UK PM Andy Burnham seeks to delay assisted suicide debate

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Prime Minister Andy Burnham

The new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, while speaking with reporters after a speech at a Jewish Care facility about social care reform commented on the upcoming assisted suicide debate. Burnham stated at (11:34):

"I take the view that the debate, and I don't say that there shouldn't be a debate at some point about those issues, personally I think that there is something that needs to happen first and that's the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care. 

I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care.”

Burnham did not say that he opposes assisted suicide but he did say that improvements to end-of-life care should be dealt with first, before the UK considers assisted suicide.

These comments are important because on June 17, 2026 Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a similar version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill that recently died in the British House of Lords. MPs are scheduled to vote on the Edwards assisted suicide bill at second reading on September 11, 2026.

On November 29, 2024; the UK House of Commons voted 330 to 275 at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill, which was nearly identical to Edwards bill

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is convinced that Edwards introduced a nearly identical assisted suicide bill as the Leadbeater bill in order to invoke The Parliament Acts, which allows the House of Commons to forgo approval from the House of Lords when passing two nearly identical bills within consecutive parliamentary sessions.

The Parliament Acts has only been used seven times since 1911 for Government legislation, and it has never been used for a Private Members’ Bill. Edwards assisted suicide is a private members bill.

Prime Minister Burnham's comments along with the fact that he has given members of his Labour party the right to vote with their conscience means that the Edwards assisted suicide bill will more likely be defeated on September 11.

Is MAiD Medical Murder? A Podcast Discussion

Podcast exposes red flags regarding MAiD in Canada

Viviana Runstedler
Staff Writer, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Christopher Shaw

We are pleased to share information a podcast episode that exposes the truth about (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada that mainstream, government-funded podcasts avoid discussing.

On an episode aired July 17th 2026, the Children’s Health Defense (Canada Chapter) interviewed two medical professionals about (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada. 

Dr Christopher Shaw is a neuroscientist and professor at the University of British Columbia as well as the co-chair of the scientific and medical advisory committee of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance. Dr York N. Hsiang is a professor emeritus of surgery also at the University of British Columbia and a member of the scientific and medical advisory committee of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance. Together, these two doctors presented a helpful overview of the current state of MAiD in Canada and shared eye-opening information concerning the ongoing execution of MAiD.

Dr York N. Hsiang

Dr Hsiang began by reminding listeners that MAiD is now the 5th leading cause of death in Canada and is an effective way to recoup healthcare costs. He briefly reviews recent discussions to expand Canadian MAiD approvals for mental illness and for minors. He went on to discuss issues within the current MAiD system.

One major issue presented by Dr Hsiang involves the misuse and misunderstanding of the drugs used in MAiD. The drugs used in Canada are essentially anesthetics used in very high doses to cause death. He referenced a 2022 article in the Canadian Medical Association journal that “only 21% of the physicians who are actively giving MAiD can be said to fully understand the drugs that they are giving for MAiD” (timestamp 8:30)

Dr Hsiang continues:

“about a quarter of patients took over an hour to die. And this is, clinically, this meaning you no longer have a heartbeat. Your brain could still be functioning, but you no longer have a heartbeat and so you are then deemed to be dead. The shocking thing is that when you actually look at the drugs that are being used, many of the drugs, in particular being the kill shot, the cardio-toxic drugs, in one quarter of those patients was not given. Why was that? Was that the reason why patients were taking over 1 hour to die? At the same time when MAiD is explained to be a painless procedure, less than one percent of the patients actually received a true medication for pain, in other words a narcotic. Very very surprising. And so, I have concerns that as the program gets expanded even more there’s going to be more practitioners that want to get on to this because it is lucrative and the majority of them don’t have any training. Nobody has training in how to kill a patient, our whole training is how to save a patient and keep them alive.” (timestamp 10:15)

Dr Hsiang is not the first doctor we have heard expressing concern about the administration of euthanasia and how the drugs may actually affect the person experiencing a euthanasia death. EPC has previously reported on euthanasia deaths which caused great distress to the deceased and family members present at the death. 

The National Post also covered this issue in 2022, recognizing that until euthanasia was legalized, doctors had never given doses this large of these particular drugs. The National Post article included a quote from Dr Joel Zivot suggesting that euthanasia could “feel like drowning” and that he “worries paralytics could mask an unpleasant death.” Zivot’s conclusions were based on his work studying capital punishment via lethal injection in the US which uses a common sedative to Canadian euthanasia protocol.

Another red flag that Dr Hsiang has identified in Canada is:

“physician zealots who contact family practitioner offices, and this I have heard from discussing this with family doctors, that they want to know on each family doctor’s list how many patients are eligible for MAiD. There is a financial incentive for these doctors since they are reimbursed quite well for a very short procedure.” (timestamp 9:08)

This quote highlights the pressure being placed on many Canadians to accept and utilize euthanasia. Discussion also turned to the Dying with Dignity Canada “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book” created for children. This child-centric material is especially dark considering the context of possible expansion of MAiD eligibility to impressionable minors.

Dr Hsiang and Dr Shaw also speculate that since euthanasia is used to facilitate organ donation, the expansion of eligibility to minors would increase accessibility to “younger” organs for donation and this may be a contributing factor behind these criteria expansions. We have covered several of these issues on the blog over the years; our posts related to organ donation can be found here.

Drs Hsiang and Shaw are currently working on a book about euthanasia, expected to be published next year. The portion of the podcast regarding euthanasia ends at timestamp 16:40. We thank these doctors for working independently of mainstream discussions to bring these issues to light in an open forum.

New York Sisters obtain temporary order protecting them from participating in assisted suicide

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have good news. 

The Beckett Fund reported that a temporary order was obtained preventing the state of New York from forcing Catholic Sisters and Catholic healthcare from participating in the assisted suicide law while the federal lawsuit by Catholic healthcare proceeds in the court. 

The New York assisted suicide law will come into effect on August 5

Article: Catholic sisters challenge New York state assisted suicide law (Link).

The lawsuit was filed on July 16 to overturn the New York assisted suicide law based on the language in the law that, among other things, requires Catholic healthcare to inform patients that they can have assisted suicide, requires them to refer patients who request assisted suicide and the law conflicts with the federal law that prohibits federal funding for assisted suicide.

The temporary order was agreed to by US District Court Judge Anne M. Nardacci enabling Catholic healthcare to not participate in assisted suicide until a court decision is made in the full case. The order states that Catholic healthcare is temporarily protected from:

• providing information and counseling about assisted suicide,
• establishing policies and procedures about how counseling for assisted suicide will be done,
• arranging for other physicians or nurse practitioners who will provide information about counseling about assisted suicide or refering patients to other physicians or nurse practitioners who are willing to assist suicide,
• documenting requests for assisted suicide,
• assessing, evaluating or otherwise assisting patients in being qualified for assisted suicide,
• permiting assisted suicide or refering for assisted suicide.

