Gabriel Peters: MAiD is built discrimination, not a remedy to it.

The following was published by Gabriel Peters on her substack on April 23, 2026.

By Gabriel Peters

Re: Eligibility of Persons Whose Sole Underlying Medical Condition is a Mental Illness

The following is a longer version of my testimony to Special Joint Committee on MAiD. Due to time restrictions I had to edit severely. However the session is an hour long and I had hoped some of the Committee members would use their time to ask me questions. Only one did.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide some brief comments. One of the hats I wear is that I sit as a care partner on the Providence Health Care Psychiatry Lived Experience Research Advisory Committee and I am always struck by the urgency accorded expansion of MAID for mental illness versus that of providing funding for comprehensive mental health care, supports, livable income and housing for those with mental illness.

Injustice can often be measured in time.

Today, I am speaking as co-founder of the Disability Filibuster.

As policy makers I am certain you are aware that neither people nor policies are islands unto themselves. And yet MAID is discussed as if it exists inside a vacuum, free of influence from, or consequence to, society.

In what little time I have I will address a couple of persistent myths that constantly derail and impede rather than build understanding.

Myth One: The reason people oppose expanding MAiD criteria to include mental illness as a sole underlying condition is because they believe mental illness is less real than physical illness and they treat it as less significant and less worthy of support.

False: The division between physical and mental illness is one asserted and maintained by the medical model and the Canadian state. Due to the exclusion of essential elements of mental health care from Canada’s publicly funded and arguably misnamed universal health care system, Canada has a two-tier mental health care system. The average provincial and territorial mental health care funding lags behind that of many peer countries. Proportionally, Canada’s public spending on mental illness is lower than its occurrence among all illnesses. People with mental illness face particular threats to their civil rights. A BC study found that for nearly a third of people with mental illness, their first contact with mental health care involved the police. A situation that the Canadian Mental Health Association attributes to the lack of community services, the limited scope of crisis services, a reduction in hospital beds so that even short stays are only available to those in the most acute crisis. A CMHA fact sheet states: “Police officers are, by default, becoming the first point of access to mental health services for persons with mental illness, earning them the nickname ‘psychiatrists in blue.’” They go on to explain that one of the consequences of this is that “​​public also receives reinforcement for the false perception that mental illness is a crime rather than an illness, and that persons with mental illness are a public danger – a common and erroneous belief which hurts both persons with mental illness and the public.”

Stigma requires power. Without power, stigma is just someone’s bad opinion.

I hope this isn’t too idiomatic a reference, but in terms of the claims asserted by the myth, the call is coming from inside your house, not ours.

As disabled people we understand disability as one large tent. Power divides and builds hierarchies. Justice unites through shared struggle and common goals.

There are differences and these do matter. Where physical disability can be met with a benevolent though also hostile othering that infantalizes, assumes helplessness, denies access and views our bodies with disgust, people with mental illness confront staggeringly pervasive, dehumanizing and isolating stigma and dangerous stereotypes while being simultaneously blamed for their illness and having its existence doubted.

The experience of oppression is not the same but the cause of it is.

And please remember that the majority of disabled people have more than one disability and a combination of both physical and mental illness is not uncommon. So when someone projects this myth onto one of us they are often accusing and pretending to defend the exact same person.

Myth Two: Failing to expand MAID is discrimination.

False: This and other assertions made by proponents of MAiD’s expansion reflect a profound lack of understanding of disability rights, history and what the causes, consequences and solutions to the discrimination and injustice disabled people experience actually are.

This myth exists as part of the hyper-individualization of human rights by neoliberalism. Instead of human rights as integral component for building a better society, your body becomes a container of assets that you manage. Universal human vulnerability is denied and instead treated as a deviance from ‘normal’ so that whatever social institutions and policies do exist, do not reflect the necessary conditions for broad resilience. Disability and illness are interpreted through the lens of self-ownership, (an extension of private property rights) and personal responsibility. That the neoliberal state is generously offering to aid you into the grave – for free – is not a pivot, it’s an unmasking of any pretence left covering Canada’s allegiance to the dictum of Margaret Thatcher: “there is no such thing as a society.”

In a zero-sum society where the state’s responsibility for social welfare of its citizens is eroded, it was almost inevitable that human rights would become a competitive race to the bottom. A throne of nails and a poison drip awaits the victor.

