis bleak.’ The man who ‘didn’t want to be a burden’ chose to die at home. An internal investigation into the matter is underway.

I find it interesting that the article states that Meunier chose to die by euthanasia when in fact he was put into an untenable situation. Moscrop then reinforces the concerns of the disability community:

Disability and other advocates have been warning us for years that MAiD puts people at risk. They warned that the risk of people choosing death – because it’s easier than fighting to survive in a system that impoverishes people, and disproportionately does so to those who are disabled – is real. Underinvestment in medical care will push people up to and beyond the brink, which means some will choose to die instead of ‘burden’ their loved ones or society at large. They were right.

Moscrop comments on how euthanasia is the outcome of a failed social welfare state:

A libertarian ethos partially underwrote the fact that not many people blinked when MAiD was initially rolled out. Taking a more expansive view of rights, many of those not swayed by rote libertarianism were convinced that concerns over bodily autonomy and compassion were reason enough to adopt MAiD. However, in the absence of a robust welfare state, and in the face of structural poverty and discrimination, particularly toward disabled people, there is no world in which the MAiD program can be understood to be ‘progressive.’

Indeed, last year, Jeremy Appel argued that MAiD was ‘beginning to look like a dystopian end run around the cost of providing social welfare.’ Initially supportive, he changed his mind on MAiD as he considered that the decisions people make are not strictly speaking individual but are instead collectively shaped and sometimes ‘the product of social circumstances, which are outside of their control.’ When we don’t care for one another, what do we end up with?

‘I’ve come to realize,’ wrote Appel, ‘that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning with the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism – we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life [. . .] and if you don’t like it, why don’t you just kill yourself?’

READ: Young, healthy women being euthanized in the Netherlands should be a warning for Canada

Moscrop then comments on that euthanasia for psychiatric reasons has been delayed in Canada based on the lack of mental health care. He refers to the reality as grotesque and writes that this is the stuff of nightmarish science fiction. Moscrop comments on the broken social welfare system in Canada.

In Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, a recipient of disability support receives about $1,300 a month – a pittance they’re meant to stretch to cover food, shelter, and other basic needs. Ontario Works – the province’s welfare program – pays a current maximum of $733 a month. Meanwhile, rental costs for a one bedroom apartment routinely push toward an average of $2,000 a month in many cities. In April, in Toronto, a one bedroom apartment averaged almost $2,500 a month.

Moscrop challenges a statement by euthanasia activists James Downer and Susan MacDonald who stated:

Despite fears that availability of MAiD for people with terminal illness would lead to requests for MAiD driven by socioeconomic deprivation or poor service availability (e.g., palliative care), available evidence consistently indicates that MAiD is most commonly received by people of high socioeconomic status and lower support needs, and those with high involvement of palliative care.

By their own admission, the data on this matter is imperfect. But even if it were, the fact that ‘most’ patients who choose MAiD are better off socioeconomically is beside the point. Some are not – and those ‘some’ are important. That includes a man living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis who, in 2019, chose medically assisted death because he couldn’t find adequate medical care that would also allow him to be with his son. It also includes a man whose application listed only ‘hearing loss,’ and whose brother says he was ‘basically put to death.’ This story came a year after experts raised the concern that the country’s MAiD regime was in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2022, Global News said the quiet part out loud: poverty is driving disabled Canadians to consider MAiD. Those ‘some’ who are driven to assisted death because of poverty or an inability to access adequate care deserve to live with dignity and with the resources they need to live as they wish. They should never, ever feel the pressure to choose to die because our social welfare institutions are starved and our health care system has been vandalized through years of austerity and poor management.

Moscrop then states that Canada has the resources to prevent endemic poverty and provide adequate care, that poor people being euthanized by the state is profane.

Moscrop then refers to a recent article by professor Trudo Lemmens who is a critic of Canada’s euthanasia law.

In a February piece for the Globe and Mail, University of Toronto law professor Trudo Lemmens wrote, ‘The results of our MAiD regime’s promotion of access to death as a benefit, and the trivialization of death as a harm to be protected against, are increasingly clear.’ In critiquing MAiD’s second track, which allows physician-assisted death for those who do not face ‘a reasonably foreseeable death,’ Lemmens points out that within two years of its adoption, ‘“track two”’ MAiD providers had ended already the lives of close to seven hundred disabled people, most of whom likely had years of life left.’

In raising concerns about expanding MAiD to cover mental illness, Lemmens added that ‘there are growing concerns that inadequate social and mental health care, and a failure to provide housing supports, push people to request MAiD,’ noting that ‘[a]dding mental illness as a basis for MAiD will only increase the number of people exposed to higher risks of premature death.’