The Judge assigned a time-line for the State of New York if they decide to appeal the emergency motion.

This is a temporary order until the court hears the full case. EPC believes that the court needs to recognize the conscience rights of care-givers and strike down the New York assisted suicide law based on federal assisted suicide funding restrictions.

For those who believe that assisted suicide is a choice, then they should also acknowledge the choice of others to not participate in assisted suicide. Participation is wider than the actual act of prescribing or directly assisting the suicide.

Further to that, assisted suicide is not about "autonomy" since it requires the direct involvement of medical professionals who are complicit with a person's suicide.

Medical professionals should never be involved with killing or assisting suicides since it changes the nature of care. For ethical healthcare to survive, there must be a commitment to always care and never kill.

More articles on this topic:

• Catholic sisters challenge New York state assisted suicide law (Link).
• New York is opening a pandora's box with assisted suicide (Link).
• New York Governor to sign assisted suicide bill (Link).

Colorado 2025 assisted suicide report. Missing data.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Alex Schadenberg

Colorado citizens legalized assisted suicide by approving Proposition 106 in 2016 which came into effect in 2017. In 2024, Colorado passed assisted suicide Bill SB 068 expanding their assisted suicide law by: permitting non-physicians to prescribe the assisted suicide poison, reducing the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours and allowing the 48 hour waiting period to be waived if the presciber believes that the person is imminently dying.

The 2025 Colorado assisted suicide report states that:

In 2025, 580 patients received prescriptions for aid-in-dying medications under the provisions of the Colorado End-of-Life Options Act. This represents a 12.4% increase in the number of prescriptions compared to 2024. Among those prescribed aid-in-dying medication in 2025, CDPHE has received reports for 261 patients to whom aid-in-dying medication was dispensed. Also among those prescribed aid-in-dying medication, CDPHE has received death certificates for 512 patients through routine vital records registration. Note that not all of these deceased patients were dispensed aid-in- dying medication, and deaths may have been due to ingestion of aid-in-dying medication, the underlying terminal illness or condition, or other causes.

The Colorado report indicates that they do not know how many people died by ingesting the lethal poison concoction. 

The reporting is suspicious!

In 2025 there were 580 lethal poison prescriptions which was up from 516 in 2024 and 261 poison prescriptions dispensed which was down from 315 in 2024.

So the data makes it appear that more people are receiving a poison prescription for assisted suicide but fewer people are dying by assisted suicide. Based on the data, 45% of the people in 2025 who were prescribed a poison prescription obtained the prescription. The data must be wrong. 

In 2022, 317 people were prescribed poison prescriptions and 249 (79%) were dispensed. In 2023, 398 people were prescribed poison prescriptions and 316 (77%) were dispensed. 

A new trend started in 2024 with 516 poison prescriptions written and (315) (61%) prescriptions dispensed and as has already been explained, in 2025 only (45%) of the poison prescriptions were dispensed.

Unless there has been a change in the culture, it is suspicious that 45% of the 580 people who received a poison prescription received the prescription. 

• Is there a pharmacy that is dispensing assisted suicide poison and not reporting?
• Is there an underground or out-of-state source of assisted suicide poison that people obtaining with the prescription?
• Or are fewer people who have received a poison prescription having that prescription dispensed?

An investigation needs to be done to identify what is actually happening.

Let's look deeper into the data about who is being approved for assisted suicide in Colorado.

When examing the data the conditions that people have that are receiving approvals for assisted suicide remain consistent accept for two areas of concern.

The first concern is the increase in people with "other conditions" who are being approved for assisted suicide. Since legalization, 4.2% of the approvals were people with "other conditions" but in 2025 40 people 6.9% had "other conditions." The report does not indicate what is included within "other conditions."

The second concern is the increase in people with eating disorders or severe protein calorie malnutrition being approved for assisted suicide. In 2021 Colorado approved one person for assisted suicide based on a eating disorder. Eating disorders accounted for 19 assisted suicide approvals in 2024 and 17 in 2025.

Based on the likelihood that there is missing data in the report,  the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition urges the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to conduct an independent investigation into the assisted suicide data.

Free online film screening of Prescription Poison on August 4.

Register for the free online screening of Prescription Poison: Averting Assisted Suicide in America 

Tuesday August 4 at: 2 pm (Eastern Time) / 11 am (Pacific Time).

The Prescription Poison film is produced by Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Frank Panico with Xs in the Sky films.  

Topic: Prescription Poison

Tuesday Aug 4, 2026 2 PM Eastern Time/11 am Pacific Time.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link). 

Prescription Poison is 43 minutes long. The screening will be followed by a discussion.

Prescription Poison is ground-breaking documentary exposing the expansion of assisted suicide in America.

Prescription Poison seeks to awaken America to the growth of assisted suicide and is a warning to Americans that, unless stopped, the Canadian system of killing will become a reality in America.

Purchase the Prescription Poison film for $10 US (download) or $15 DVD at: Prescriptionpoison.com

Watch the Prescription Poison Trailer:

Topic: Prescription Poison - Averting Assisted Suicide in America.

Tuesday, Aug 4, 2026 2 pm Eastern Time/11 am Pacific Time.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link).

The Last Ten Days of Brigittte (GG) Stegemann

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on July 27, 2026.

By Kelsi Sheren

An 83 year old Ontario woman declined medical assistance in dying, telling her family it conflicted with her Christian faith. Two months later with discussions restarted behind her advocate’s back, her capacity assessed in a meeting her family calls a farce, and her paperwork completed and witnessed by the facility’s own staff after her death was already scheduled she died by lethal injection without, her family says, speaking a word of final consent. A reconstruction.

*This account is based on the Stegemann family’s written public statement, published to Facebook in mid July 2026, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of interactions and constitutes the first public record of this case; on an 80 minute recorded interview I conducted on July 22, 2026, with Brigitte, GG’s granddaughter, namesake, caregiver of more than twelve years, and holder of her Power of Attorney; and on the provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code governing medical assistance in dying. The family has formally requested the underlying documents the death certificate, the eligibility assessments, the signed request and the identity of its witness, the medication administration records, and any waiver of final consent and none had been produced at the time of writing. Where the family’s two accounts differ on a detail, this report says so or follows their written statement. The practitioners involved are not named here, as the family chose not to name them publicly; they will be identified when records confirm their identities, and each will be given the opportunity to respond before that happens.*

On the morning of Friday, July 10, 2026, on the patio of a long term care facility “The Pearl, formally EJ Mcquigge Lodge” in Belleville, Ontario, an 83 year old woman named Brigitte Stegemann “GG” to the four generations of family who loved her sat in the fresh air in a wheelchair, eating a scoop of strawberry ice cream, her favourite, surrounded by her daughter and her granddaughter while they waited for her pastor to arrive. Her death by lethal injection, under Canada’s medical assistance in dying program, was scheduled for eleven o’clock.

