Defeating the UK assisted suicide bills. Victory is close.

The following is the report from Dr Gordon Macdonald the CEO of Care NOT Killing in the UK, a leading group opposing the legalization of assisted suicide in the UK, Scotland and the British Isles.

Care NOT Killing needs donations to stop assisted suicide legalization in the UK (Donation Link).

Dr Gordon Macdonald

Dr Gordon Macdonald

I am delighted to report that the fruits of many months of campaigning could be about to pay off.

FIRST: England & Wales (Westminster)

Victory is now a real possibility.

Concerns over the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords are growing.

Peers deserve great credit for refusing to be railroaded into rushing the Bill through the House of Lords.

They are coming under huge pressure from our opponents.

They are being wrongly accused of ‘filibustering’ (a term from US politics to describe deliberately blocking legislation by endless debating so that time runs out and it falls).

In fact, what is being misleadingly cast as blocking tactics is simply Parliamentary due diligence.

As one senior Labour MP put it:

“It [the Leadbeater Bill] only just scraped through the Commons by 23 votes because MPs were told that the Lords would scrutinise it carefully.

And that’s what the Lords are doing, with every debate revealing more holes and more problems with this proposed law.”

In addition, a More in Common poll published last week found fewer than half of those questioned (44%) expressed the belief that the House of Lords is deliberately trying to delay the Bill rather than taking time to go through legitimate concerns.

Experts and professional groups that have opposed or raised significant concerns include:

• The Royal College of Pathologists warned that its members would have to “review the process leading up to the decision to authorise an assisted death and the circumstances of the assisted death, which they are not qualified to do.” That could include probing whether safeguards were followed or if there was coercion, deception or other serious issues at play.
• The Association for Palliative Medicine, representing over 1,300 palliative medicine doctors in the UK, has stated it “opposes any change in the law to license doctors to supply or administer lethal drugs to a patient to enable them to take their own life.”
• The British Geriatrics Society reported that many of its members are “not confident that effective legal safeguards could be developed to protect older people from unwarranted harms.”
• Academics and Barristers: 73 leading academic experts in the fields of health, end-of-life care and the law signed an open letter to MPs warning that the Bill's safeguards are insufficient and would put vulnerable people at risk.

The Academics and Barristers emphasised that the dangers of allowing individual autonomy to trump all other considerations, the letter warned:

“Laws must be concerned for the safety of the whole population, especially the most vulnerable.”

It also noted that “research has shown that a person’s stated wish to die is frequently unstable and depends on the care and support they receive [or lack of]”.

Former President of the Family Division of the High Court, the late Sir James Munby, stated the Bill falls "lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards".

Former Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Thomas Teague KC, has warned that a key provision in the Bill would prevent coroners from routinely investigating assisted deaths as they would other unnatural deaths, potentially allowing cases of coercion to go undetected.

Disability Rights Groups: multiple disability rights organisations have opposed the Bill, citing concerns that it could put pressure on disabled and vulnerable people to end their lives.

The National Down Syndrome Policy Group has warned that every person with Down Syndrome would be eligible for assisted suicide under the Bill.

Illustrating how dangerous a step this would be, a professional who works with people with Down Syndrome warned:

“Years ago, I did a benefit appeal for a client with Down syndrome.

He was so suggestible [that] he agreed with the benefits assessor that he could successfully navigate across town.

I got the same positive answer when I asked if he could fly an aeroplane.”

The list goes on.

As things stand, the Bill is set to run out of time and fall.

It looks unlikely that Peers will have time to debate all the proposed amendments before the current Parliamentary session ends (late April/early May).

When a session ends, any legislation that has not completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament is generally 'lost' and must start from scratch in the new session.

We must guard against complacency

However, it is too soon to celebrate victory, because:

1. Our opponents are threatening to use the Parliament Acts

These allow the House of Commons to bypass the House of Lords should it repeatedly block a public bill. The Bill’s supporters could circumvent the Lords altogether—avoiding its scrutiny—by reintroducing the Leadbeater Bill in the House of Commons at the next session of Parliament (May 2026), then (if it passes) seek Royal Assent without the Lords’ consent.

• This would require MPs to pass the Bill in the same form it last left the Commons. It could include Lords’ changes from this session, but most of the changes currently under discussion (a) won’t be voted on until report stage, and (b) have in any case been rebuffed by Lord Falconer.

2. Disgruntled opponents could push legislation through in other ways

Presently, some are working to weaken the House of Lords’ powers to scrutinise legislation.