The urge to distinguish oneself as ‘free’ while yoked to neoliberal and eugenic logic leads to absurdly invoking the Charter to demand something simply because someone else has it - even if what that person has is killing them and those around them. MAID is particularly exploitative as it uses the same hierarchy of deservingness as the charity model to suggest you can reverse your way out of pity and ableist oppression, assert your freedom and prove your equality by asking the state to kill you. Surely this committee and the Canadian state is capable of a more sophisticated understanding of discrimination and human rights.

In a forthcoming chapter entitled, The Case Against Legalizing Assisted Death for Psychiatric Disorders,” Trudo Lemmens and Scott Kim demonstrate why parity arguments logically lead to absolute autonomy (death on demand for anyone).

“..the parity argument is difficult to restrain. For instance, it is not clear whether one can

draw a principled line around ‘medical and psychiatric suffering’ so that all other suffering is excluded, if all that matters is some formal criterion of equal treatment. What is unique about medically based suffering (both somatic and mental) that suggests a clear, principled line around it (Braun, 2023; Davis & Mathison, 2020; Kim, 2023)? That is, one could apply the parity principle to whether persons suffering from non-medical causes are being discriminated against. There is a perennial debate in the Netherlands about extending legal EAS [euthanasia, assisted suicide] to, for example, elderly persons who do not have irremediable medical suffering, but who are ‘tired of life’ and would like EAS. What principle would exclude suffering from abject poverty? The logical destination of the parity argument seems to be a pure autonomy-based EAS system.”[i]

This aligns with disability analysis that for years has asked “Why Us?” The actual discrimination exists at the level of deciding that our suffering - and only our suffering - makes us killable. Humans suffer in a myriad of ways and among the worst is feeling helpless while someone you care for is suffering. And those feelings also happen when you are the person who others might be feeling powerless to help. It makes me wonder how much unprocessed grief and feelings of powerlessness lead to a misguided desire to add meaning and purpose by participating in the construction of MAiD. Once you unravel and disentangle your thoughts and definitions of words like dignity from ableism, you are left with the realization that ableism is the only thing defining the perimeters of MAiD.

Disability analysis has evolved from its early focus on individual rights, independence and integration into existing systems. Breaking free of the medical and charity model and the explosion of knowledge that followed the freeing of many, (though not all), from institutions, led to the realization that the tools we were using were pre-coded to build ableism not dismantle it. As Jean-Sebastian Beaudry, Canada Research Chair in Health, Inclusion and Policy at McGill Law School explains, “Disability justice…requires the dismantling of the multifaceted ableist ideology that pervades the very tools used to achieve justice, and disguises policy shortcomings as unavoidable economic or biological necessities.” [ii]

MAiD is built discrimination, not a remedy to it. The Canadian state decided no dignity is possible for someone who is disabled and, as consolation prize, branded a lethal injection from a state-sanctioned provider “dignified” declaring, “There’s your human rights!”. Conveniently, this aligns with the commodification of human rights. A new revenue stream was created for some but, overall, killing us is vastly cheaper than building the necessary infrastructure and policy to make a dignified life plausible.

The reasoning behind this myth is akin to suggesting that ugly laws were discriminatory not because they banned visibly disabled people from public space but because they didn’t ban all disabled people from public space.

Those presenting the astroturf-autonomy of “access” to death to an actual-autonomy-deprived population are certainly making a choice to do so. But why?

At least one study found that support for euthanasia on the basis of mental illness was positively correlated with stigma towards people with mental illness. Not only the opposite of what one would expect if the myth were true but suggests that those spreading this myth may be projecting their own beliefs onto us.

The co-opting or, at best, outdated and incorrect understanding of disability rights invoked in the name of support for MAiD is made possible by the absence of disabled knowledge and understanding. The mythmaking - or some would call it misinformation – reflects broader epistemic injustice that has remained largely unchallenged and become more entrenched and fictitious as a result of MAID.

MAiD is discrimination not a solution to it. It must be repealed not expanded.


