Suicide helpline suggested assisted suicide for my disabled friend.

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan Schrader

From my perspective as a disability justice advocate and scholar, assisted suicide is an ableist public policy that furthers systemic violence and trauma, and it is best to nip the USA assisted suicide movement in the bud and not let that movement get its foot in the door. l think that this reality is perhaps best exemplified in the story of my Canadian friend “Amy.”

I’ve heard a lot of proponents refer to assisted suicide opponents as “cruel,” and I think Amy’s story is a good opportunity for readers to contemplate which public policies are cruel and which are not, especially because the USA death with dignity movement that is pushing Oregon style laws collaborate with people who want to take the United States in Canada’s direction.

Amy is a disabled Canadian who reached out to me and another X user for help after Canada legalized euthanasia for disabled people in 2021. Amy had endured child abuse, which left Amy with PTSD and physical injuries that caused severe chronic pain. As an indigent disabled person Amy was unable to access thorough medical treatment for these disabilities, so even though Amy wanted to live and was deeply offended by Canada’s decision to expand euthanasia to people with disabilities, Amy’s suffering was so great that Amy thought constantly of dying by “MAiD.”

However, when Amy called a mental health and suicide crisis support hotline for poor people and asked the operator for help fighting against these thoughts, the operator said, “Well, MAiD is a legit and legal option. Maybe it’s something you should consider. The medical system seems to be failing you. And you are never going to get the opiate pain medication that you think you need.”

So, me and this other X user, “Rachel,” took the place of that suicide hotline. For months, whenever Amy thought about applying for MAiD or dying by some other suicide method, we would talk our companion down. The three of us became really good friends. We talked about our experiences with ableism, our struggles to access treatment for our illnesses, what toys we liked as children and our hopes for the future. Various issues had made it impossible for Amy to approach a faith leader about the situation, so Rachel and I did our best to fill that role. At Amy’s request, the three of us prayed together and talked about God.

With help from about ten different people, including the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Amy was eventually able to take a train four hours away from home and show up in the emergency room of a hospital that opppses “MAiD” and specializes in chronic pain and mental illness. Amy finally recieved excellent care. Although Amy sometimes still has symptoms of chronic pain and PTSD and life is still often quite a struggle, Amy’s symptoms are manageable and Amy is not planning to die by “MAiD.” It was my honor to attend Amy’s Zoom birthday party recently.

But thanks to Compassion and Choice’s friends in Canada and the systemic ableism that is enabling their cause, the Canadian medical system would have killed Amy before providing adequate medical treatment or support.

I am not sure what happened to Rachel. Rachel shared that she now has to walk past a “MAiD provider’s” office at every psychiatrist appointment, that this is traumatic and that appropriate accommodations for her physical disabilities are often not available. We have not heard from Rachel in over a year. I hope Rachel is alive.

I’ve read statements from proponents of recent assisted suicide bill's saying that their supporters are “real people with grief and loss, not hypothetical scenarios.” Well, Amy and Rachel are not hypothetical scenarios, they are my friends. I’ve read statements describing myself and other disability rights movement opponents of assisted suicide as “abusive, bullying and cruel.” 

But I can think of few things more abusive, bullying and cruel then for a suicide prevention hotline operator to tell a caller to go ahead and be killed. I don’t want to live in that world, and like others in the disability justice movement I won’t be quiet while the proponents lay the scaffolding for that to happen. 

I’m sorry if that makes me cruel.

The push to legalize and extend assisted suicide in America

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

When it rains it pours.

EPC is very concerned with the threat to legalize assisted suicide in the states of Illinois and New York and the expansion of assisted suicide laws, where it is already legal.

In Illinois, assisted suicide Bill SB9 passed on April 9, 2025 by a vote of 8 to 3 in the Senate Executive Committee. Bill SB9 seemed to have stalled and was renewed when it's sponsor attached the assisted suicide bill to a food preparation safety bill (SB 1950).

On May 29, 2025 SB 1950 was passed in the State by a vote of 63 to 42. Bill SB 1950 may be voted-on in the Senate today or in early June.

It is ironic that a bill that enables physicians to prescribe a lethal poison cocktails to kill patients would get attached to a food preparation safety bill.

In New York, assisted suicide Bill A136/S138 passed in the New York Assembly by a vote of 81 to 67 on April 29 and may soon be debated in the state Senate. We have urged supporters to contact the members of the New York State Senate and in particular the New York State Senate Health Committee (Link to Senate Health Committee).