• The Observer reported this month that a new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for “wholesale” House of Lords reform is being set up by pro-assisted suicide MPs Simon Opher and Kit Malthouse.

The new APPG will look at “how a minority of peers have been able to use filibustering to block a bill”.

(FACT CHECK: a firm majority – around two-thirds – of the 160 Peers who spoke or else were represented across two days of the Second Reading debate last September expressed opposition to the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill.)

While APPGs have no official law-making powers, when they are well-funded – as pro-Bill groups tend to be – they can have considerable influence among fellow politicians and feed friendly media outlets propaganda to print and broadcast.

The coming weeks and months will be crucial.

Winning the media war is vital.

We are bracing for media attacks on those Peers who refuse to be bullied into allowing vulnerable people to be abandoned to systematic killing or see the ‘checking and balancing’ role of the House of Lords undermined.

Indeed, former Telegraph and Spectator editor Lord Moore, warned in December that lobbyists working for our opponents are already attempting to influence the debate in Parliament:

“I know very well what happens—how to recognise when we’re being pushed to do a story.

“In the last two weeks, all the British media have been pressed very hard, by lobbyists in favour of this [Leadbeater] Bill, to produce a series of highly contentious arguments which attack anybody who tries to debate this Bill fully.”

SECOND: Scotland (McArthur) Bill

Major question marks also hang over the Scottish assisted suicide bill.

1. With the McArthur bill set to be voted on again on 17th March, just 7 weeks before the Scottish Parliament election, Holyrood proponents of that bill are getting nervous. Many MSPs who have doubts about the bill are worried that this might be an election-defining issue for many of their constituents.
2. The Health Committee at Holyrood wrote to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as important legal questions have arisen as to the Bill’s compatibility with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
3. Provisions for the protection of conscientious objection rights for NHS clinical staff — those who would be tasked with carrying out assisted deaths — will have to be stripped out of the Bill at Stage 3 in March because medical regulation is a power over which Holyrood has no legislative competence.

This could be a major stumbling block for our opponents as the area of employment rights is a matter reserved for the UK Government, whose approval would be required before the Bill could come into force. Already, some MSPs who voted for the bill at Stage 1 are expressing concerns about the conscience protection for medics and nurses being removed from the Bill.

BUT should these legal wrangles be settled in time and the final (Stage 3) vote scheduled for mid-March be lost, the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill would pass.

Should that happen, our opponents would gain valuable political capital for law change south of the border, arguing on ‘equality’ grounds that the people in other parts of Great Britain (including England and Wales) should also be legally entitled to an assisted death.

The best outcome would be for the Scottish bill to be voted down next month.

The final vote is expected to be very close.

A CNK social media campaign targeted at Scottish voters is a major priority.

We urgently need Scots to contact their MSPs to make their concerns over the Bill clear, and with the Scottish elections due in May, there couldn’t be a better time to make their case.

THIRD: Isle of Man

The Isle of Man’s landmark Assisted Dying Bill – the first to be passed in Great Britain – is being held up.

It needs to secure Royal Assent before the end of the current administration (September 2026) before it can come into force.

But this may NOT happen.

Major development

Last year, I wrote to the then-Lord Chancellor & Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood, arguing that the Manx Bill contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights.

I pointed out that, should the Lord Chancellor recommend the Bill for Royal Assent (the final stage in a bill becoming law), it may breach the UK’s international obligations.

The Manx bill requires the UK government’s approval before it can receive Royal Assent.

Last week, the island's Chief Minister, Alfred Cannan, announced that the UK Ministry of Justice had asked for clarification on codes of practice to accompany the Manx bill, regarding matters relating to human rights law compliance mentioned in my letter, specifically:

• Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which upholds the ‘right to life’

The MOJ has also asked for clarification about capacity legislation in the Isle of Man. Mr Cannan stated that the Bill “…cannot commence until safeguards, oversight mechanisms and protections are in place…”

If amendments have to be made on the face of the bill, the proposed legislation would need to be debated again by the House of Keys, and considered also by the Legislative Council, the upper chamber of the Manx Parliament (Tynwald). At present, the two Governments are considering a Code of Practice which CNK believes is insufficient to meet the requirements of Article 2.

Care NOT Killing needs donations to stop assisted suicide from being legalized in the UK (Donation Link).

France's euthanasia bill would criminalize suicide prevention.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sebastien Ostertag, an American who is living in France, sent EPC an analysis of France's euthanasia bill. 

