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| Meghan Schrader |
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.
This blog post responds to the fact that the American Association of Suicidology’s 2017 statement saying that Oregon Model “MAiD” is not “suicide,” previously “retired” by the AAS Executive Committee in 2023, was reissued verbatim this year.
I may write follow-up blog posts about this development, but I will stick with this one for now.
Clearly the AAS is comprised of brilliant scholars who have done great good for suicide prevention. Yet AAS’s vacillation can be understood to suggest that the statement is not indisputably based entirely on whatever scientific method the AAS considers most useful for studying suicide, but is at least partly influenced by the individual perspectives and ideologies of which scholars are in charge of the AAS at a given time. Suicidologists in charge of the AAS in 2017 thought it would be good to create the statement, the suicidologists in charge of the 2023 AAS Executive Committee thought it would be good to retire it, and enough current AAS suicidologists thought it would be good to reissue it.
However, the AAS’ statement does not establish unanimity among suicide prevention experts. In 2025 the New Hampshire Coalition For Suicide Prevention opposed the New Hampshire End of Life Freedom Act, because “This bill will send the message that it is OK to take your own life “in certain circumstances,” and “While framed as a compassionate option, physician-assisted suicide often exacerbates existing inequities in healthcare systems.”
Moreover, the International Association For Suicide Prevention released a 2025 “IASP Position Statement on Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia” warning about an overlap between “MAiD” and “suicide.” While not as unequivocal as euthanasia opponents would like (despite recommending a ban on psychiatric euthanasia and expressing deep concerns about the systemic pressures that might coerce disabled people who aren’t dying to end their lives, the statement doesn’t say, “all ‘MAiD’ is suicide, don’t legalize it for anyone”), it also does not say that any particular form of “MAiD” is not suicide.
Despite the harms that the Oregon Model poses to marginalized people with terminal or potentially terminal conditions, I am glad that at least the AAS’ current webpage about “MAiD” indicates that the distinction it draws between “suicide” and “MAiD” is limited to people who are already dying.
But we know that the Oregon Model has been applied to situations that the AAS has historically worked to prevent. For instance, people with eating disorders have used Oregon model “MAiD” as a suicide method.
Moreover, the actual text of the re-posted statement acknowledges that in international jurisdictions, “MAiD” is allowed for “incurable” illnesses, without explicitly saying that this is bad. The equivocation in those passages makes it easier for expansionists to apply the AAS statement to their advocacy. This is especially true in paragraph 1, which acknowledges the existence of “MAiD” for people who aren’t dying, and paragraph 20, which makes the blanket statement that “a patient’s choice of PAD that satisfies legal criteria is not an appropriate target for ‘suicide’ prevention,” without reiterating that this criteria must include terminal illness. Even though the organization’s “MAiD” webpage, and other parts of the statement, indicate that the AAS’s statement is meant to apply specifically to terminal illness, there are passages that expansionists can cite to support their cause.
Perhaps this is why the resurrected 2017 statement helped redefine suicide in the 2019 Canadian Truchon court case. The judge in that case cited the AAS statement when ruling that the “MAiD” deaths of disabled people who were not dying would not be suicides, even though the United Nations and nearly every disability rights group in Canada say that that’s not true.
So the AAS’s statement has been used to effect what the majority of disability experts, and likely many people at the AAS, view as suicides, even if that wasn’t the AAS’s intention.
As I’ve said, I can respect the logic of well-intentioned people, even suicidologists, who draw a good-faith distinction between Oregon model “MAiD” and “regular” suicide. I also understand that the AAS’s scholars have done great good for suicide prevention, and they may have reissued the statement with the best of intentions. But that statement has harmed disabled people, especially when “MAiD” expansionists have used it to achieve their goals.
We can observe some of those expansionists beginning to acknowledge that their agenda does indeed involve suicide, such as when famous expansive “MAiD” advocate Thaddeus Mason Pope tweeted to me that the suicides of disabled people are good.
Moreover, the AAS’s 2023 decision to retire its 2017 statement indicates doubt about the content of that statement. It is not unreasonable to infer that whoever was in charge of the AAS Executive Committee at the time entertained the thought that there might not be such a strong distinction between ““MAiD” and “suicide” after all, or that the statement was undermining suicide prevention in some way; otherwise why retire the statement?
It will be valid for future discussions about the statement to note that the statement was created, then retired, then re-issued, which suggests disagreement among suicidologists as to its usefulness.
Moreover, as noted, the AAS’s statement has been celebrated by very aggressive extremists who believe in “MAiD” for disabled people who aren’t dying and for people with mental illnesses. Their position contradicts the position of the Canadian Association For Suicide Prevention, the International Association For Suicide Prevention, and the director of Canada’s 988 Suicide Prevention hotline, all of whom have said that “psychiatric MAiD” is suicide and should not be legalized.
Canada’s “MAiD” program encourages doctors to raise the possibility of “MAiD” with their patients-a practice that is now happening so regularly that disabled Canadians who find such suggestions offensive and disturbing have begun carrying cards telling doctors not to do this. I’m going to give the AAS the benefit of the doubt and assume that when they released their “MAiD” statement, that wasn’t what they had in mind.
Yet the AAS statement was cited in the 2019 Truchon court decision that expanded “MAiD” to disabled people without terminal illnesses and caused these scenarios.
I am sure that the AAS’s reissued statement will once again become one of the “MAiD” movement’s favorite talking points. But the statement must be assessed with respect to its impact, cultural context and inconsistency; it isn’t indisputably the rock-solid scientific consensus that “MAiD” proponents would like it to be.
Author Note 1: Here is an archived link to the retirement notice and a screenshot of that notice.
Author Note 2: Here is the complete text of the Truchon decision that cites the AAS statement.
Author Note 3: For a more in-depth response to the perspective of those who draw a good faith distinction between Oregon Model “MAiD” and “regular” suicide, see my blog post, “What Does Suicide Have To Do With the Oregon MAiD Model?".
Author Note 4: For peer-reviewed research on how “MAiD” intersects with the cultural trope that disabled people’s suicides are acceptable, see Professor Emily Lund’s 2016 article, “Is Suicide An Option? The Impact of Disability On Suicide Acceptability In the Context of Depression, Suicidality And Demographic Factors.”
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