Oregon's assisted suicide expansion Bill SB 1003 will be heard in committee next week. Oregon assisted suicide Bill SB 1003:

1. Expands who can participate in assisted suicide – Right now, doctors (physicians) can prescribe lethal drugs or can be consulting providers. This bill changes the wording from "attending physician" to "prescribing provider" and "consulting physician" to "consulting provider." This bill allows nurse practitioners or physician assistants to facilitate assisted suicide.
2. Requires promotion by Healthcare facilities – The bill forces hospices and hospitals to publicly disclose whether they participate in assisted suicide. Hospices must tell patients upfront and post their policies online, while other healthcare facilities must at least post their stance online. In some cases, family members have pressured vulnerable patients to participate in assisted suicide. This disclosure requirement makes it easier for patients to be directed toward facilities that will not object.
3. Removes the 15-day waiting period – The current waiting period in Oregon to provides a proper evaluation prior to prescribing lethal poison drugs. The bill removes this waiting period allowing patients to be shuffled to death on demand within 48 hours.

The assisted suicide lobby has expanded existing assisted suicide legislation in nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide. 

Oregon has already allowed physicians to wave the waiting period and Oregon has eliminated the residency requirement. Vermont is permitting assisted suicide by telehealth, they are forcing medical practitioners who oppose assisted suicide to refer patients and they eliminated the residency requirement. Washington state, California, Colorado and Hawaii have also expanded their assisted suicide laws.

Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will lobby or launch court cases to expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill is designed to pass in the legislature, once passed incremental extensions will follow.

Scheduled to Die. Signed and Sealed.

The following article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on May 28, 2025.

Kelsi Sheren

By Kelsi Sheren

Canada: Home of the most efficient killers.

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program was “supposed” to be about compassion, offering dignity and choice to people at the end of their lives. Lies, it’s always been nothing but lies from the very start. It’s always been about killing. Somewhere along the way our society has taken a dark turn back to the time when eugenics was normalized. I thought this idea of killing our people for being disabled, injured or suffering was over. Turns out I wasn’t just wrong, I missed the mark completely. Eugenics has never ever stopped, it’s just been done quietly in the dark and done to people who will never be able to speak because…. Well, MAID = DEATH and you can’t complain when you're dead now can you?

Instead of a compassionate last resort, MAiD has become a symptom of our societal failure, an escape hatch offered to vulnerable individuals we’d rather ignore than support and our government wants to do anything it can to stop supporting you.

Take Kiano Vafaeian’s case. At just 23 years old, Kiano wasn’t terminally ill. He was diabetic, partially blind, and severely depressed. These conditions are profoundly challenging, yes, but are they reasons for a state-sanctioned murder? His mother, Margaret Marsilla, found out about his planned euthanasia by accident, stumbling across the approval in his emails. She wasn’t informed by medical professionals or social services. No alarm bells rang. No safeguards in place. The system simply moved forward, silent and indifferent, ready to quietly eliminate what it saw as a "problem" rather than confront the underlying issues.

Remember they DO NOT HAVE TO CONTACT FAMILY, and as Ellen Wiebe the head executioner of Canada said: 

“People ask me why and I think, well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody is more grateful than my patients now and their families,” 

Carr interviewing Wiebe

She tells Liz Carr, though that’s not always necessarily so. 

“We know that angry family members are our greatest risk” (National Post article link).

Margaret had to fight desperately to save her son's life, resorting to impersonating a patient to uncover the chilling ease of accessing assisted death. How has it come to this? A mother must battle her own government to keep her child alive? What does this say about the priorities of a system that would rather expedite death than offer comprehensive support and care? I’ll tell you exactly what it says.

WE DON’T CARE. We do not care if your son is struggling, he is a burden to our society so he must go and we will do it behind your back. Their favourite part, is there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it. You can try, but good luck.

This story isn’t isolated, not even a little unfortunately. It speaks to a profound rot within our society, a rot where the vulnerable are viewed as disposable, burdensome inconveniences rather than human beings deserving dignity and support. When a young man’s pain is so readily met with death instead of help, we have failed. We have failed Kiano, we have failed Margaret, and we have failed ourselves. We have lost sight of our shared responsibility to each other, allowing bureaucratic convenience to triumph over human empathy. I’d agree it’s no longer about convenience either, with over 1800 killers in Canada, roughly 300 do all the killing. That means in 2023 with the death tally over 13,000 people who were murdered, they were taken out by roughly 300 people.

Now if you were in the military, like I was and you had killed that many people on your own. Not only would we be questioning your mental health but questioning a lot more than that. But because these are “doctors” we say its compassion.