France's euthanasia bill not only gives medical professionals the right in law to be directly involved with killing their patients the bill would also criminalize suicide prevention. Ostertag explains:

This bill would not only allow the killing of the physically and mentally ill, but would also do what no country in world history has ever done, which is to criminalize, with two years imprisonment, suicide prevention.

Ostertag continued:

The French bill would also criminalize anyone attempting to dissuade someone from committing suicide through assisted suicide or euthanasia. This applies to psychologists, therapists, priests, teachers, parents, doctors, and even organizations attempting to prevent suicide.

Ostertag explains:

Article 17, Section 2 states, “Is punished with two years imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros the act of stopping or trying to stop the practicing, or informing on medical aid in dying by any method including through electronic communication and online, notably by the transmitting of allegations or indications…with a goal of dissuasion, on the characteristics or consequences of medical aid in dying.”

Section 3 criminalizes trying to disrupt in any way the locations where euthanasia and assisted suicides will occur, which would mean that you couldn’t go to the hospital to try to dissuade your 18-year-old teenager or the doctor prepared to euthanize them.

That is followed by Section 4, which criminalizes the exercising of “moral or psychological pressure, by threatening or any act of intimidation towards people trying to be informed on medical aid in dying, the personnel participating in medical aid in dying, the people wishing to have recourse to medical aid in dying…” This means that any attempt to dissuade a loved one would be illegal.

All of this is topped off by the last section, which gives activist “right to die” organizations the legal right to file lawsuits against individuals and organizations that violate the delit d’entrave. These organizations have already stated that they will go after religious retirement homes and institutions that refuse to participate in assisted suicide and euthanasia. These groups would sue parents who try to keep their depressed 18-year-olds from getting assisted suicide.

Ostertag is urging the US government to condemn the French euthanasia bill. He believes that if this bill is stopped that it would likely die since President Emmanuel Macron is very unpopular.

Ostertag article: (Link).

Canadian Government Ignores UN Scrutiny Over Euthanasia Law.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Breach published an article by Simon Spichak on February 11, 2026 concerning how Canada has ignored the scathing report UN Committee on Disability Rights on Canada's euthanasia law.

A press release from Inclusion Canada on March 26, 2025 explained that the report from the UN Committee on Disability Rights that called for Canada, among other recommendations, to: Repeal Track 2 Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), including the planned 2027 expansion to persons whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness,” and reject proposals to expand MAiD to “mature minors” and through advance requests.

Spichak writes in the Breach how Canada's federal government has ignored this recommendation. Spichak writes:

When the United Nations released a scathing report on Canada’s treatment of disabled people last spring—calling out inadequate financial supports and urging Ottawa to halt the expansion of medical assistance in dying—the federal government was silent. 

Nearly a year later, it still is.

Spichak gained access to internal government emails indicating that the government expected little scrutiny of the report and further the government eliminated the Minister for Disability.

The disability movement are not surprised. Spichak reports:

The UN report and its recommendations weren’t “surprising to anyone listening to the disabled community,” said Gabrielle Peters, a disabled writer and policy analyst and co-founder of the Disability Filibuster. Disabled Canadians, she said, expressed the same concerns in government testimony, to the media, and to “anyone who would listen.”

Spichak contacted federal government departments to find out if they are planning to act on the report and was told that they are "reviewing" the report. Spichak states:

...But the government has not publicly responded to the findings nor has it committed to holding public consultations on how they will be implemented.

This is not the first time that the federal government has been tight lipped about United Nations criticism of Canada's euthanasia law. Spichak explains:

Three UN human rights experts cautioned Canada in 2021 about MAiD expansion but did not receive a formal response.

The United Nations further challenged Canada's euthanasia law in March 2025. Spichak writes:

In March 2025 Canadian officials met in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss Canada’s track record on disability. They were asked to justify how the expansion of MAiD differs from “state-sponsored eugenics.”

Rosemary Kayess, vice-chair of the UN’s disability rights committee, questioned officials about the 2021 creation of the Track 2 pathway for MAiD. Track 2 expands access to medical euthanasia to people with significant and irreversible medical conditions, whose deaths are not foreseeable, if they experience what the law defines as “substantial suffering.”

Kayess challenged Canadian officials concerning Track 2 MAiD because Track 2 euthanasia approvals apply specifically to people with disabilities. The UN Committee was not pleased with the response of the Canadian officials. Spichak explains:

The UN committee was not satisfied with the responses they received. In a report they released a month later, they argued the federal court case that led to the creation of Track 2 MAiD established euthanasia based on “negative, ableist perceptions of the quality and value of the life of persons with disabilities.” It implied, they said, that suffering is intrinsic to disability rather than that “inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering.’”