[i] Scott Kim & Trudo Lemmens, The Case Against Legalizing Assisted Death for Psychiatric Disorders

(Forthcoming in Matthé Scholten, Kelso Cratsley, and Tania Gerkel, eds., Mental Health Ethics:

Current Controversies and Emerging Debates (Oxford University Press))

[ii] Jonas-Sebastien Beaudry Ableism’s new clothes: Achievements and challenges for disability rights in Canada

University of Toronto Law Journal 2024 74:1, 1-40

Canadians are getting euthanasia for reasons that are illegal.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr John Maher

Sharon Kirkey reported for the National Post on April 22, 2026 that Psychiatrist Dr. John Maher told the Special Joint Parliamentary Committee that is weighing Canada’s plan to extend euthanasia to those with a mental disorder alone that:

People with mental illnesses are already dying assisted deaths in Canada “under the guise of flimsy medical excuses” and others will “doctor shop until death” if euthanasia is allowed for psychiatric suffering alone.

 “I and other colleagues are experiencing this: People are clearly getting MAID for reasons that are frankly illegal,”

Kirkey also reported Maher's comments that Canada's euthanasia law may lead to a suicide contagion effect:

Maher, who specializes in treating severe mental illness, also warned Canada risks a “suicide contagion” effect if medical assistance in dying (MAID) becomes seen as a legitimate option for mental suffering. He pointed to the Werther Effect, a phenomenon that refers to a rise in suicides after publicized reports of celebrity deaths by suicide.

 Rates of suicide in jurisdictions that have legalized doctor-assisted death “have risen much faster after it was legalized than before,” he said.

“Suicide contagion is a well-proven reality. Don’t pretend that it won’t happen in Canada,” he said.

Euthanasia academic activist, Jocelyn Downie told the Special Joint Parliamentary Committee a few weeks ago that preventing euthanasia for people with mental illness will lead to violent other suicides. 

Research by Jim van Os, a Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Public Health at Utrecht University Medical Centre, in The Netherlands was published on April 22, 2026 by Cambridge University Press, examined the relationship between suicide and youth psychiatric euthanasia. Based on research conducted on 353 young people who had requested euthanasia that for every 10 young people who die by euthanasia based on mental illness, only one of the ten would likely have died by suicide if euthanasia was not an option.

Kirkey reported that Maher, who is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health and works with specialized teams that treat the most severe mental illnesses said that:

“people are getting MAID for psychiatric reasons under the guise of flimsy medical excuses, prolific MAID providers are happy to assist with suicide while people are on wait lists for effective treatment (and) MAID is being offered to veterans, disabled people and people with very treatable illnesses,”

Maher said that:

 “People need lifeguards, not someone to push you under,” 

Kirkey also reported Maher as stating:

“Decades of suicide research put the lie to this: 80 per cent of suicide attempters thoughtfully plan their suicides,” he said.

“MAID is suicide par excellence, like having a wedding planner to make it all as easy as possible, even with same-day service.”

Canada has scheduled euthanasia for psychiatric conditions alone to begin on March 17, 2027. The Special Joint Parliamentary Committee is examining whether or not Canada should extend euthanasia to people with mental illness next March.

Meanwhile, Private Members Bill C-218 is being debated in parliament. If passed Bill C-218 will prevent euthanasia for mental illness alone.

Suicide Clinic Helping Grieving Mother Die Promotes Death-on-Demand

This article was published by National Review online on April 23, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

A grieving mother who is in good health has been accepted for termination by a Swiss suicide clinic. From the New York Post story:

A physically healthy British woman heartbroken over the death of her only son is heading to Switzerland to end her own life at an assisted suicide clinic.

Wendy Duffy, 56, attempted to take her own life after her son died four years ago — but is soon bound for Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, after her application was accepted by a clinic, according to the London Times.

Duffy, a former care worker from the West Midlands, told the Daily Mail that she paid Pegasos, a Swiss assisted-dying nonprofit organization, $13,500 to euthanize herself under its care, saying suicide is the only way her “spirit can be free.”

Thirteen grand! A lot of money is being made by Swiss suicide clinics accommodating the death desires of despairing people.

Suicide is becoming romanticized:

She’s already chosen what she will wear on her deathbed and told the Daily Mail that Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile” will be playing as she passes on. Once she’s dead, she’s requested that all the belongings she brought with her be donated.

The consequences of legalizing assisted suicide are finally becoming unequivocal. We follow roads where they lead. Once we declare that facilitated death is an acceptable answer to suffering, there is no way to limit the causes of suffering that qualify one to be made dead. If it’s okay for a cancer patient, why not also a grieving mother, the owner of a business that collapsed, a bored elderly person “tired of life,” or someone struggling with mental illness?

This is why euthanasia laws always expand over time. Indeed, after decades of the promotion of “death with dignity,” we are becoming desensitized to the carnage. We are well on the way to determining that assisted suicide is a fundamental human right — as courts in Germany and Estonia have already ruled.