I call bullshit. These “doctors” are enjoying this, far far too much.

We pride ourselves as Canadians on being compassionate and inclusive, yet we’re abandoning those who need us most while we crumble under policies that have broken our country in half. Instead of investing in mental health services, social support, and disability care, our leaders choose a cheaper, colder route. MAiD = murder, once carefully bounded, now creeps into a territory where depression, poverty, and disability alone WILL justify ending a life. This isn't compassion. It's negligence dressed up as mercy.

Our society has become desensitized to suffering, choosing convenience and cost-saving over genuine care and compassion. How many others like Kiano have faced similar battles without a Margaret fighting tirelessly in their corner? How many have silently slipped through the cracks, never receiving the attention, care, or advocacy they deserved?

We need to look deeply at ourselves and our values. Are we comfortable living in a society where death is offered as an alternative to adequate support? Are we okay telling someone that their existence is too costly, too inconvenient? Are we prepared to admit our government’s failure in creating a society where people feel their lives are not worth living simply because they have been left behind by the systems meant to protect them?

So I ask you, will you stand up now

Or

Will you wait until your family finds a hidden email or letter, or when they call to say your loved one, child or friend was just murdered before you call you MP’s and say this stops NOW.

We have the power to stop this, will you help?

Kelsi Sheren, relentless in the pursuit of life and never MAID.

https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2022/09/victory-23-year-old-scheduled-for.html

https://nationalpost.com/feature/canada-maid-assisted-suicide-doctor

Dying to Meet You: Renewing Life

By Amanda Achtman

My friend Rabbi Jonathan Jaffit didn't expect euthanasia to impact him personally.

As an Orthodox Jew, he always told me, "That's not something we do."

But one day, he got a phone call that brought the issue to him in an unexpected way.

In the newest Dying to Meet You vignette, "Renewing Life", Rabbi Jaffit shares the story and offers some poignant insights on our cultural moment.

The Renewing Life vignette is an excellent lead-in to the importance of the Compassionate Community Care program. 

To receive training in visiting, advocacy or calling people who need a friend, Contact Compassionate Community Care at info@beingwith.org

Disability Advocate: I urge you to oppose New York's assisted suicide bill.

Dear Legislators:

Meghan Schrader

As a disability justice advocate, I urge you to oppose assisted suicide Bill SB138.

I teach people with disabilities at the University of Texas at Austin and have published research on how assisted suicide connects to America’s deep history of eugenics and systemic ableism.

Although New York assisted suicide Bill SB 138 is aimed at terminally ill people, the right to die movement, that  it is attached to, dehumanizes and oppresses people with disabilities. The best way to safeguard against that oppression is not to pass assisted suicide laws. 

A disabled Canadian friend of mine with PTSD and severe chronic pain was subjected to further wounding trauma when a suicide prevention hotline operator told her that she should consider killing herself with “MAiD.” The New York bill would lay the scaffolding for the proponents to build that same world. I would be happy to talk to you more about my friend’s experience or anything else in this email. 

The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of People with Disabilities says that even assisted suicide laws that are limited to the terminally ill violate its Convention on The Rights of People with Disabilities (Link)

Compassion & Choices (C & C) acknowledged that an eating disorder specialist who published a case study about helping people with eating disorders be killed by assisted suicide abused the law (Link to Study) (Link to C & C response) and yet representatives of C & C say that these laws have never been abused. So, has the law been abused or not?

Right to die movement leader Thaddeus Mason Pope tweeted to me that he thinks it’s good for disabled people to die by suicide. (Twitter Link) The director of Compassion and Choices appeared on Dr. Phil with Thaddeus Mason Pope in January of 2023.

One proponent of this bill is a man named Christopher Riddle, who claims to be a “disability rights advocate.” Please listen to the voices of the many disability rights organizations opposing this bill instead of him. Riddle’s theories about disability rights have been reasonably criticized as lacking any empirical grounding in the experiences of disabled people. He has no experience or personal stake in the practical implications of his ideas. (Link to Book) (Link to Book Review)

Furthermore, Riddle’s scholarship dehumanizes disabled people who are harmed by assisted suicide; he frames anyone who might be harmed by assisted suicide as the equivalent of a car accident statistic. He asserts that harm that assisted suicide might cause for people with disabilities “ought not to be of special concern.” (https://philpapers.org/rec/RIDAD).

Hence, Riddle is willing to sacrifice people with disabilities for the right to die movement’s agenda; he is not the “disability rights advocate” he claims to be.