Within ten minutes of the family settling outside, by their account, an administrator came out to the patio and insisted that GG be returned to her room immediately so that an intravenous line could be started nearly two hours ahead of the scheduled procedure, for reasons no one at the facility ever explained. Her granddaughter refused to cut the morning short, answered the administrator’s question of how much longer the family needed with “as long as it takes,” and finally had to ask her to leave the patio so the family could have privacy.

By early afternoon GG was dead. According to her family, who were in the room, she spent her final minutes silent, her hands clasped in a fixed prayer position, and never gave the explicit verbal confirmation that the medical team had assured them strictly and repeatedly, they say she would be required to provide before anything was administered. When she said nothing, her granddaughter smiled, flooded with relief, believing the silence meant the procedure could not lawfully proceed.

It proceeded.

Whether that was legal turns substantially on documents the family has demanded and not yet received. Whether it should ever have reached that morning is the larger question because the story of GG’s last ten days, as her family has now told it publicly and in detail to me, is a story about what happens to a hard of hearing, cognitively vulnerable woman who says no to the system offering her death, once her advocate leaves the country for ten days. More than a decade of advocacy, Brigitte Stegemann was, by her family’s written account, the second youngest of fourteen children, a devout Christian, and the mother of two Fritz and Karin. She had lived at the facility for two years. She was completely deaf in her left ear and had very limited hearing in her right; conversation required repetition and volume, and even then she often looked past visitors rather than engaging. The one voice that reliably reached her, family and staff alike had long observed, belonged to her granddaughter and namesake, Brigitte, who could be heard at a normal speaking tone even through a mask.

That granddaughter had devoted more than twelve years to GG’s care. She held legal Power of Attorney and served as the primary contact for all medical and personal decisions, and the facility used her in that role constantly calling every day or every other day, the family says, about medications, treatments, appointments, and the small logistics of daily living. That pattern of communication is worth fixing in mind, because the family’s central allegation is defined by the moment it stopped.

There is one more thing the family says about GG that no institution ever formally recorded: she had lived her whole life, in their observation, with an undiagnosed developmental or cognitive impairment one they suspected may have been on the autism spectrum that deeply affected her processing, comprehension, and decision making. It had never been clinically assessed. It will matter shortly.

Roughly five months before her death, GG was diagnosed with untreatable stage four stomach cancer and roughly two months before her death, a meeting was held at the facility to discuss the possibility of medical assistance in dying. The family’s written account of GG’s response is unambiguous: she clearly stated that she did not wish to pursue it, and explicitly said that it conflicted with her personal beliefs and her Christian faith.

She said no. What follows is what happened anyway.

Ten days

Shortly after that refusal, Brigitte and her husband, Robert, left on a planned ten day vacation. GG was not left alone, her daughter Karin and Karin’s husband, Dave, visited regularly throughout.

What they found on those visits alarmed them. GG was extremely weak and largely unresponsive waking briefly, sometimes only long enough to say her daughter’s name, then drifting off; eyes open but unfocused. Dave told the family that, based on what he was seeing, he believed GG was nearing the natural end of her life regardless of any medical intervention.

Meanwhile, the phone calls to Brigitte continued as they always had routine decisions, routine consultations, the familiar rhythm of a facility that contacted her about everything. What the facility did not tell her, on any of those calls, was that its staff were meeting privately with her grandmother twice, by a nurse’s later admission in front of the family to discuss the assisted death GG had declined two months earlier. Brigitte learned only that a further formal meeting about MAiD had been scheduled for after her return.

The family’s written statement calls this omission the first major warning sign, and it is difficult to argue with their framing: an institution that phoned the Power of Attorney about routine care matters found no occasion, in ten days of contact, to mention that it had reopened the question of her grandmother’s death behind her back.

The Monday turnaround, and a medication record that couldn’t explain it.

On Monday, July 6, the family attended the scheduled MAiD meeting expecting to speak with GG’s physician. What they encountered first was GG herself and she was, abruptly, a different woman. The grandmother who days earlier had been too weak to hold a conversation was sitting upright in bed, talking, smiling, laughing when Dave playfully pinched her toes and raising her fists as if to box with him.

The turnaround was so dramatic, and so inexplicable against what Karin and Dave had witnessed all week, that Brigitte grew suspicious enough to request GG’s Medication Administration Record that Wednesday and audit it herself. What she found deepened the problem rather than resolving it: the facility’s official records showed the exact same dosage administered every single day.

The family’s written statement lays out the dilemma that record creates, and I will state it as plainly as they did, because it is the analytical heart of this case. Either the facility’s paperwork did not accurately reflect what was actually being administered to GG or the records are accurate, her days of unresponsiveness and her Monday alertness occurred on identical medication, and the clinical team then chose that brief, anomalous window of lucidity to rush through a permanent capacity evaluation that bore no resemblance to her true everyday baseline. There is no third reading that flatters the institution. The original alleged MAR log, which the family has demanded, will determine which of the two it is.

The physician never arrived that Monday. While the family waited, an administrator and a registered nurse entered GG’s room and it was there, in GG’s presence, that the confrontation the family describes as a wall of defensiveness took place. Brigitte asked who had arranged the MAiD meeting; no clear answer was given. The nurse disclosed that staff had met privately with GG twice during the vacation. Brigitte asked, point blank, whether those conversations had been initiated by GG or by facility staff, and why they had been initiated at all given GG’s faith based refusal. The nurse an employee Brigitte, a near daily presence for years, had never once encountered grew agitated, and answered: “I’m advocating for her.” Pressed on who had raised the subject, she snapped: “I don’t need to tell you anything.” When Brigitte finally said, “I don’t understand where this attitude is coming from,” the nurse retorted, “Well, you have attitude,” and, after being told to leave and return only when composed, scoffed and stormed out the entire exchange unfolding where a frightened, dying woman could watch it.