Can we finally agree that the issue is ultimately about whether we want to empower a death-on-demand culture? If that is what we want, at least be honest about it. If not, it seems to me the only defense is to refuse assisted-suicide legalization, regardless of the cause. Otherwise, institutionalized suicide’s triumph is only a matter of time.

Robert F Kennedy Jr. Calls Assisted Suicide ‘Abhorrent’

This article was published by National Review online on April 23, 2026

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Assisted suicide is not discussed much at the federal level. But at a recent Senate committee hearing, Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) asked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his thoughts on assisted suicide. Kennedy was unequivocal (starting at minute 3:30):

Lankford: I want to switch to an issue we have not had a lot of time to talk about, and that is assisted suicide. We now have three states, California, Colorado, and Delaware that disability groups are filing against some of the assisted suicide laws because it seems to target those with disabilities and the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990, that act has worked to protect those with disabilities, not incentivize them to take their own life. And so, this is an ongoing conversation on this and I think my question for you today . . . what is HHS doing to protect those with disabilities that may be targeted by those assisted suicide laws?

Kennedy: To me, I think those laws are abhorrent. And we just see in Canada today, I think the number one cause of death is assisted suicide, and as you say, it targets people with disabilities and people who are struggling in their lives. And I don’t think we can be a moral society, we can’t be a moral society around the globe if that becomes institutionalized throughout our society. So, I am happy to work with you in whatever way we can.

Kennedy is mistaken about euthanasia being the No. 1 cause of death in Canada. It is the fifth, with some 16,000 people being killed by doctors — and rising — each year.

But he is absolutely correct about the rest. Indeed, we can’t “be a moral society around the globe” if assisted suicide/euthanasia “becomes institutionalized throughout our society.”

Why? Legalizing hastened death devalues intrinsic human dignity (by creating killable castes of people), undermines equality (some suicides will be prevented, others facilitated), while offering utilitarian rewards (organ harvesting, saving health care resources, etc.) to states that allow doctors to facilitate the suicides of — or lethally jab — people who are sick, disabled, elderly, and/or mentally ill.

Good for Lankford for raising the issue and Kennedy for denigrating legalized assisted suicide for what it is: “Abhorrent.”

Psychiatric euthanasia (youth) and suicide prevention in the Netherlands

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Research by Jim van Os, a Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Public Health at Utrecht University Medical Centre, in The Netherlands, that was published on April 22, 2026 by Cambridge University Press, examines the relationship between suicide and youth psychiatric euthanasia.

van Os responded to the claim that youth psychiatric euthanasia is necessary to prevent violent suicide deaths. Based on research on 353 young euthanasia applicants, van Os concludes that for every 10 youth psychiatric euthanasia deaths, 9 would not have died by suicide. van Os writes:

Thus, ten youths would need to undergo assisted dying to prevent one suicide, and nine would die without a preventive purpose having been served. Empirically and ethically, the prevention argument does not appear to hold; real prevention requires other, previously well-debated factors such as relational continuity, trauma-informed care and social inclusion in response to mental suffering.

van Os presents his concerns that the number of youth psychiatric euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands has increased substantially. He writes:

Between 2020 and 2024, the number of euthanasia procedures for individuals under 30 rose from 5 to 30, a sixfold increase, representing over 9% of all premature deaths (suicide + assisted dying) in that age group.

van Os suggests that youth psychiatric euthanasia has created a Werther effect, meaning that the acceptance of youth psychiatric euthanasia has created a suicide contagion effect. 

The "suicide prevention" argument was promoted by Menno Oosterhoff, a retired Dutch Psychiatrist. van Os explains:

The suicide prevention argument in The Netherlands was most notably advocated by a retired psychiatrist, who admitted in a national newspaper to having performed euthanasia 12 times in 11 months, including young people and minors. Introducing deterministic terminology like calling patients ‘mentally terminal’, the retired psychiatrist argued that refusing assisted dying to a suicidal patient can be catastrophic in the case of a ‘false-negative’ event. 