For a more accurate understanding of how assisted suicide has and will impact disabled people, I encourage you to watch a video created by disability studies ethicist Harold Braswell about disability rights opposition to assisted suicide. Braswell has studied the right to die issue extensively. (Link to Brawell research)

The American Association of Suicidology made a 2017 statement saying that assisted suicide is not suicide. But in 2023 the AAS had to retract that statement (Link to retracted statement) because it was used in the 2019 Truchon decision that expanded assisted suicide to disabled Canadians. (https://twitter.com/TrudoLemmens/status/1666067817035190272), which was opposed by the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. (CASP statement) The consequences of the AAS’s statement are an example of how green lighting assisted suicide for the terminally ill easily results in violence against people with disabilities.

Disabled people already experience a higher rate of suicide than the general population and peer-reviewed research indicates that people are more likely to think suicide is acceptable if the victim has a disability. (Link to research) 

Passing assisted suicide laws further normalizes the sentiment that disabled people’s suicides might be a good thing, and that’s a monstrous way for society to bully people in the disabled community. 

You can find videos from many disability justice leaders opposing the legislation of assisted suicide at these links:

Disabled writer Brian Koukol: (Information Link).

Professor of Musicology and Disability Studies Andrew Dell’Antonio: (Information Link).

United Nations speaker with Down Syndrome and disability justice advocate Charlotte Fiene: (Information Link).

Disability Equality in Education board member Lisa Aquila: (Information Link).

My program director Joe Tate has a long history of advocating for people with intellectual disabilities, including participating in a 2014 ADAPT protest outside a Chicago conference of the World Federation of Right To Die Societies: (Information Link).

I urge you to allow Bill SB 138 to die in this session because regardless of its content, it rewards a movement that is hostile to people with disabilities. Exacerbating the oppression that disabled people already face so that the proponents can plan their deaths is unwise and unjust.

Equality, justice, love and the equal citizenship of people with disabilities are more important than the proponents’ individual autonomy. Please do not support this bill.

Sincerely,
Meghan Schrader

France's National Assembly votes to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Mike Heuer reported for UPI news that the French National Assembly voted to pass a bill that would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide by a vote of 305 to 199. The bill will need go be debated and voted-on inthe Senate and the bill will require a second reading vote in the National Assembly.

The bill allows euthanasia, meaning the doctor directly injects the person with lethal poison drugs and assisted suicide, meaning the person would self-administer the lethal poison drugs. 

According to Heuer's report, euthanasia must only be done when a person is unable to self-administer the lethal poison.

Politico reported:

The French bill will now be debated in the Senate, which is controlled by a conservative majority that could seek to amend or remove several provisions.

Politico also reported that President Emmanuel Macron will support a referendum on the issue, if the bill does not pass.

If the parliamentary process fails to produce an agreement between the two chambers, President Emmanuel Macron — who promised the legislation during his 2022 campaign — has suggested the issue could be put to the public via a referendum, although constitutional experts have questioned the legality of such a move.

The French media has reported that the bill is "stricter" than other European euthanasia legislation. I believe that the French bill is very similar to other euthanasia legislation as it does not require the person to be terminally ill.

The French National Assembly also unanimously approved a palliative care bill.

We demand a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law. We want real medical care.

*Please sign and share the link to our EPC petition (Petition Link)

By Gordon Friesen

President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

EPC has an online petition, we have post-cards to be sent to members of parliment and we have a traditional paper petition demanding a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law. Contact EPC at: info@epcc.ca to order post-cards or paper petitions.

In coming weeks and months, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and the Delta Hospice Society will be calling on government's to undertake a complete, and long-promised review of euthanasia (MAiD) in Canada.

It is our observation that events have unfolded in a completely unexpected and alarming fashion; that current policy has little to do with its originally stated intent; that such policy is in fact leading us on a horrific course that no one consciously chose (or very few) but which is now evolving under its own anti-human economic logic and impetus.

Even we, in the organized resistance to euthanasia, have been taken unawares, while our rhetoric has been roughly overtaken by the facts. To take one key example, it has always been a priority to champion fair treatment of the most vulnerable, in terms of access to needed care and services. For we all immediately understand that legal euthanasia threatens the safety of specific lives. What we did not understand is just how many lives that would be.

Very simply put, the "most vulnerable" narrative assumes that disputed benefits actually exist; that people are generally able to access appropriate services; that only certain groups (defined perhaps by economic, racial, gender, or ability criteria) are not. However, as the situation now exists in Canada, real health care --meaning truly life-affirming care, free of the pressure to accept euthanasia-- is no longer available (in so far as that availability depends upon the State).