Two details complete that scene. First, the family later learned from the home’s own manager that the nurse was barred from GG’s room immediately after the altercation which is to say, the administration itself judged her conduct indefensible, in the same week it relied on the process she had helped set in motion. Second, before the meeting dissolved, the administrator suggested that, “worst case,” she could sit in on the physician’s private meeting with GG. Brigitte refused: either the meeting was strictly doctor and patient, or Brigitte would be present too. Her stated fear, which the coming days would do nothing to quiet, was of her grandmother alone in a room, outnumbered by authority figures, feeling she had no choice but to agree to their terms.

Ninety minutes past the appointment time, the family was told the physician could not attend, and everything moved to Tuesday.

Six questions.

On Tuesday, July 7, the attending physician the family identifies her publicly only as Dr. K arrived to determine whether GG had the capacity to make an informed decision about MAiD, and began putting questions to her in the family’s presence.

What followed, in the words of the family’s written statement, was a deeply alarming farce. GG’s deafness forced Dr. K to repeat her questions several times, but the barrier ran far deeper than hearing. Asked whether she had any siblings, the second youngest of fourteen children answered that she had none. The family corrected the record. Asked whether any siblings were still alive, GG said no; the family intervened again some were living, and GG had spoken with one just the previous week. By this point GG was disoriented and distressed, crying, saying “I forgot about the grandkids” as she confused her living siblings with her great grandchildren. The family, by their account, had to correct the vast majority of the answers she gave.

Brigitte objected to the evaluation on the spot, asking Dr. K directly how a woman who could not accurately recount the most basic facts of her own family and who was actively breaking down in confusion in front of her could possibly be deemed capable of consenting to her own death.

The assessment carried forward anyway. Dr. K then explained the procedure to GG in terms the family recounts as: receiving medication, feeling peace, falling asleep with the explicit promise that she “would not lose control of her bowels.” The family’s written statement dwells on this framing, and rightly so. To a woman of GG’s generation, faith, and cognitive capacity, “medication” meant healing, care, relief; describing a lethal injection as medicine while soothing her specific, everyday fears of physical indignity did not inform her consent so much as engineer it. What the gentle framing omitted among other things is that the MAiD protocol includes a paralytic.

Then Dr. K instructed the family to leave the room. Brigitte asked to remain, citing more than a decade as GG’s advocate and her legal Power of Attorney. The request was flatly denied. The critical conversation occurred entirely in private, and when Dr. K emerged, she announced: “I have deemed her capable of making her own decisions.” GG, she said, had consented, and the procedure was scheduled for Friday, July 10.

The private meeting had been justified as necessary to rule out pressure or influence from the family. Brigitte answered that reasoning with the question this entire case keeps asking “Well, we are concerned about pressure and influence from the home. Would that not be a concern of yours as well?” Dr. K brushed it off if that was the family’s concern, they could take it up with the home. Why influence from the institution that had reopened MAiD with a woman who refused it, met with her privately while her advocate was away, and controlled her bed was not an automatic clinical concern while her family of decades was treated as the presumptive threat is a question the physician, by the family’s account, never engaged at all.

The legal effect of those few private minutes was total. Under the MAiD framework, a patient deemed capable in the moment speaks for herself; the finding instantly superseded GG’s Power of Attorney and stripped her designated advocate of standing. A determination the family regards as indefensible on its face rendered in an evaluation they measure in minutes, on a woman whose answers they had spent the morning correcting was, from that moment, the only voice the system recognized.

The paperwork came after, then there is the sequence the family’s statement calls the backwards timeline, and it may be the most legally consequential paragraph in their account.

A MAiD death is supposed to rest on a formal written request, signed by the patient and independently witnessed, with assessments and scheduling built on top of it. In GG’s case, by the family’s account, the death was scheduled on Tuesday, July 7 and it was only after that date was set that facility staff completed the official MAiD application and witnessed GG’s signature, privately, without informing the family, during a week in which Brigitte and Robert were at the facility visiting every single day. The family learned of it only because Brigitte asked. On Wednesday, in a conversation with the home’s manager, she inquired about the paperwork she assumed she would be involved in, and the manager admitted that she had personally filled out GG’s official MAiD application herself.

Consider what that means, if the records bear it out. The facility initiated the renewed MAiD discussions with a patient who had declined. The facility’s staff conducted the private meetings while the advocate was away. The facility’s manager completed the application. The facility’s personnel witnessed the signature. And the facility’s records will now be asked to explain a medication log that either misstates what GG was given or confirms that her capacity was assessed inside an unexplained anomaly. At every load bearing point where the law imagines independence, the same institution appears initiator, facilitator, scribe, and witness while the one genuinely independent party, a Power of Attorney of twelve years, was kept, in the family’s phrase, in the dark despite their constant physical presence at the home.

Canadian law, it should be said, permits more of this than most readers will assume. The 2021 amendments to the Criminal Code reduced the witnessing requirement from two independent witnesses to one and expressly allowed paid professional care providers to serve. An employee of the institution that controls the bed may lawfully witness the request that empties it. Whether every element of this particular sequence was lawful is a question for the documents. That the law was written to make most of it possible is not in dispute and is its own indictment.

“They’re going to kill me Friday?”

On Wednesday, July 8, before the family’s planned visit, the facility called Brigitte with news: the procedure was being moved up a full day, to Thursday, July 9, because the physician had an opening in her schedule. Staff had already gone directly to GG, the caller said, and GG had agreed.

Brigitte objected immediately and drove in. In a meeting with the home manager, she laid out the family’s position staff had gone around the advocate again, this time to change the date of a woman’s death for a doctor’s calendar, while the things GG had actually and consistently said mattered to her being surrounded by her family, having her pastor present were treated as secondary to scheduling. The program, Brigitte told the manager plainly, was being rammed down the family’s throats. The manager apologized for how things had been handled and asked what she could do to make the situation better. Brigitte’s answer, as the family recorded it: “The damage is already done, and you have taken an awful situation and made it even worse.”

The family’s opposition worked, to the extent anything did that week: the facility backed down, and Friday at 11:00 a.m. was maintained.

It was during the visit that followed that the conversation at the centre of this case took place. Brigitte sat with her grandmother and asked whether she was entirely certain she wanted to go through with this on Friday. In the recorded interview, she recounted the exchange to me word for word. GG said: “I’m gonna die on Friday.” Brigitte answered “You are they are going to *kill* you on Friday.” And her grandmother replied:

“They’re gonna kill me?”

GG wept for an extended period three quarters of an hour, by Brigitte’s recollection repeatedly saying that she had made a mistake. Brigitte comforted her and told her the truth, which was also the law if she had changed her mind, she had the absolute right to tell the medical team on Friday that she did not want to proceed.

