Death on Demand: Cautionary Tales from CanadaCanada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program, once reserved for the terminally ill, is increasingly attracting applicants experiencing poverty and depression.
Margaret Wente
1 Feb 2023
Two years ago, a dear friend asked my husband and me to act as witnesses to his request for medically assisted death. We agreed without hesitation. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) law had been conceived for cases just like his. He was dying of respiratory failure and cancer. He was out of medical options, and his suffering was acute. The end was not far off. Through MAiD, he could either self-administer lethal medications, or have them administered intravenously by a medical professional. In either case, he could expect to drift into an unconscious state, from which he would never emerge.
We signed the form as his wife looked on, and tried not to cry. A few weeks later, he died in his sleep. Our friend never did use MAiD. But he was grateful and relieved that he had the choice of doing so. So were we.
In its original form, which was written into law in 2016, MAiD had widespread support from the general Canadian public. After all, we believe in personal autonomy. We do not believe in pointless suffering—including our own. Canada is, by now, a mostly secular country, unbeholden to religious ideas about the sanctity of each God-given soul. And so when Justin Trudeau’s government enacted MAiD seven years ago, it was presented as a progressive moral victory over regressive conservative medical hang-ups.
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It now turns out that some of the original doomsayers weren’t quite wrong when they warned of the slippery slope that MAiD would lead us to, as even many MAiD advocates are now acknowledging. “Tired-of-life cases in Canada are happening,” says Madeline Li, a Toronto-based psychiatrist specializing in palliative care for cancer patients, who has assisted in numerous MAiD deaths. “We’ve made MAiD so open you can request it for basically any reason.” It turns out you don’t even have to leave your home to get a doctor to sign off on MAiD: You can do it over Zoom.
And the eligibility conditions are set to expand further: As of March 17th, MAiD is slated to become available to Canadians with a mental illness as their sole medical condition (though, as discussed below, that date is in flux). And yes, depression counts. In one reported case, a 31 year-old Toronto woman who claims to suffer from a dubious psychosomatic condition called “Multiple Chemical Sensitivities” (more on this below) applied for MAiD because she couldn’t find proper housing.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2023/02/01/death-on-demand-cautionary-tales-from-canada/