In line with many disabled advocates, the committee argued that providing MAiD to disabled individuals allows the government “to enable their death without providing safeguards that guarantee the provision of support.”

Spichak then commented on the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner's MAiD reports:

According to the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner, as well as federal government reports, women and marginalized individuals are more likely to access Track 2 MAiD. One woman, referred to as Mrs. B, was euthanized within one day because her husband was “experiencing caregiver burden.” The woman, who was in her 80s, experienced complications after a coronary artery bypass graft.

Critics also say MAiD advocates often ignore the role that systemic deprivation —including poverty, inadequate services, lack of access to publicly funded psychotherapy, and social isolation—has in shaping who seeks assisted death.

In 2022, a 51-year old woman known as Sophia, who lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, accessed MAiD after being unable to secure affordable housing with adequate ventilation that would ease her symptoms.

Spichak suggests that the UN Committee on Disability Rights reports may have delayed the implementation of euthanasia in Canada to people with mental illness alone. Currently Canada's federal government has scheduled the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone for March 17, 2027.

Spichak states that the euthanasia lobby consider denying euthanasia for mental illness alone is illogical and discriminatory while opposition to euthanasia for mental illness alone argue that:

...it has so far proved impossible to determine whether someone’s mental illness is truly untreatable. The International Association for Suicide Prevention, an official partner of the UN, echoed similar concerns.

Spichak continues by explaining that the federal government has established no consultation process on the United Nations recommendations. Health Canada told Spichak that they were having a closed door round table meeting on February 26 to discuss the United Nations recommendations.

Gabrielle Peters questioned whether government funded disability charities and non-profits who receive at least 50% of their funding from the federal government will be capable of providing a - “controlled opposition” to government policy. Peters called the government's consultation on disability:

“An illusion of involvement that props up a policy of horror disguised by euphemisms and omissions.”

The article further discusses the response by the federal government to the UN Committee on Disability Rights report on Canada's euthanasia law and concludes:

Almost a year after the report’s release, there is no plan to substantially act on any of the UN’s recommendations. Government officials guessed right: mainstream news outlets have largely ignored the report’s criticisms of MAiD. Meanwhile, the situation for disabled Canadians—the poverty, health-care inequity, and other systemic neglect contributing to these deaths—remains unchanged.

The government has ignored the concerns of the disability community concerning Canada's euthanasia law as they continue to move towards more killing by euthanasia.

More articles on this topic:

• How euthanasia fails Canada's most vulnerable (Link).
• Shouldn't care come before euthanasia? (Link). 
• The International disability rights community is concerned with Canada's euthanasia law (Link).
• UN demands change: Canada must end MAiD for people without terminal illness (Link).
  
• United Nations Committee directs Canada to repeal Track 2 euthanasia deaths (Link).
• Canada's euthanasia deaths continue to rise with approximately 16,500 euthanasia deaths in 2024 (Link).
• Has Canada's euthanasia law gone too far (Link).

How a Structured Exchange Became a Masterclass in Deflection

The following post is part of a structured, multi-week, simultaneously published exchange between Kim Carlson and Paul Magennis, authors of  MAiD in Canada, and Gordon Friesen, President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. These alternating messages will explore deeply divergent views on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), and no mutual endorsement is implied.

Previously published instalments have been:

Gordon Friesen, Monday, January 12, 2026.
Maid in Canada (MIC)     January 19, 2026.
Gordon Friesen                January 26, 2026.
Maid in Canada (MIC)     February 2, 2026
Gordon Friesen                January 26, 2026 .

On Capacity and Its Absence:

How a Structured Exchange Became a Masterclass in Deflection

When Friesen approached us about a multi-week exchange, he was clear, “my interest is to get my point of view published on your blog.” Congratulations, you achieved exactly that. Your point of view was published, repeatedly, even when it wandered well outside the agreed-upon topics.

What was supposed to be a structured, good-faith discussion became a showcase in dehumanizing statements, diversions, and inaccurate use of references. Instead of engaging with the arguments directly, Friesen took off-topic detours and then claimed there was "insufficient space” to address the actual issue.

If the objective was simply to use our platform as a megaphone while avoiding meaningful scrutiny, then mission accomplished. But let’s be clear, avoiding thoughtful and respectful discussion is not a position of strength. It’s what you do when you are trying to protect your narrative.