That conversation took place one day after a physician deemed her capable of consenting to her death, and two days before that death was carried out. The next day, Thursday, the family kept MAiD out of the room entirely and simply spent hours with her and at the end of the visit, GG looked around the room she had lived in and remarked that it was lovely, and that when she moved, she would want a room like it.

July 10, the family arrived around nine on Friday morning and took GG out to the patio the wheelchair, the sunshine, the strawberry ice cream, the pastor on his way. The administrator’s push to start the IV nearly two hours early came within ten minutes, and was held off only by Brigitte’s refusal.

At approximately 10:20, they brought GG back to her room. The administrator began the IV insertion and to the family’s lasting distress asked Brigitte and Robert, who openly opposed the procedure, to assist by handing her medical supplies. When the rest of the family was called into the room moments later, they walked into what their statement describes without euphemism a significant, alarming amount of blood covering GG, the bedding, and the surrounding area more blood than Brigitte, in all her years managing her grandmother’s care, had ever seen result from a standard IV insertion.

The pastor prayed. GG closed her eyes and clasped her hands.

Then Dr. K arrived and attempted to speak with her. GG was silent, her hands fixed in prayer, and never gave Dr. K a verbal response of any kind. In the recorded interview, Brigitte recounted the physician’s words to her grandmother” Okay, Brigitte, I’m gonna give you your medicine”and what the physician said next, when no answer came:

“Okay, well, I’m just gonna get started then.”

The family had been assured, strictly and explicitly it is the reason, they say, that they did not attempt to physically halt the procedure that morning that GG would be required to give a final, explicit verbal confirmation immediately before the injection. They had been told by the medical team itself that only the patient could rescind consent, and that the last moment confirmation was the safeguard guaranteeing her that power. So when GG stayed silent, Brigitte felt relief wash over her and smiled at her husband, believing the mandatory safeguard had just held that silence, under the rule the team itself had stated, meant stop.

The team proceeded. As the medications were pushed, the family watched Dr. K encounter visible difficulty injecting one of the fluids through the line, pausing to exchange a look with the administrator that suggested a complication. A brief moment after the final medications went in, Dr. K confirmed that GG was gone.

The room fell silent. And in the days that followed through the removal of her belongings, the clearing of her room, the first stunned week of grief no one from the facility’s clinical team, by the family’s account, reached out to them at all.

What the law demands, and what the records must now show.

Strip the anguish out of this account and a set of narrow, documentary questions remains. Each has a paper answer.

Capacity, the Criminal Code requires that a person be capable with respect to decisions about their health at the time of assessment. The family describes a woman with a lifelong, un assessed cognitive impairment, profoundly deaf, freshly emerged from days of unresponsiveness her medication records cannot explain, who failed the factual questions of her own assessment so comprehensively that her family corrected the majority of her answers, and who, the following day, did not understand that “MAiD on Friday” meant she would die. Dr. K’s assessment notes, the MAR log, and the timeline will either withstand that account or they will not.

The request, when was the written request actually signed, who witnessed it, and was the signing before or after the procedure was scheduled? The family says after, completed by the facility’s own manager and witnessed by its staff, in secret. The dated documents will settle it.

Final consent, the code requires that immediately before administering MAiD, the practitioner give the person an opportunity to withdraw and ensure their express consent unless a written waiver of final consent was executed in advance, under the 2021 provision known as Audrey’s Amendment, while the person had capacity. The family was promised express final consent would be required; none was given. That leaves two possibilities and only two. Either the procedure was carried out without the final consent the law demands or a waiver exists that no one ever mentioned to the family, including while assuring them of the very safeguard it would nullify, signed at some point by a woman whose capacity is the central dispute of this case. Produce the waiver. Its date, its witness, and the capacity notes from the day it was signed.

The second assessment. The law requires two independent eligibility assessments. The family’s public account describes one. Who performed the other, when, and in what condition was GG at the time?

*** Requests for comment were made multiple times through phone and email request and neither Dr. K nor the nursing home chose to comment. We are waiting on the coroner report to release Dr. K’s full name, but we will be doing so in a piece once we confirm. ***

What the family is doing, and what happens next

The family is in the process of filing, the complaints this situation calls for: a police report identifying the location and personnel involved; a formal complaint to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario noting the existence of that report; and a comprehensive demand for records the death certificate and its listed cause, both assessments, the signed request and its witness, the complete MAR log, and any waiver of final consent. They have been advised not to be surprised if the death certificate, when it arrives, attributes GG’s death to cancer rather than to the injection that ended her life; federal guidance to certifiers permits exactly that.

They have also been told the records will come slowly, and that they will be encouraged at every stage to let it go. Their public statement suggests how likely that is. “Grief does not erase these documented lapses in transparency,” the family wrote, “nor does it excuse a system that felt entirely rushed, defensive, and calculated. We will forever live with the painful uncertainty of how long GG might have lived comfortably had nature been allowed to take its course.”

I have reviewed the family’s full written statement, conducted its own recorded interview, and will follow the documentary record wherever it leads including to the names of the facility and every practitioner involved, each of whom will be offered the chance to respond before being identified.

GG asked to be kept comfortable, to be surrounded by her family, and to have her pastor at her side. She told the people offering her death that her faith said no. The record now being assembled will establish, step by step and paper by paper, how a system built on the word *choice* took her from that refusal to a scheduled appointment in nine weeks and why, when she met its final safeguard with silence, the silence wasn’t enough.

Similar topic:

Our families experience with Medical Aid in Dying (Read).

Alicia Duncan's Book Launch in Abbotsford and Vancouver BC - August 20/21.

Attend the book launch for the powerful - The Other Side of the Straightjacket, by Alicia Duncan.

EPC is promoting the Book Launch Celebrations on: August 20 in Abbotsford and August 21 in Vancouver.

August 20, 2026 - The book launch is at: The Reach Gallery Museum, 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford BC V2T 0B3 from 6:30 - 9:00 pm (Link to register).

August 21, 2026 - Author presentation and book signing is at Suite Genius, 225 W 8th Ave Vancouver BC V5Y 1N3 from 6:30 - 8:00 pm (Link to register).

 

Purchase the book from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition for $25 (plus shipping) (Purchase Link).  

 

In 2021, Alicia’s mother, Donna Duncan, died by Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), a death that sparked national controversy and led to the first police investigation into a MAiD death in Canada. What began as a daughter’s search for answers became years of advocacy, legal action, and a mission to expose troubling gaps in the systems mean't to protect vulnerable people.

Donna’s story has been featured by major media outlets, including the BBC documentary Better Off Dead? and CBC’s The Fifth Estate. Alicia has since become a recognized voice in the national and international conversation around assisted dying, most recently providing testimony to Canada’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD).