Real, good and decent doctors and nurses do exist, of course! And they are clearly among the most influential actors in our Coalition. However, our chances of being treated properly as patients should not be dependant upon the personal moral compass of individual professionals who are now forced to operate as dissidents within a hostile system.

That is not at all how things were intended to be. We have always been taught to expect proper medical care as a right of citizenship. Our universal Canadian system was established some sixty years ago with the precise goal of making such care available to all.

Shockingly, the true calamity we are now experiencing involves nothing less than the cynical replacement of that time-honoured medical ideal, with a radical, euthanasia-based, veterinary-style system of population management.

In this scheme, advanced medical treatment will indeed be provided for those briefly incapacitated persons who may easily be restored to full productive status. But a radically different path is marked out for everyone else, which is to say: for anyone at all whose physical or mental status --for whatever reason-- might cause their expected economic contribution to fall below the cost of their upkeep. In these cases, illness, disability, and even simple aging itself, are now to be collapsed into the smallest social dimension possible, by actively steering all such individuals towards the newly discovered medical "treatment" of euthanasia.

Indeed, the only easy way to escape this trap requires personal resources large enough to privately make up the difference. For our ruling elites there is obviously no difficulty. Simply jump in the plane, and off they go, to state-of-the-art facilities provided by dynamic extra-national organizations dedicated to the satisfaction of every client whim (medical or otherwise) in settings of luxury.

Back in Canada, however, few individuals possess such options. The available earnings of the entire working and middle classes are already fully committed to the spending policies of which medical care is by far the greatest component. For the individual taxpayer, that money cannot be spent twice. No personal budgetary room remains for typical Canadians to pay, out of pocket, for real medical care.

To repeat the essential: service deprivation is now the norm, not the exception. To portray this as a "most vulnerable" issue (wholly, or even primarily) would require the redefinition of "most vulnerable" to include any person whose speedy recovery cannot guarantee prompt return on investment. And in the normal experience of accident and aging (while excluding our rulers) this is a category which includes the entire population.

In short, the problem of euthanasia does not affect only certain persons. It affects every person at certain seasons in their lives. Our common problem is the deliberate promotion of euthanasia by the administrative State. It is the shameless presentation of medical homicide as a legitimate and sufficient solution for any sort of problem. Nor have we seen the worst. We may now expect decision-makers to actually lower care standards on purpose. For if suffering is assumed to have a cure --in euthanasia-- then suffering can no longer be allowed to impede rationalization.

In retrospect, I think it is fair to say that very few people could have suspected that a supposedly limited access to voluntary euthanasia might ever devolve into the scale of industrial destruction, of human life, to which we are now witness. Quite naturally, many people have come to question the "why" and the "how" of such a calamitous outcome.

And that is why we are calling for a complete review of Canada's euthanasia policy.

*Please sign and share the link to our EPC petition (Petition Link)

We demand a full review, as originally promised in law but never delivered: an open and unfiltered scrutiny of current practice, accompanied at each stage by the severe questioning of past decisions made. Everything must be on the table.

We further believe that serious changes must result. For we --by a large majority-- want real medical care.

 

Link to our letter to federal and provincial parliaments (Link to letter).

Naomi's poem: Fatal Temptation

The following is a contribution to our EPC "Story Contest". Please visit our "contributor info" (link). "recent stories" (link). and "story index" (link).

We would be thrilled to receive your story (fact or creative fiction) at: story@epcc.ca

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is not a religious organization. Naomi submitted her poem and we accepted it for publishing. All formats are welcome.

Fatal Temptation

By Naomi Jane Haw

Many times, at the bleak barricade of depression,

Looking down the endless, echoing tunnel

That seems to be my life.

Many times, if there had been a pill or injection

To remove me from that seemingly senseless suffering,

I would have taken it.

If euthanasia is allowed for the terminally ill,

I could argue that my endlessly repeating battles with depression

Represent a similar depth of pain and suffering that will continue to haunt me.

Many times I have wanted to walk the path

To a peaceful, painless, blameless, endless sleep.

AND YET

I am a Christian and I truly believe God when He declares:

“I know the plans I have for you,

 plans for welfare and not for calamity,

 to give you a hope and a future.”  (Jer. 29:11 NLT)

I can also see the Devil’s deviant, defiant schemes.

I truly believe that “You must not murder”,   (Deut. 5:17 NLT) 

And euthanasia is killing humans.

In other words- murder.

And yet, if the path to euthanasia was opened up,

I would be tempted to kill (myself), to be killed;

Anything to escape the torture of untreatable depression.