Back to our regularly — or perhaps chaotically — scheduled program

We will complete this (un)structured “exchange” by attempting to respond to this latest post and hopefully close off this discussion back at the agreed upon topic.

Friesen begins his final contribution by conceding that he and Kelsi Sheren “have a natural connection, because we are both eligible” for MAiD, a claim he repeats multiple times. Eligibility, however, is not self-declared. It is determined following a voluntary request, informed consent, and assessment by two independent clinicians. If neither of them has undergone that process, then repeatedly describing themselves as “eligible” is, at best, speculative — and at worst, misleading.

Upon learning that we redacted some of his post Friesen stated in an email that he and Sheren “have an earned experiential right to discuss suicide in ways that (we) would not be comfortable with.” Based on this post and his email, he appears to believe that medical conditions and lived experiences grant them both freedom to speak about suicide and MAiD in whatever terms they choose. Lived experience deserves respect. But it does not grant immunity from responsibility and accountability, nor does it place anyone beyond critique. Yet his latest contribution suggests he views them both as members of a protected class of experience — one that must never be challenged, corrected, or, in his words, “censored,” regardless of how reckless and dangerous their statements may be.

“Pet theory of Carter”

We are not entirely certain, but it appears that Friesen’s reference to “pet theory of Carter” is directed at our statement that “Uncertainty is not justification for categorical exclusion, and arguments of this kind have already been considered and rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.” In doing so, he seems to suggest that reliance on Carter v. Canada[1] is inadequate or irrelevant when assessing the constitutionality of categorical exclusions.

The constitution and the courts would disagree. In Canada, the evolution of MAiD has and will continue to be shaped by individuals with lived experience bringing Charter challenges before the courts. As a reminder to Friesen, Carter did not explicitly exclude any particular group. The federal government chose to restrict access only to those whose natural deaths were reasonably foreseeable, thereby creating categorical exclusion. Those exclusions were subsequently challenged in Truchon v. Quebec, leading to the passage of Bill C-7.[2] As a result, individuals whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable are no longer excluded from accessing MAiD.  

The evolution of MAiD follows a clear constitutional pattern: exclusions are tested against the Charter, and where they cannot be justified, they fall. In addition, the courts have consistently rejected fear and speculative concerns as sufficient justification for a complete prohibition. To characterize this constitutional trajectory as a “pet theory” is to dismiss not merely our position, but the jurisprudential path that has defined the legal framework itself.

The next charter challenge

John Scully is 84 years old and has lived with PTSD for approximately 30 years.[3] He has described the persistence of his symptoms in stark terms: “Every single night of my life now I get nightmares, horrific nightmares. It doesn’t stop.”[4] He has spoken publicly about decades of treatment and has acknowledged two prior suicide attempts. His condition stems from nearly 50 years as a war correspondent covering 36 war zones.

Scully, along with Claire Elyse Brousseau, have launched a constitutional challenge seeking to end the exclusion of individuals whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness.[5] Once again, history appears to follow a familiar constitutional path driven by individuals with lived experience.

The constitutional question is not about whether uncertainty exists in psychiatric prognostication or capacity assessments. The question is whether uncertainty or moral opposition can withstand constitutional scrutiny as a basis for denying Scully and an entire class of competent adults even the opportunity to be assessed for MAiD. If fear is insufficient to justify categorical exclusion in one context, it does not become constitutionally sufficient simply because the suffering is psychiatric rather than physical. “We all must demand that we mentally ill will be accorded identical human rights as the physically ill, with access to MAiD on the very same conditions that they have.”[6]

Conclusion

We agreed to this exchange on the understanding that it would be thoughtful, respectful, and focused on the agreed-upon topics. Rather than continuing to talk past one another, we saw it as an opportunity to engage directly in each of our concerns and differing opinions, and give readers a genuine chance to consider both views.

However, at the announcement of this exchange, Friesen stated, “the more public interest which is stimulated, the more, we believe, that our own positions will gain traction.”[7] By his own framing, this was never about engaging meaningfully with complex ethical and clinical questions. It appears his purpose was amplification and spectacle. It was an opportunity for him to rail against MAiD before an audience that may not ordinarily engage with his work.

He also seemed to think this was something to be won — a “cage fight,” even a “battle of the titans,” as he put it in one of our email exchanges. From his perspective, it was a contest, with readers cast as spectators rather than participants in a careful and principled dialogue. What could have been a meaningful exchange between individuals with opposing views was instead turned into a battleground.