More than anything, these events are about the story behind the book: why Alicia felt compelled to write it, what she learned in the process, and why these conversations matter now more than ever.

• Article: How the narrative control is narrowing Canada's MAiD debate (Read).
• Article: Alicia Duncan, History will remember the lives saved or lost (Read).

Federally funded podcast promotes euthanasia clinic.

Encouraging increased access to Euthanasia via alternative media.

Viviana Runstedler
Staff Writer, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Earlier this month, we reported about the podcast “Disrupting Death” which received $289,226 in Canadian government research grant funding to discuss Canadian experiences with Medical Assistance in Dying.

As per their website, their goal “is to provide insight and contribute to improving the implementation of accessible, person-centered MAiD for Canadians”. While the interviewees are not in all cases explicitly pro-euthanasia, the interviewers make it clear that they believe MAiD is healthcare and should be accessible to all Canadians.

The most recent episode, released on July 17, 2026, features the new Executive Director of MAiDHouse, Tamara MacIntyre. As we have previously reported, MAiDHouse is a euthanasia clinic which started in Toronto and has expanded to a location in Victoria, BC. They provide space for the purpose of euthanasia death as well as training and support to euthanasia providers. The interviewers refer to MAiDHouse as “an invaluable response and service” (episode time stamp 36:23). 

This episode was for all intents and purposes a promo for MAiDHouse; a one-sided conversation funded by our tax dollars via government research grant.

The following are key reflections from the episode. All time stamps noted are when the statement begins as streamed on the Spotify platform.

MacIntyre states:

“I had somebody who said to me that what they thought was going to be one of the darkest days of their life ended up being replaced with love and light, and that just removing the mystery changed her ability to be present with the experience. And I think that’s what people don’t understand is, that what people describe as the beauty of natural death, there is beauty in a MAiD death and your listeners would be familiar with that from so many subjective stories of how people have described it. And the opposition would position it as a facade that needed to be believed because it was otherwise.” (time stamp 12:30)

Here, MacIntyre paints that “opposition” (and we’re sure she would include us) as members of a ‘death illiterate’ society who oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide because of inexperience with death or fear to discuss it. She brushes away individuals such as physicians and spiritual care providers who have accompanied many individuals in the dying process yet still oppose euthanasia, as well as those who have had a negative personal experience with euthanasia. She speaks as though all euthanasia deaths will be “love and light” and cites subjective stories, but ignores the subjective stories that exist in contradiction to that narrative.

MacIntyre further states:

“What I would say to you is that, specific to MAiD, there is bravery, there is curiosity, there is courage, there is human complexity that I think we often times don’t talk about.” (time stamp 15:30)

How logically backwards - to pair the oft-cited fear of being a burden as “bravery” and the choice to end one’s own life early as “curiosity” rather than the inquisitive desire to explore life’s potential, final natural moments.

However, MacIntyre also points out the weaknesses in our existing healthcare system that created the breeding grounds for our current MAiD landscape:

“People still think there’s a hospice bed for me when I need it or if I choose MAiD, there’ll just be a hospital bed for me. You know, they don’t realize that the way our healthcare system is built, that means they’d have to be checked in as a day patient and they would sit until there is space.” (time stamp 18:56)

It is well known that there is a severe lack of hospice and palliative, which has a negative impact on the trust Canadians have that their natural deaths will be properly managed. This along with ‘hallway healthcare’ was part of the conversation that led to legalization of euthanasia - decreasing the burden on an over-taxed system. MAiDHouse claims to be helping to solve the problem of space for dying patients but we suggest - are they just diverting funds towards themselves that should be invested into the expansion of hospice and palliative care?

MAiDHouse also positions themselves as a place for the vulnerable - those who don’t have a family or personal network to help them navigate the end of life process. MacIntyre talks about walking through the full range of end-of-life planning decisions from cremation to urn selection and more. This existential loneliness is a separate issue existing in society that is not going to be solved by euthanasia and instead we suggest MAiDHouse’s ‘support’ exasperates the issue. We MUST ensure people aren’t "choosing" euthanasia simply because they are alone or need help with end of life planning. This is clearly a way to prey on the vulnerable.

Finally, there was a discussion of transfers for the purpose of obtaining MAiD. This usually refers to being moved from a facility that does not provide MAiD to one that does. However, the conversation moved ahead in a surprisingly dark way:

“The complexity of deciding on time that they will be transported because they want the least amount of individuals to know. People who leave homes that they’ve lived in for a long time, that they know that they’ve not told any of their neighbours, they’ve not told anybody. They just need to disappear because they don’t want to be the rumour in their home environment.” (time stamp 27:23)

MacIntyre further states that planning “with those additional complexities in mind” is “work that we do on a regular basis.” (time stamp 28:17) This is heartbreaking. Is that really what Canadians are hoping for in their final days? Stigma. Fading away without a trace. Disappearing.

There is a human desire to be remembered after we are gone. The purpose of cultural norms around death such as visitations, funerals, and gravesites are to revisit and honour the life that was lived, yet MAiDHouse is facilitating the deaths shrouded in shame and emotional conflict. This is in stark contrast to final days honoured with visits from friends and family, recognizing that the moments are becoming ever fewer and to be savoured.

When asked for final thoughts on how she would like the conversation surrounding MAiD to be, MacIntyre instead took the opportunity to frame providers such as MAiDHouse and those who have chosen MAiD as the victims:

“I would just say the biggest piece I would ask is the level of compassion that it is not possible for you to know or understand what somebody’s circumstance is. And while you may find security in values that give you permission to judge another’s choice, just like somebody didn’t tell me what to wear when I got up this morning, somebody’s not going to tell me what my end of life looks like.” (time stamp 39:35)

As though fashion and end of life choices carry a similar ethical and moral weight. Yet the interviewer thought that was “a fabulous way to conclude our conversation” (time stamp 40:02) and thanked MAiDHouse for being part of the MAiD care landscape in Canada.

This is what the Canadian government is funding. Our tax dollars fund the killing of Canadians by doctors, and our research tax dollars fund these heavily biased conversations pushing for expansion of access to euthanasia.

We urge you to not become lethargic on this topic just because it is currently legal. Conversations such as those in this podcast will only gain more traction unless we do something about it. Speak to your members of parliament about these ongoing discrepancies and biases. Sign our petitions. Speak candidly to your friends and family who may be considering euthanasia. Direct those in your circles who may be less informed about end of life issues to reliable sites such as our website or our EPC blog. It is never too late to facilitate change for the better.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights statement on the ADA and assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The following message was released by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on July 27, 2026.