But it would be wrong.

I could be slipping into an endless torment of separation

From God, my family and friends.

You may think of death (from euthanasia) as a sweet oblivion,

An endless, dreamless sleep.

But you may be wrong!

It may be a trick and a lie from the Devil.

No-one has ever returned to tell us about this unending death.

It could be a terrible, fatal beginning,

More painful and terrifying than the hardest fight against illness.

Medically assisted suicide

Would mean depriving my family of a wife, a mother, a daughter.

And though there are many times

When I have no success in playing the roles assigned to me,

Times when I no longer want to be me…

Still I believe that:

A hopeless, helpless wife is better than no wife for my husband,

A failing mother is better than no mother for my children,

An emotionally distant daughter is better than no daughter for my parents.

And I think they would agree.

God created me, with all my talents and in all my weakness.

And God allows the Devil To hunt me and haunt me with depression.

I don’t understand why.

I may never understand why,

But I choose to believe in the value that God places on my life.

“You keep track of all my sorrows.

 You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

 You have recorded each one in your book”  (Psalm 56:8 NLT)

I choose to believe God when He says:

“I created all the delicate, inner parts of your body

 and knit you together in your mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13 NLT)

And also when He declares that, in the end:

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

 and death will not exist anymore -

 or mourning, or crying, or pain,

 for the former things have ceased to exist” (Rev 21:4 NLT)

In essence, what I’m saying

Is that the lure of an endless, dreamless sleep May be a trick and a lie,

May, in fact, be a nightmare of torment,

And could well prove to be

Not just a final extinction

But a fatal temptation.

Written by Naomi Jane Haw

Canada's euthanasia lobby is pushing for child euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kelsi Sheren, on Twitter, commented on the lobbying by euthanasia groups to legalize euthanasia for "mature minors" (children) in Canada.

The response to her social media was phenomenal but it also elicited a response from some euthanasia lobby leaders who accused Sheren of fear mongering and not getting her facts straight.

Sheren responded with a link to a Global news story from February 16, 2023 reporting on the Canadian government Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) released a report calling for the expansion of euthanasia (MAiD) to include mature minors.

Euthanasia for "mature minors" (children) is not legal in Canada but the issue of child euthanasia is being promoted by Canada's euthanasia lobby and a federal government committee recommended on February 15, 2023 that euthanasia be extended to "mature minors."

I responded to the February 15, 2023 (AMAD) report by stating:

The report by the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) was tabled in the House of Commons on February 15, 2023 calling for a drastic expansion of euthanasia (MAiD) in Canada. Among the recommendations, the report recommended that euthanasia be expanded to include children "mature minors."

Recommendation 19 in the report stated:

That the Government of Canada establish a requirement that, where appropriate, the parents or guardians of a mature minor be consulted in the course of the assessment process for MAID, but that the will of a minor who is found to have the requisite decision-making capacity ultimately take priority.

This means that parents or guardians may or may not be consulted, in the euthanasia death of a child that is deemed to have decision-making capacity.

To understand Recommendation 19 better we need to go back to the draft policy developed by the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto on euthanasia for "mature minors" that was published as a report in the Journal of Medical Ethics in September 2018.

• Article: Sick Kids Hospital Toronto will euthanize children with or without parental consent (Link).

Sick Children's hospital draft policy applied the same "ethics" for mature minors to make medical decisions as for making a decision to be killed. 

The draft policy by Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children set out what can be expected if Canada permits euthanasia for children (mature minors).

Children who are deemed, by their physician, as competent to make medical decisions would also be deemed competent to decide, with or without the consent of their parents, to be killed by lethal injection.

The Canadian government report suggested that child euthanasia and euthanasia of incompetent people by advance request be permitted. Both of these issues fundamental change the meaning of consent.

Child euthanasia is wrong, based on the meaning of effective consent.

Euthanasia is wrong because it enables doctors and nurse practitioners to literally kill their patients.

Québec radio host: Assisted suicide is a 'solution' for the mentally ill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Luc Ferrandez

Tristan Hopper reported for the National Post on May 21 that Luc Fernandez, who co-hosts a radio talk show on 98.5 Montreal told his audience, on May 15 in French that:

doctor-assisted suicide could be a form of “liberation” for the mentally ill.

Hopper reported that Fernandez also stated that:

Quebec should enshrine “comité de sages” (committees of experts) to authorize assisted suicide “in cases where, for example, someone no longer has any parents, people who were abandoned … people who no longer receive visits … no longer have any joy in life, they have no more interest in living, who live in permanent suffering.”