Discussions about MAiD — particularly where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition — require good faith, intellectual humility, and genuine seriousness. Mr. Friesen’s approach to this exchange was, in our view, fundamentally unserious.

Readers deserve better.

References

---

[1] Carter v Canada (Attorney General), 2015.

https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2015/2015scc5/2015scc5.html

[2] Legislative Background Bill C-7: Government of Canada’s Legislative Response to the Superior Court of Québec Truchon Decision

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/ad-am/c7/c7-eng.pdf

[3] Scully, John. Am I Dead Yet?: 71 Countries, 36 War Zones, One Man's Opinion. Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd, 2008.

[4] Toronto man explains why he wants MAiD for mental health issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtNuk_1XBJs

[5] Announcement of Charter Challenge for Mental Illness

https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/MDSUMC_Lawsuit_PressRelease_EN_FINAL.pdf

[6] John Scully: Why people living with mental disorders deserve equal treatment under the law

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-UEux9koE

[7] Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Sponsors Debate on Medical Homicide for Mental Illness (Jan 4, 2026)

https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2026-01-05T12:22:00-05:00&max-results=100&start=27&by-date=false

 

Dying With Dignity's financials.

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on February 5, 2026.

By Kelsi Sheren

There is a basic ethical rule we apply almost everywhere else in society, almost. If you profit from an outcome, you should not be the loudest voice advocating for it, but I guess Dying with Dignity didn’t get the morality memo.

Medicine used to understand this instinctively.

Doctors are not supposed to financially benefit from prescribing a particular drug. Judges are expected to recuse themselves if they have a stake in a case. Regulators are scrutinized when they take money from the industries they oversee. We understand or at least normal people understand intuitively — that money distorts judgment.

Except, apparently, when it comes to death.

In Canada, organizations that aggressively lobby for euthanasia and assisted death are allowed to operate as tax-exempt charities, raise millions of dollars, invest surplus funds, earn substantial interest, and spend heavily on advertising ON FACEBOOK all while presenting themselves as neutral advocates for “choice” and “dignity.”

Nothing about that is neutral. Advertising death is INSANE. This is a massive conflict of interest.

When an organization’s continued relevance, funding, and growth depend on expanding access to assisted death (poisoning by your dr), its incentives are no longer aligned with caution, restraint, or genuine exploration of alternatives. They are aligned with normalization. Expansion, rapid expansion at that and volume.

That doesn’t require malice, necessarily. It only requires incentives, and money is one hell of an incentive.

“In 2024 Dying with Dignity Canada had $9,231,137 in assets, of which $7,370,174 was in long term investments.”

Dying With Dignity Canada does not simply respond to public demand. It actively manufactures it daily, through marketing campaigns, political lobbying, media engagement, and messaging that frames euthanasia as compassionate, inevitable, and progressive.

In 2024 alone, the organization spent over $800,000 on advertising and promotions. That is not an educational pamphlet budget. That is a persuasion budget, the slow trip method to convincing a country to kill itself.

Now go ahead and ask yourself an uncomfortable but necessary question. Why does an organization advocating for death need to advertise so aggressively?

The answer is obvious once you allow yourself to see it. Advocacy groups that rely on donations must maintain emotional urgency. They must keep the issue front-of-mind. They must expand the pool of people who view their cause as necessary and virtuous.

Death becomes the product, dignity becomes the brand and once death becomes the product, vulnerable people become the market. This is where the conflict sharpens and this is where Canada currently is.

The people most affected by euthanasia policy are not healthy, empowered individuals making abstract philosophical choices. They are the elderly, the disabled, the chronically ill, the mentally unwell, the socially isolated, and those failed by an underfunded healthcare system.

These are precisely the people least equipped to push back against subtle pressure and the people most likely to internalize the message that their continued existence is a burden.

When an advocacy organization profits financially and institutionally from policies that make death easier to access than care, the ethical line has already been crossed.

There is another layer to this conflict that demands attention and to be pulled apart.

Many of the same euthanasia advocates and organizations pushing for expansion are closely connected to CAMAP (the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers) the pro death cult organization that trains physicians, educates assessors, and helps shape the protocols used to deliver MAID in Canada and even advised the NIH on its Maid Kits. Even though not a SINGLE DRUG USED IS FDA APPROVED FOR KILLING.

CAMAP is not a passive observer of policy. It is involved in operationalizing it. It trains the doctors. It influences standards. It normalizes practice and it exists within the same advocacy ecosystem lobbying for broader eligibility and fewer safeguards.

That is a textbook conflict of interest, in case anyone still isn’t getting it.

