Medical Aid in Dying, language games.

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The assisted suicide lobby plays word games to convince people that assisting a death by prescribing poison cocktails is not assisted suicide.

The latest word game concerns the phrase Medical Aid in Dying, also known as MAiD.

MAiD is a made in Canada term to describe euthanasia and assisted suicide by using language that is considered more acceptable. The Canadian euthanasia lobby needed a phrase that would make killing people, by euthanasia or assisted suicide, more palatable. They came up with the phrase Medical Aid in Dying also known as MAiD to achieve their goal.

Compassion and Choices (C & C), the leading assisted suicide lobby group in America published an article titled: Medical Aid in Dying is not Assisted Suicide, Suicide or Euthanasia. The (C & C) publication states:

Medical aid in Dying is fundamentally different from euthanasia.

Medical aid in dying is a practice by which a terminally ill, mentally capable person with a prognosis of six months or less chooses to request, obtain and take medication that brings about a peaceful death. In all authorized jurisdictions, only the dying person can request an aid-in-dying prescription under the law, and if and when they decide to ingest the medication, they must self-administer it. Therefore, control stays with the patient from beginning to end.

In contrast, euthanasia, sometimes called “mercy killing,” is an intentional act by which another person (not the dying person) acts to cause death. Euthanasia is illegal throughout the United States, and all medical aid-in-dying laws expressly prohibit euthanasia. Compassion & Choices does not support authorizing euthanasia because it would allow someone else — not the dying person — to cause the death of another.

In Canada, MAiD is the term defining the acts whereby a physician or nurse practitioner either prescribe or directly administer a poison cocktail for the purpose of intentionally causing death. In fact the term MAiD actually constitutes both euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.

So let's get this straight. A made in Canada term (MAiD) that was designed to replace the use of the terms euthanasia or assisted suicide is not euthanasia, assisted suicide. How is euthanasia or assisted suicide not euthanasia or assisted suicide?

C & C obviously likes the term MAiD but it doesn't want to admit that MAiD is euthanasia.

The assisted suicide lobby wants you to believe that prescribing a lethal poison for the purpose of death, is not assisted suicide, it is not suicide, it is not "mercy killing" but rather it is MAiD and by the way, MAiD is not euthanasia, even though in Canada MAiD is euthanasia and assisted suicide.

You can't make this stuff up. But even if you change the use of language the act remains the same.