As we mark the ADA's 36th anniversary, HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reaffirms a fundamental principle of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): people with disabilities have the same inherent dignity and equal worth as every other person.

The ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibit discrimination based on disability in many settings, including healthcare. Healthcare decisions must not be influenced by stereotypes, bias, or judgments that a person's life is less valuable because of disability. Steering an individual toward physician-assisted suicide because of disability or assumptions about that person's quality of life may constitute unlawful disability discrimination. The Affordable Care Act also prohibits the use of federal funds for physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing and protects health care providers and entities that decline to participate in those practices.

HHS OCR is committed to enforcing these protections and ensuring that people with disabilities are treated with dignity and respect and receive equal treatment under federal law. If you believe you have experienced disability discrimination in healthcare, you can file a complaint at: hhs.gov/ocr/complaints…

The HHS OCR statement upholds the equality of every American while correctly acknowledging that assisted suicide can be based on discrimination.

The statement also reinforces the federal law prohibiting funding for assisted suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing and the importance of protecting health care providers right to decline to participate in assisted suicide.

The statement focused on three points. Some people with disabilities have felt pressured to assisted suicide. Research has uncovered the fact that the federal law prohibiting funding for assisted suicide is being circumvented. Several state assisted suicide laws, including New York, undermine the right of health care workers to refuse to participate in killing by assisted suicide.

Event in Jordon Ontario - Exposing Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia in Canada (August 13)

Lessons on opposing MAiD in Canada

Rachel Parker Live and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition are sponsoring an important event in Jordan Ontario

Date: Thursday, August 13 at 7 pm.

Location: The Jordan Hotel

(Purchase tickets) 

Use discount code: RP FOLLOWER 

An evening with: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Executive Director, Alex Schadenberg, podcaster Rachel Parker and author / activist Jonathon Van Maren.

The evening provides excellent speakers and an incredible opportunity to focus-on and share what needs to be done to change Canada's future. 

(Purchase tickets) 

 

 

EPC intervention in euthanasia for mental illness court case.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) needs your financial support (Read).

The legal counsel for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), Hugh Scher, was in a Toronto court on July 21 / 22, 2026 representing EPC in the case concerning Claire Brosseau and Dying with Dignity. 

The Brosseau case is asking the court to legislate from the bench to permit euthanasia for mental illness alone in Canada.

Scher reported that:

Leave to intervene was granted to EPC by order of the court. We prepared a 10 page written legal argument, reviewed the file documents and prepared for oral arguments for July 21 / 22.

The judge hearing the motion was Justice Carissima Mathen. Curiously, she used to be head of litigation for LEAF, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund. Her background is in constitutional litigation particularly with respect to women's rights.

... At the hearing, she seemed much more interested in taking charge of the application than limiting the scope of her review to the motion for a stay which was the matter properly before her.

Hugh Scher

Scher summarized the EPC position before the court:

In our oral submissions, we focussed on the core requirement of irremediability which was a core principle laid down by the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision as a criteria to access an assisted death. ...We relied on the significant evidence that suggests that it is impossible to determine if a person with a mental illness only is irremediable.

It is also hard to determine prognosis given the significant changes that occur with mental illness that are often quite fluid. EPC urged the court against finding on the minimal record before it that a stay is appropriate.

We also suggested that the intention of this application was to avoid the change in direction of Parliament, effectively pitting the court against Parliament. ...Parliament has recently, through its parliamentary committee (AMAD) on euthanasia report indicated a desire to be cautious and to defer any further action on euthanasia for mental illness alone.

Scher completed his report by stating:

It remains to be determined what the court will do, particularly given the background of the judge and her possible desire to establish some kind of precendent. That said, the law is currently against granting a stay to grant Brosseau death based on mental illness alone.

EPC has intervened in this case in an attempt to prevent the court from expanding euthanasia by legislating from the bench to allow euthanasia for mental illness alone.

Previous articles about the Brosseau case:

• (EPC) filed to intervene in Euthanasia for mental illness court case (Read). 
• Canadian actress seeking euthanasia for mental illness (Read)

Swiss assisted suicide leader dies while climbing Mount Fuji

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Mount Fuji Japan

Bernhard Sutter, who was the leader of the  Exit assisted suicide/euthanasia group recently died in Japan while climbing Mount Fuji

Sutter was a colleague of Philip Nitschke, the death activist who developed the Exit Bag and the Sarco Pod as well as promoted suicide substances on the internet.

Elizabeth Beattie reported on July 23, 2026 for The Japan Times that:

The managing director of one of Switzerland’s most prominent euthanasia firms died while climbing Mount Fuji during a family vacation.

Bernhard Sutter, 58, collapsed while ascending Japan’s tallest mountain with his son via the Fujinomiya route – the shortest, most direct way up the mountain. At around 3,010 meters above sea level, he felt unwell and stopped at a mountain hut, where he lost consciousness and stopped breathing.

The Japan Times reported that Sutter was involved with assisted suicide since 2007.

Sutter, who lived in Zurich with his family, had since 2015 worked as the managing director of the largest assisted dying firm in Switzerland, Exit. He joined the firm in 2007.

Philip Nitschke, the director of Exit International and the developer of suicide devices, such as the Sarco pod and the Exit bag, offered condolences to Sutter's wife and family stating that he had known Bernhard for more than 15 years and that Sutter was instrumental in launching the German edition of Nitschke's suicide instructions Handbook in 2011.

I personally remember meeting Sutter many years ago in Switzerland when I attended a euthanasia conference organized by World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

EPC offers condolences to the family and friends of Bernhard Sutter, but we also mourn the many people who died with the assistance of Sutter and his staff. Many people have been abandoned to death under the guise of compassion.

The British assisted suicide bill is back - And so is Not Dead Yet.

The following message was sent out by Not Dead Yet UK on July 23, 2026.

By now you'll know that the assisted dying bill is back.

On 17 June, Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a new version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. MPs will vote on whether it should proceed at its second reading on 11 September 2026. That's less than two months away.

So what's new?

Honestly? Not much.

This is the same bill Kim Leadbeater brought forward in 2024 — the one that spent months being picked apart in the House of Lords, generating more than 1,300 amendments before running out of time in April. The bill fell not because it was defeated, but because Parliament was prorogued. Now it's back, with two minor Lords amendments incorporated.

The first is a technical Wales amendment. Because delivering health services is devolved to the Welsh Government, the bill now requires the Senedd to give its approval before Welsh Ministers can set up the regulations for assisted dying in Wales. It's a constitutional housekeeping change. It doesn't alter what the bill actually does.