An organization that helps design, teach, and implement assisted-death protocols should not be aligned directly or indirectly with groups lobbying to expand its use. The people setting the rules should not benefit from increasing the number of times those rules are applied.

In any other area of medicine, this would trigger immediate alarm. We do not allow pharmaceutical companies to both write prescribing guidelines and profit from increased prescriptions without intense scrutiny. We do not permit regulators to be trained by the industries they oversee while those industries lobby for deregulation.

Yet in MAID, this overlap is treated as normal even virtuous. It’s disgusting, frankly.

The result is a closed loop. Advocacy drives expansion, expansion increases demand for trained providers, training institutions gain influence and legitimacy, and the system reinforces itself. Oversight collapses into endorsement. Safeguards quietly erode under the banner of “best practice.”

This is not conspiracy. It is structural misalignment.

When the same network benefits reputationally, professionally, and institutionally from the growth of assisted death, the possibility of genuine restraint disappears. The question stops being “Should this person die?” and becomes “How do we process this efficiently?” and once death becomes a system complete with training pipelines, protocols, certifications, and career pathways — it is no longer just a medical option.

It is an industry. A pro death industry, complete with organ removal and all. Nothing to see here….

What makes this even more disturbing is what isn’t being funded at the same scale.

Palliative care in Canada remains uneven, underfunded, and inaccessible in many regions. Mental health support is rationed. Disability supports are bureaucratic nightmares. Veterans, the poor, and the chronically ill routinely report being offered assisted death while waiting months or years for care.

Yet the organizations pushing hardest for euthanasia expansion are flush with cash. This is not coincidence. It is misalignment, it’s intentional… it’s evil.

A system that finds money for death but not for care is making a values statement whether it admits it or not and a charity that grows wealthier as death becomes more normalized cannot credibly claim to be free of conflict.

Canadians deserve better than this cult, Canadians should demand transparency about financial incentives, separation between advocacy and policy design, and independent oversight free from financial entanglement.

We would demand this in any other domain involving life-altering decisions. Death should not be the exception. When euthanasia advocacy becomes a lucrative, tax-exempt enterprise, the question is no longer whether choice exists.

The question is whether consent can remain truly free in a system where death pays and that is a question Canada has not yet had the courage to face.

It’s clear to me, it cannot be truly free, when it’s being coerced into killing itself.

Source: https://run-with-life.blogspot.com/2026/02/dying-with-dignitys-lucrative-death.html

Suicide prevention group concerned about the legalization of assisted suicide

Death should never be a substitute for adequate care and support.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) published a statement on assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2025. Considering the silence by many suicide prevention groups, the statement of the IASP is important. The statement says:

There is a strong potential for overlap or equivalence between what we consider to be suicide and euthanasia and assisted suicide (EaAS), particularly when EaAS is provided not at the end of life and instead to those with chronic conditions for whom death is not imminent. Research and clinical experience indicate that when a person has an irremediable illness or life situation, steps can still be taken to remediate the suffering and reasons motivating their desire to die. Even when it may convincingly appear to be hopeless, premature deaths can be prevented. IASP’s position is that:

1. Jurisdictions considering legalising and/or expanding the availability of assisted suicide and euthanasia should engage meaningfully with suicide prevention experts and/or organisations to carefully weigh concerns about overlap between what is being contemplated and what we usually consider to be suicide. Any such concerns should have a prominent impact on decision-making.

2. Jurisdictions that legalise and regulate assisted suicide and euthanasia must ensure that other means to alleviate a person’s physical and emotional suffering, including provision of better psychosocial and material supports, mental health services and palliative care, are systematically offered and provided. Death should never be a substitute for adequate care and support.

The IASP statement further suggests:

• All persons who are seeking to end their lives have the same access to high quality suicide prevention assessments and interventions.
• All people and organizations who work in suicide prevention must to their utmost to provide the same level of quality help and interventions to all people who express a wish to die.
• All people in suicide prevention should be provided with end-of-life and hospice/palliative care training.

The statement continues:

4. IASP encourages and supports research on the relationship between suicide and assisted suicide and euthanasia, and research on best practices in suicide prevention assessments and interventions with persons who are suffering from irremediable medical conditions, as well as ethical standards for suicide prevention with these populations.

5. IASP is concerned that because of the inability, documented in current research, to predict which persons with a mental illness have a poor or hopeless prognosis, and which will substantially improve, with or without treatment, we should not allow access to EaAS for persons whose suffering is solely associated with a mental illness.