The prevention argument has received sympathetic and emotionally charged media coverage. There is anecdotal evidence that, as a result, clinicians in The Netherlands are increasingly faced with demands by young people – and sometimes their families – that euthanasia is indicated in order to prevent a suicide.

van Os explains the data concerning young people who request euthanasia:

The recent study by Schweren and colleagues on 353 young people (<24) who applied for psychiatric assisted dying at the Dutch Euthanasia Expertise Centre found that: 47% of applicants withdrew their request, 45% were rejected, 3% died by assisted dying and 4% died by suicide during the evaluation process, translating to an annual suicide risk of around 2.9%. So in this group explicitly requesting euthanasia, the annualised suicide rate is about five-fold higher than in other high-risk psychiatric populations – but still far from universal, meaning most do not die by suicide, even after requesting assisted dying. 

No jurisdiction that has legalized euthanasia has experienced a decrease in the suicide rate, van Os explains:

Empirically, there is no population-level evidence that assisted dying reduces suicide mortality. A systematic review by Doherty and colleagues found no consistent reduction in suicide rates in countries that legalised assisted dying; in some, suicides even increased. In The Netherlands, despite growing numbers of psychiatric euthanasia cases, suicide among young women continues to rise.

van Os then examined the theory that permitting euthanasia for youth with mental illness will decrease suicide. van Os uses "generous assumptions" and found:

Thus, even under generous assumptions, and realistic sensitivity scenarios thereof, the ‘preventive’ justification for assisted dying is not convincing. The intervention eliminates far more lives than it plausibly saves.

van Os examines several other factors and concludes that theory that permitting psychiatric euthanasia reduces other suicides creates a form of collusion:

When suicide prevention morphs into medicalised facilitation of death, prevention logic collapses into complicity. The preventive claim – ‘better assisted dying than a violent suicide’ – assumes a causal substitution that cannot be empirically or ethically established. It risks transforming demoralised youth into ‘false positives’ of a system that mistakes despair for autonomy.

From a strictly epidemiological standpoint, that facts are that: (a) suicide remains a rare outcome, even among those requesting assisted dying; (b) predictive accuracy for suicide is low; positive predictive value in youth is <20%; and (c) no evidence exists that assisted dying reduces suicide rates; in any realistic model, around 10 young people die for each suicide theoretically prevented by assisted dying.

Therefore, the argument that youth euthanasia prevents suicide appears to be scientifically unfounded and morally inverted. True suicide prevention lies not in medical facilitation of death but in restoring relational continuity, trauma-informed care and societal inclusion. Compassion without critical reasoning risks becoming cruelty by proxy.

The research by Jim van Os is important as Canadian debates extending euthanasia to people for psychiatric reasons alone.

Jocelyn Downie

Recently, euthanasia activist and academic, Jocelyn Downie, argued before a Parliamentary Committee that preventing euthanasia for mental illness alone will lead to violent suicide deaths.

Downie is a long-time activist who has bought into the Oosterhoff theory that euthanasia reduces other suicides. But Downie, like the others, didn't test the theory with actual data.

Canada has experienced a massive increase in euthanasia deaths and has also experienced a massive increase in suicide deaths. If Oosterhoff and Downie are correct, the suicide rate would actually be going down, or minimally speaking, not increasing. 

There is no jurisdiction, over a long period of time, that experienced a lowering of the suicide rate after legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Fewer Animal Euthanasia Deaths — but More Human Euthanasia Deaths

This article was published by National Review online on April 21, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

After a bear was euthanized in California because she paw-swiped a human who owned a house under which the bruin and her cubs were living, there was a popular outcry. Now, a bill has been put in the hopper in the California State Senate promoting “coexistence” between people and wild animals. From S.B. 1135:

It is the policy of the state that the management of wildlife shall include an emphasis on the coexistence of humans and wildlife through department-led efforts to reduce, minimize, and mitigate conflicts. These efforts shall also seek to align with the state’s conservation, public safety, environmental planning, and climate adaptation goals and to be accomplished through coordination and cooperation between the department and wildlife coexistence partners.

Here are the details:

Upon appropriation by the Legislature, the department shall establish the Wildlife Coexistence Program to manage and promote wildlife coexistence by conducting all of the following activities:
(a) Managing, tracking, and responding to wildlife conflict calls, reports, and incident responses.
(b) Avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating conflicts between humans and wildlife by proactively and continuously implementing best practices that emphasize effective and ecologically appropriate nonlethal conflict resolution solutions developed using best available science and indigenous knowledge.
(c) Investigating, documenting, and analyzing reported human-wildlife incidents, including, but not limited to, depredation, perceived or actual human-wildlife conflicts, and wildlife health issues.
(d) Maintaining a statewide wildlife incident reporting tool.