Montréal disability rights group RAPLIQ responded by accusing Ferrandez of promoting a eugenic ideology and stated:

“To speak of euthanasia with logistical calm, as if it were a measure of social efficiency, is to deny the value of different lives,”

“It is to slip down a eugenic slope, the very same that has led history into the abyss.”

This is not the first time Ferrandez has made comments about euthanasia. The Post Millennial reported on December 3, 2019 that Ferrandez wrote on his facebook page, concerning euthanasia for climate change that:

“Could we, for environmental, social and economic reasons, decide that we want to receive help to die so as not to be a burden for our family and society in general?”

Ferrandez's recent comments were madewhile discussing the story of "Florence" an intellectually disabled 24-year-old woman who was profiled in a story by Le Presse. Hopper reports:

Florence, not her real name, was held in solitary confinement for eight days at Quebec’s Leclerc Institution following a perennial failure by Quebec health authorities to place her in an institution that suited her needs.

Florence is described as having the mental capacity of a small child, and suffers from Prader–Willi syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which the sufferer always feels hungry.

Florence's story outlines the abusive care that she receives in Québec.

Hopper explains how Ferrandez responded to the "Florence" story:

Mid-way through Thursday’s segment on the case, Ferrandez suggests that Florence’s mother should have the right to end her daughter’s life via doctor-assisted suicide.

“How does the law have the right to say ‘no’? How does the state have the right to say ‘no’?” he said, to agreement from Normandeau.

He added that in extreme disability cases, the only medical solution is to “freeze” a patient in bed, and that death could be seen as “a way to end their pain.”

RAPLIQ responded by stating:

No to the trivialization of death as a “social solution.”
No to this false compassion that hides a deep contempt.
No to this morbid fantasy of liberation which is nothing but a shameful surrender.

Disability is part of the human condition.
It is not a virus to eradicate.
It is not a problem to be solved through erasure.

To reject disabled people is to reject one’s own humanity.

We choose, for Florence and for all the others:
Solidarity, not suppression.
Adaptation, not abandonment.
Dignity, not disappearance.

Quebec can do better. Quebec must do better.
Solutions exist — here and elsewhere. What’s lacking is courage.

Ferrandez is a former mayor of the Montreal borough of Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. He co-hosts a daily three-hour talk show with Nathalie Normandeau, a former deputy premier under the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest.

Canada approved euthanasia for mental illness alone and has scheduled to implement it on March 17, 2027. 

On March 21, 2025 the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Committee report urged Canada's federal government to:

• Repeal Track 2 Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), including the 2027 commencement of Track 2 MAiD for persons whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness”;
• Not support proposals for the expansion of MAiD to include “mature minors” and through advance requests;

Québec has the highest euthanasia rate in Canada at 7.6% of all deaths in 2024. Recently a Québec coroner's inquest has investigated the death of Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic man who died by euthanasia on March 29, 2024 after developing bedsores from a lack of basic medical care. Québec expanded it's euthanasia regime on October 30, 2024 by permitting euthanasia by advance request.

Assisted suicide bills do not specify which lethal drugs are used.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Raga Justin has brought up an important point in her article that was published on May 15 in the Times Union, that being, the New York assisted suicide bill does not stipulate what drugs would be used in the lethal poison cocktail, if the assisted suicide bill passes.

Article: Assisted suicide is neither painles or dignified (Link).

Justin wrote in the Times article that:

The controversial legislation dubbed “Medical Aid in Dying” would enable New York residents suffering from a terminal illness to end their own lives using a series of medications administered under a physician’s care after thorough review of their situation. The “drug cocktail” that patients would need to be administered to die was frequently questioned by opponents, with many lawmakers also worrying out loud about the possibility of those drugs being diverted for nefarious purposes.

“That medication is as dangerous as a loaded gun but precautions for its safekeeping are absent from this legislation,” said Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh, a Saratoga County Republican.

Yet the legislation contains nothing about which substances, exactly, New York would choose to legalize for the purpose of ending a person’s life. Instead, lawmakers have appeared to relinquish control of determining what life-ending mixtures of medications would be used to the state Department of Health, individual health care providers and participating pharmacies.

Justin further noted that “The time it takes a patient to die is not certain.”

Oregon’s data, culled from 261 deaths during 2024, showed that patients died in a range from seven minutes to 26 hours from ingestion of life-ending drugs. The New York bill language includes a consent form that patients would need to sign to authorize their participation in the procedure; it includes an acknowledgement that “although most deaths occur within three hours, my death may take longer.”