The second concerns people with eating disorders. This one is more serious. During the Lords debates earlier this year, peers raised concerns that someone with anorexia could potentially stop eating — deliberately — in order to reach the six-month terminal threshold and qualify for an assisted death. A minor amendment was added in the Lords to address this. But experts who work with people with eating disorders say it doesn't go far enough. The loophole, they argue, remains. We agree.

Everything else about the bill — its safeguards, its eligibility criteria, its scope — is unchanged. The concerns we have always raised remain. Disabled people face cuts to their independence, support, and care. Palliative care is under-resourced. In that environment, telling people they have the option to end their lives early is not compassion. It is a profound risk to people who already feel like a burden.

Even the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has acknowledged this. He has said he supports the principle of assisted dying — but only if hospices are "properly funded and sorted out" first. "You can't have this law change with an underfunded hospice movement," he said. We agree. And that underfunding hasn't been fixed.

What we're doing about it.

We are meeting very shortly to put the final touches to our campaign strategy for September. Our main goals are:

• Persuading MPs to vote against the bill at second reading on 11 September.
• Organising a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on the same day.

We will be in touch with full details as soon as they're confirmed — including how you can write to your MP, join us in person, or support the campaign in other ways.

We know many of you have been with us since the beginning of this fight. Your support matters enormously. We are not done yet.

What Does ‘Suicide’ Have to do with the Oregon assisted suicide Model?

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

Meghan Schrader

One time when I was testifying at an Oregon model assisted suicide hearing I decided to describe one of my episodes of psychotic depression in detail, to try to get legislators to observe parallels between what I was describing and the experiences of terminal illness that the proponents were describing. It struck me as a way to illustrate the overlap between the Oregon Model proponents’ logic that assisted suicide is a valid response to end of life suffering, and expansionists’ logic that “psychiatric assisted suicide” is a valid solution for extreme mental suffering.

Also, the Oregon assisted suicide model proponents describe disturbing physical symptoms at hearings all the time. So it should be ok for me to describe my past severe psychiatric symptoms, right?

The legislators looked at me kind of like I was high and then made comments along the lines that what I had described had nothing to do with the proposed law, but they appreciated my bravery in sharing my story.

I feel kind of silly about that testimony now. After all, I was describing severe mental illness, not a terminal illness like cancer. Also, maybe providing all those details came across as trauma dumping and attention-seeking. Perhaps it would have sufficed to say, “Having experienced mental illness in the past and observed expansionists efforts to legalize psychiatric euthanasia, I think society should not take another step towards that world by legalizing the Oregon model.”

But I still think that talking about severe mental illness and suicidal ideation during discussions about the Oregon model is less ridiculous than those legislators seemed to think. As disability rights opponents of assisted suicide have pointed out, the distinction between “terminally ill” and “disabled” can be blurrier than the Oregon model proponents would like it to be. There are some people who can live for years with their disabilities with the proper support, yet would die quickly if that support were withdrawn. And some of those people experience suicidal ideation. Moreover, there have been instances of people with mental illnesses like anorexia nervosa dying by assisted suicide. This abuse thins the distinction between “suicide” and assisted suicide” that the Oregon model proponents perceive.

Furthermore, some proponents have openly admitted that they want to medicalize disabled people’s suicides; famous euthanasia activist, Thaddeus Mason Pope told me so.

Nevertheless, I’ll entertain the position that there may often be meaningful distinctions between the “Oregon assisted suicide model” and “regular” suicide, with respect to the reasoning behind the decision, the possibility of graphic violence, the typical impact on family members, the length of time that the person had left to live, etc. So, I can understand why there are a lot of people who think that equating the Oregon assisted suicide model and suicide is “silly.”

I’ll again use my former pastor as an example. This pastor was a wonderful person and a dedicated faith leader. She did a lot of great work with marginalized people. She was also very anti-suicide. One time when I was sobbing in front of her about how much pain I was in during a bad bout of depression, she asked, “I don’t want to scare you, but as your pastor I need to know: are you having any thoughts about hurting yourself? Is there anything that we need to do to keep you safe?”

I wasn’t planning to harm myself, but I appreciated the compassion behind the pastor’s question.

This pastor also did a lot of terrific work with terminally ill people, and she disagreed with me about the Oregon assisted suicide model. When we had a friendly debate about the issue, she said, “Having been with people who have experienced a horrible death from Glioblastoma, I strongly reiterate my comments. And I hope that I would have the grace to make a similar choice.”

Obviously I disagree with the pastor, but I feel able to respect her motivations and logic. After all, she had had years of working with terminally ill people and I hadn’t. And she had worked with a lot of people experiencing suicidal ideation. So although assisted suicide and “regular” suicide both involve dying by one’s own hand (and hence meet the technical definition of suicide) I can “get where she was coming from.”

Unfortunately, not all assisted suicide proponents think like my former pastor. Some of them would like to expand assisted suicide to disabled people who aren’t dying. And that’s a situation where I think proponents’ distinction between assisted suicide and suicide is indisputably linked to ableism.

Disabled people are already systemically excluded from suicide prevention. Peer-reviewed research shows that there is a high suicide rate among people with disabilities and that people are more likely to think suicide is acceptable if the victim is disabled. There is also a lack of suicide prevention resources designed for people with disabilities. In that context, suicide prevention organizations equivocating on whether disabled people’s assisted suicide deaths are suicides falls into a longstanding pattern of abandonment.

The Oregon assisted suicide model proponents’ argument that assisted suicide is never suicide would be on much firmer ground if the Oregon model had never been used to kill people with anorexia, and if it were the only assisted suicide model that existed anywhere in the world. But it isn’t. Moreover, the Oregon model movement leaders routinely do things that normalize discussions about expanding assisted suicide such as by rubbing elbows with assisted suicide expansionists who have said that medicalizing the suicides of disabled people is ok. Compassion and Choices leaders cannot possibly have missed People Magazine and the New York Times’ enthusiastic platforming of people with chronic mental illnesses who would like to die by assisted suicide. Compassion and Choices leaders have published statements declining to take a position on whether Canada’s euthanasia (MAiD) program is ok, even though the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of People With Disabilities says that it’s not.

In short, although the Oregon model is ostensibly limited to terminally ill persons, it is helping to normalize the expansive proponents’ position that disabled people’s suicides are therapeutic.

Author Note: For a nuanced discussion of why what the Oregon Model proponents call "MAiD" is best described as “Assisted Suicide,” and why such “MAiD” is most accurately understood as a variation of suicide, read Harold Braswell’s article, “In Defense of "Physician-Assisted Suicide": Toward (and Back to) a Transparent, Destigmatizing Debate.”