Okay. That’s going to take a lot of time, effort, and resources in a state in which homelessness is rampant, children aren’t learning in school, and the public debt is increasing. Still, my main concern is public safety. Dangerous animals that have attacked humans should be euthanized, it seems to me.

There is also a major push around the country for “no kill” animal shelters. I’m fine with that, particularly for adoptable pets. But aren’t our moral sensibilities being inverted? As we see a greater push for fewer animal deaths by euthanasia, concomitantly, euthanasia activists are pressuring for policies to increase the number of ill and disabled people who are killed by assisted suicide or a lethal jab.

In 2024, I wrote about a California assisted-suicide activist who, in the California Health Report, urged the medical community to be more proactive in informing qualifying patients of their right to be killed. (This happens all the time in Canada.) The fellow groused that Canada had so many euthanasia deaths whereas California — with an equivalent population — had so comparatively few.

Meanwhile, Compassion and Choices (formerly and more honestly known as the Hemlock Society) sought to increase the number of people of color who opt for assisted suicide. Similarly, Thaddeus Mason Pope — the bioethicist leading the charge for radicalizing access to euthanasia and assisted suicide, took to the pages of the American Journal of Bioethics to advocate the “Top Ten Expansions” he wanted to see to increase access to euthanasia. He concluded:

The United States took an early worldwide lead with MAID when Oregon enacted its Death with Dignity Act in 1994. But . . . the United States has lost its lead. And it is quickly falling to the back of the pack in terms of MAID safety and access.

I would put it differently. The U.S. isn’t falling into the moral abyss as fast as some other nations, but we are falling.

I am all for reducing the number of animals that are euthanized, consistent with public safety, the protection of livestock, and the ability to care for them humanely. I just wish we were equally committed to “no kill health care” for humans.

Previous similar article:

• Animals can have no kill shelters. Why not humans? (Read).
  

Repealing the Final Rule Would Be Tragedy For Opposition To Euthanasia.

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

As I’ve mentioned, the Final Rule, a 2024 update to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, is one of the best tools that the anti euthanasia movement has had in decades. The Final Rule strengthens Section 504 and the Americans With Disabilities Act in several ways, including new prohibitions against medical personnel pushing disabled people towards death. These provisions are new bulwarks against assisted suicide, coerced DNRs, futile care statutes and the infanticide of disabled babies; such as in the 1982 Baby Doe case. Everything groups opposing euthanasia need to avoid a Canada-like situation is in those regulations.

The Final Rule not only addresses futile care statutes, assisted suicide and infanticide, it also contains numerous other beneficial provisions. For instance, the Final Rule contains new protections for disabled parents, internet access, accessible medical equipment and better community services for disabled people at risk of being institutionalized. Hence, the Final Rule will help protect disabled Americans from the scarcity that is pushing disabled Canadians towards euthanasia.

But in 2025, 17 states filed the Texas vs. Becerra lawsuit, now called Texas vs. Kennedy. The original lawsuit sought to repeal the entire Final Rule, as well as Section 504 itself. (The challenge to Section 504 itself was dropped after backlash.)

In addition to multiple disability protections that I think EPC blog readers from across the political spectrum can agree on, one clause of the Final Rule defined gender dysphoria as a disability. This was one of the reasons that the 17 states filed suit against the Final Rule.

But the gender dysphoria issue is currently a moot point. Regardless of whether one believes that gender dysphoria ought to be defined as an impairment, the President’s executive order on gender issues means that this government will not enforce that part of the Rule. So, eight of the original 17 states dropped out of the lawsuit.

But 9 states still want to eliminate the rest of the Final Rule. Texas, Florida, Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, Kansas, Montana and South Dakota want the government to avoid “burdening” states with the Rule’s requirement that states institute new supports for disabled people at risk of being institutionalized. So, on January 23rd, 2026, those states filed an updated version of their lawsuit. This iteration of the lawsuit makes no mention of gender dysphoria or repealing Section 504 itself, but it still seeks to have the entire Final Rule set aside.

I am also very worried that even if the lawsuit is dropped, HHS and the Department of Justice will rescind the entire Final Rule anyway.

This would be a shame, because the Final Rule is a critical tool for achieving opposition to euthanasia.