It’s an approach that has angered other physicians, who argue the process of choosing which drugs to administer has not undergone exhaustive, controlled scientific study.

“From my perspective, the widely varying, seemingly experimental nature of the cocktails that they use raise huge concerns and red flags,” said Dr. Joseph Marine, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University who has lobbied against Maryland’s adoption of similar legislation. “Virtually anything in the pharmacopeia is fair game for them to effectively experiment on, without any of the usual safeguards that we take for granted in academic medical settings.”

The longest reported length of death by assisted suicide was 137 hours in Oregon in 2023. Let me state that again, one person took 5 days and 17 hours to die by assisted suicide in 2023, after ingesting the lethal poison cocktail.

An article by JoNel Aleccia published by Kaiser Health News on March 5, 2017 examined the experiments by assisted suicide activists to find a cheaper alternative drug cocktail for assisted suicide. The article states:

The first Seconal alternative turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients — and up to 31 hours in one case.

The poison drug cocktail experiments were done with humans, not animals even though people suffered greatly during the experimental assisted suicide deaths.

Link to a video by Dr William Toffler of Oregon on this topic (Link).

An article by Jennie Dear published on January 22, 2019 in the Atlantic reported on the development of the poison drug cocktails. The Atlantic article stated:

In Washington, an advocacy organization called End of Life Washington briefly advised prescribing a drug mixture with the sedative chloral hydrate to about 70 patients. “We know this is going to put you to sleep, and we’re pretty sure it’s going to kill you,” Robert Wood, a medical director at the organization, says they told the patients. It worked, but with a tragic catch: In a few cases, the chloral hydrate burned people’s throats, causing severe pain just at the time they expected relief.

The Atlantic article explains how the assisted suicide lobby did human experiments with a lethal poison cocktail known as DMP. The article continued:

Next, the group had to test the drug. But they still didn’t have a way to follow standard procedure: There would be no government-approved clinical drug trial, and no Institutional Review Board oversight when they prescribed the concoction to patients. The doctors took what precautions they could. Patients could opt in or out, and for the first 10 deaths, either Parrot or Law would stay by the bedside and record patients’ and families’ responses.

The first two deaths went smoothly. But the third patient, an 81-year-old with prostate cancer, took 18 hours to die.The article explains that the group stopped DMP testing, met by conference call and decided to try a new lethal cocktail called DDMP.

The Atlantic article explained how the assisted suicide lobby developed the lethal drug cocktail DDMP, and later DDMP2 that is referred to in the 2018 Oregon DWD report.

An article by Lisa Krieger published by the Medical Xpress on September 8, 2020 also reported on the lethal drug experiments. Krieger wrote:

A little-known secret, not publicized by advocates of aid-in-dying, was that while most deaths were speedy, others were very slow. Some patients lingered for six or nine hours; a few, more than three days. No one knew why, or what needed to change.

"The public thinks that you take a pill and you're done," said Dr. Gary Pasternak, chief medical officer of Mission Hospice in San Mateo. "But it's more complicated than that."

Justin asked more questions in his article about research concerning the efficacy of the lethal poison cocktail.

But significant concerns persist among some researchers about those fatal drug combinations. A 2022 study published in the British Medical Bulletin by United Kingdom researchers reviewed data reported from jurisdictions where medically assisted death was legal and concluded that many patients were at risk of “distressing” death. It called for further research into the methods of assisted suicide and the prescribed drugs in order to adequately inform patients of the risk involved with consuming life-ending medications.

“Drugs used for medical purposes are required to undergo a stringent approval process in order to assess efficacy and safety,” researchers concluded. “But the drugs being used for ‘assisted dying’ have not undergone such process; the safety and effectiveness of previous and current combinations of lethal drugs is largely unknown.”

Some assisted suicide doctors claim that the drug cocktails are effective for use, based on many years of trial and error.

The assisted suicide lobby developed the lethal poison cocktails through human trials. The "developers" seemed concerned with the lethal efficacy and cost of the poison cocktail as opposed to the possible negative consequences associated with the use of the cocktail.

The concerns raised by Justin in his article are fundamental to the issue. If the law approves the killing of people, then what kind of oversight will exist within the law?

Links to more articles on this topic:

• Death by assisted suicide is not what you think it is (Link). 
• Assisted suicide: Proceed with caution (Link). 
• Assisted suicide is the wrong prescription (Link). 
• Assisted suicide. It's not that simple (Link). 
• Assisted suicide deaths are not what you think they are (Link). 
• Assisted suicide is neither painless nor dignified (Link).