Moscrop continues by referring to a commentary from disability leader Gabrielle Peters.

In 2021, Gabrielle Peters warned in Maclean’s that extending MAiD to cover those who weren’t facing an immediately foreseeable death was ‘dangerous, unsettling and deeply flawed.’ She traced the various ways in which a broader MAiD law could lead to people choosing to die in the face of austerity, adding an intersectional lens that is often missing from our discussions and debates over the issue.

She warned that we were failing to consider ‘how poverty and racism intersect with disability to create greater risk of harm, more institutional bias and barriers, additional layers of othering and dehumanization, and fewer resources for addressing any of these.’ And now here we are. We should have listened more carefully.

Moscrop ends his article by suggesting that euthanasia may be OK based on personal choice but it is indefensible when it is based on poverty.

While MAiD may be defensible as a means for individuals to exercise personal choice in how they live and how they die when facing illness and pain, it is plainly indefensible when state-induced austerity and mismanagement leads to people choosing to end their lives that have been made unnecessarily miserable. In short, we are killing people for being poor and disabled, which is horrifying.

It thus falls to proponents of MAiD to show how such deaths can be avoided, just as it falls to policymakers to build or rebuild institutions that ensure no one ever opts to end their life for lack of resources or support, which we could provide in abundance if we choose to.

I agree with most of Moscrop’s comments but I disagree with his statement that euthanasia is possibly defensible as a means of individuals exercising personal choice. Even though people with disabilities experience social devaluation in Canada, they may be still exercising personal choice when they ask to be killed.

The problem with modern writers is that they miss the fact that euthanasia is about killing people. Even if Canada had a greater level of equality, there would be people who ask to be killed based on their poverty or their concerns about homelessness.

The real concern is that Canada has given medical professionals the right in law to kill their patients. This is about people killing people.

Nonetheless Moscrop is right that euthanasia based on poverty or disability is rarely based on personal choice and autonomy, it is horrifying, it is profane, it is the outcome of a failed social welfare system, and it is indefensible.

Reprinted with permission from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

MAiD

Quebec set to take euthanasia requests in advance, violating federal law

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Quebec has the highest rate of MAiD in Canada. The province saw a 17 percent increase in euthanasia deaths in 2023 compared to 2022, with the program claiming the lives of 5,686 people. The high figure represents a staggering 7.3 percent of all deaths in the province, putting Quebec at the top of the list worldwide.

Despite the practice being illegal at the federal level, Quebec says it plans to go ahead with taking euthanasia requests in advance.

In an October 24 post on X, Sonia Bélanger, the Quebec minister responsible for seniors,  announced that the province would be moving forward with taking “advance requests” for euthanasia, called “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD),” regardless of the policy’s violation of the Criminal Code of Canada.

As it stands, in order for a person to be killed by euthanasia in Canada, they must provide “consent” at the time of the procedure. So-called “advance requests” would allow a person to approve their killing at a future date, meaning the procedure would be carried out even if they are incapable of consenting, due to diminished mental capacity or other factors, when the pre-approved death date comes.

“Quebec has full jurisdiction to legislate in the area of ​​health care,” Bélanger wrote in French. “The advance request for MAiD is a consensus in Quebec.” 

 

“This is a real concern for Quebecers and on October 30, we will respect their choices by moving forward,” Bélanger continued.   

In September, the province announced they would soon be taking advance requests for MAiD after the June 2023 passing of Bill 11.

In Canada, there are two euthanasia laws, those passed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government and those passed solely in the province of Quebec. The 2023 passing of Bill 11 in Quebec expanded MAiD to those with serious physical disability, mandated that hospices offer the procedure and allowed euthanasia by advance request. 

The decision to enact the legislation came after senior ministers from the provincial government said they would not “wait any longer” for Canada’s federal Criminal Code to be amended to allow the change. 

“The Criminal Code has not changed. It is still illegal in this country under the Criminal Code to enact advance requests,” federal Health Minister Mark Holland said during an October 28 press conference before adding that he “can’t direct” how a province administers its “judicial system” and that is is “extremely important to say that we have a spirit of cooperation here, that the issue that Quebec raises is a legitimate and fair issue.”

Holland also said that the federal government will launch a countrywide consultation regarding the practice of advance requests in November, with a report due in March 2025.  