This IASP statement is important since the death lobby argues that there is a clear difference between requests for suicide as compared to requests for assisted suicide and/or euthanasia.

In March 2021, (MAiD) euthanasia was extended to people who are not terminally ill but rather living with a grievous and irremediable medical conditions in Canada. Many of these euthanasia deaths appear to be requests for death based on suicidal ideation. Instead of receiving suicide prevention or mental health supports, these people become approved to be killed by euthanasia. This is a form of abandonment, not a "freedom" to choose death.

Hopefully the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) statement will lead to legislatures, world-wide, rejecting the legalization of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.

Did Gavin Newsom Witness His Mother’s Murder?

This article was published by National Review online on February 5, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

California Governor Gavin Newsom is clearly running for president and — surprise, surprise — has a new memoir coming out. In an interview about the book, he recounted attending his mother’s hastened death. From the Washington Post story:

It was the spring of 2002 when Gavin Newsom’s mother, Tessa, dying of cancer, stunned him with a voicemail. If he wanted to see her again, she told him, it would need to be before the following Thursday, when she planned to end her life.

Newsom, then a 34-year-old San Francisco supervisor, did not try to dissuade her, he recounted in an interview with The Washington Post. The fast-rising politician was racked with guilt from being distant and busy as she dealt with the unbearable pain of the breast cancer spreading through her body.

Newsom’s account of his mother’s death at the age of 55 by assisted suicide, and his feelings of grief and remorse toward a woman with whom he had a loving but complex relationship, is one of the most revealing and emotional passages in the California governor’s book, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery,” which will be published Feb. 24.

Some call it assisted suicide, but it appears to have actually been a homicide because she was lethally injected by a doctor:

Forty-five minutes before the “courageous doctor” arrived to administer the medicine that would end her life, Newsom and his sister gave their mother her regular dose of painkillers to keep her comfortable, he said.

When the doctor arrived, Tessa Newsom lucidly answered his questions and told him she was sure of her decision, Gavin Newsom said. Her labored breathing and the gravity of the moment became too much for Newsom’s sister. She left the room. Newsom stayed.

“Then I sat there with her for another 20 minutes after she was dead,” he said, his voice breaking briefly and his eyes welling as he told the story. “My head on her stomach, just crying, waiting for another breath.”

Here’s the thing. If the “courageous doctor” intentionally administered an overdose with the intent to kill Tessa, it was murder, which is defined in California as “the unlawful killing of a human being . . . with malice aforethought.”

Malice in this context doesn’t mean ill will. Rather, “(1) Malice is express when there is manifested a deliberate intention to unlawfully take away the life of a fellow creature.” That was clearly the case in Newsom’s telling.

It’s what she wanted! Perhaps. But under the law, a victim cannot consent to being murdered, so that would be no defense for the doctor.

But Wesley, it would be legal in California today! No, it wouldn’t. California’s assisted suicide law requires self-administration. So, under the law as it currently exists, if a doctor intentionally lethally injects someone with the intent to kill, it remains murder.

Despite the obvious emotional pain caused in witnessing his mother’s killing, Newsom says that he strongly supports legalizing assisted suicide. Of course he does. Legalizing assisted suicide is a liberal agenda item. And as I said, he’s clearly running for president.

So, the question is: Did Newsom break the law? If he did not participate directly in his mother’s killing or arrange for the doctor to do the deed, probably not.

But in a 2018 recounting, he told a New Yorker reporter a somewhat different story: “The night before we gave her the drugs I cooked her dinner, hard-boiled eggs, and she told me, ‘Get out of politics.’ She was worried about the stress on me.” Assisted suicide was illegal in 2002, so I don’t know.

I do wonder though, that if he had been continually caring for her so that she didn’t have to leave him a message about her plan, if he had tried to dissuade Tessa from having herself ended, and had facilitated the kind of medical care that might have made her not want to be killed, whether things might have turned out differently. Hospice, properly administered, can work wonders in that regard. But as Newsom said, he was “distant” from her and oh, so very busy.

Bill C-260 - to prevent coercion to euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Garnett Genius MP (Sherwood Park - Fort Saskatchewan) introduced private members bill C-260, on February 5, to prevent euthanasia coercion by bureaucrats and people in positions of trust or authority (excluding doctors and nurses).

Bill C-260 is not yet in the order of precedence, but we will keep you up-to-date about the timing of the first hour / second hour of debate and final vote.

You will find more information and updates about Bill C-260 at: https://carenotcoercion.ca/