Quebec has the highest rate of MAiD in Canada. The province saw a 17 percent increase in euthanasia deaths in 2023 compared to 2022, with the program claiming the lives of 5,686 people. The high figure represents a staggering 7.3 percent of all deaths in the province, putting Quebec at the top of the list worldwide.

MAiD is not just on the rise in Quebec but throughout Canada as well. Since legalizing the deadly practice at the federal level in 2016, Trudeau’s Liberal government has continued to expanded who can qualify for death. In 2021, the Trudeau government passed a bill that permitted the killing of those who are not terminally ill, but who suffer solely from chronic disease. The government has also attempted to expand the practice to those suffering solely from mental illness, but have delayed until 2027 after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces.

Overall, the number of Canadians killed by lethal injection since 2016 stands at close to 65,000, with an estimated 16,000 deaths in 2023 alone. Many fear that because the official statistics are manipulated the number may be even higher. 

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MAiD

New report shows people are seeking euthanasia because they’re ‘isolated,’ afraid of being homeless

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From LifeSiteNews

By Susan Ciancio, American Life League

According to Ontario’s chief coroner, ‘people asking to be killed’ through euthanasia ‘were more likely to require disability support and be socially isolated,’ and one woman in her 50s ‘asked to die largely because she could not get proper housing.’

Those of us who value the life of all human beings understand the dangers of assisted suicide, or “medical assistance in dying,” as it is euphemistically called in Canada. But now, others have begun to see the horrors of Canada’s laws. A recent article in the Frederick News-Post begins, “An expert committee reviewing euthanasia deaths in Canada’s most populous province has identified several cases where patients asked to be killed in part for social reasons such as isolation and fears of homelessness.” 

The article examines reports issued by Ontario’s chief coroner, who reviewed the euthanasia deaths of those who did not have an allegedly terminal illness. It explains that “Canada’s legal criteria require a [purported] medical reason for euthanasia—a fatal diagnosis or unmanageable pain—but the committee’s reports show cases where people were euthanized based on other factors including an ‘unmet social need.’”

A doctor on this expert committee said she feels vindicated that people are seeing the horrors of what Canada’s laws are doing to people. She stated, “We’ve been gaslit for so many years when we raised fears about people getting MAiD because they were poor, disabled or socially isolated.”

Two such cases were discussed in the article. One was a man in his 40s who suffered with a bowel disease and who had a history of both mental illness and substance abuse. The report described him as “socially vulnerable and isolated.”

The second was a woman in her 50s who was “suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome” and who had a history of PTSD and mental illness. The report states that “she was socially isolated and asked to die largely because she could not get proper housing.”

This report emphasizes what those of us in the pro-life field have been saying for years. Euthanasia is a slippery slope. For example, when a country or a state allows a sick or dying person to end his life prematurely, we open the door for ambiguity of the word “sick.” 

Indeed, what is most disturbing about the findings of this report is that the Ontario coroner found that the “people asking to be killed were more likely to require disability support and be socially isolated.”

What does that say about us as a society when people would rather die because they feel they have no one to help take care of them? 

Our society puts more emphasis on what a person can do than on who a person is. Human beings have become like commodities that we discard when they are no longer useful. 

Caring for others should not be something we are forced to do. It should be something we lovingly do. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, it can be incredibly difficult to care for someone who is sick or dying. That’s why it should never be something done alone. It takes a team of caregivers – from family, to friends, to sometimes paid staff in facilities or those who make house calls.

For years, I have seen this loving care firsthand with my uncle, whose wife passed away last week after battling dementia. He cared for her at home until he was physically unable to do so. The disease made her combative, and for his health and her safety, he moved her into a care facility. 

But unlike some facilities that have staff who leave residents alone in their rooms or in chairs in large common rooms, those at this facility cared for her. My uncle visited her daily, and he always had glowing remarks about how kindly the staff treated her. 

My uncle is a model of self-giving love that is increasingly uncommon in today’s world. He didn’t stop loving his wife when she became ill. He didn’t think she was better off dead. He didn’t find her to be a burden. On the contrary, he continued to love her because of who she was. The disease stole her memory, but it did not steal his love for her. 

This is the epitome of loving care. This is what it means to be Christ’s hands on earth and to see people with His eyes. 

Suffering is never easy, but walking with someone in their suffering is what we are called to do. My uncle did that beautifully, and he is a model to other struggling caregivers.  

If everyone who was sick or suffering had people to lovingly care for and protect them, I daresay that the desire for assisted suicide would greatly diminish. After all, who would want to hasten death when they feel loved and cherished?

Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for over 20 years; 15 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the director and executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization.

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