Groups opposing euthanasia have always fought the infanticide of disabled babies, which we know happens periodically in hospitals across the US and abroad because doctors make prejudiced judgments about the value of the babies’ lives. (Such as the UK Alfie Evans case.) Section 84.56 specifically addresses this problem. To quote from the text of the Final Rule:

“Comments: Several commenters asked the Department to clarify the application of § 84.56 to newborn infants.

Response: As indicated within the NPRM, the Department considers section 504, including § 84.56, to apply to newborn infants. This includes the prohibitions against the denial of medical treatment under § 84.56(b)(1) and (2), and the prohibitions on the discriminatory provision of medical treatment under § 84.56(b)(3).

Comment: One commenter objected based on its understanding that the Department's proposed rule would not apply to decisions to withhold treatment from infants with disabilities in which the disabling condition is related to the condition to be treated, noting that § 84.56(b)(2) addresses treatment for a separately diagnosable condition or symptom and not for the underlying disability. The comment concerned infants with disability conditions such as meningomyelocele, hydrocephaly, microcephaly, or other anatomical anomalies. The comment noted that failure to treat these conditions represents discrimination against a child with a disability.

Response: The Department believes that this comment misconstrues the section 504 rule. The Department intends that this rule will generally apply to the provision of medical treatment for infants, including those seeking treatment for separately diagnosable symptoms or conditions related to their underlying disability, when medical treatment is provided to other similarly situated children. For example, an infant with microcephaly may experience seizures. This would constitute a separately diagnosable symptom or condition for which treatment would be subject to the protections of § 84.56(b)(2) despite the fact that the seizures are a symptom of the infant's microcephaly. As the Department's NPRM made clear, with respect to separately diagnosable conditions, the rule will not require that the condition be entirely unrelated to the underlying disability. “Nor does it matter for these purposes whether the condition for which the individual is seeking treatment is in some sense causally related to the underlying disability if the decision to refuse treatment would not be made as to similarly situated individuals without the disability.” 88 FR 63405. In addition, § 84.56(b)(1) prohibits denying or limiting medical treatment to a qualified individual with a disability based on bias or stereotypes about that patient's disability, judgments that the individual will be a burden on others due to their disability, or a belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than the life of a person without a disability or that life with a disability is not worth living. Under such circumstances, the discrimination described by the commenter would also be covered under § 84.56(b)(1) even if the condition for which the patient sought treatment was not a separately diagnosable symptom or condition from their underlying disability.”

So, if you are fighting infanticide, the Final Rule is your best friend. 

Opposition to euthanasia has also always fought futile care laws, like those that exist in Texas and California, which allow hospital ethics committees to override patients’ and families’ desires for life-saving care that ableist physicians consider “futile.” For instance, the anti-futility provisions in the Final Rule were inspired by the case of Michael Hickson, who was denied treatment for COVID-19 because he was a quadriplegic. The Final Rule forbids such authoritarianism. It is the anti euthanasia movement’s best shot at eliminating futile care laws once and for all.

An excerpt about the Final Rule’s prohibition on medical futility reads as follows:

“The Department proposed §  84.56(b)(1)(iii) to prohibit recipients from denying or limiting medical treatment based on the provider's belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than a person without a disability, or that life with a disability is not worth living.

Comments: The Department received a broad array of comments from disability organizations, civil rights organizations, and other stakeholders supporting this approach. We received stories from people with disabilities describing their own experiences or those of friends regarding the denial of life-sustaining treatment and the difficulties involved in accessing it after such denials. We also received similar stories from providers. For example, one provider association described a 25-year-old patient with a developmental disability who had been referred to an inpatient hospice unit after becoming poorly responsive with brain imaging demonstrating a shunt and severe abnormalities. After the provider learned from a family member of a recent sudden change in the patient's behavior, the patient received a second opinion, leading to the shunt being surgically revised, the patient's condition improving, and her enjoying her life for many more years. In the words of this commenter, the patient's “referral to hospice without sufficient exploration of other treatment options was inappropriate and may have been driven by a mistaken clinical assumption regarding her baseline quality of life.”

Response: The Department will retain the provision as proposed. We respond to specific questions regarding the application of this requirement throughout this section.”

Hence, this section of the Final Rule forbids the futile care impositions that groups opposing euthanasia have fought for decades.

Moreover, we know that disabled Canadians are agreeing to be killed by “MAiD” because they aren’t getting the supports they need: not having wheelchairs, pain control, food, housing, jobs, etc. These conditions also contribute to high rates of suicide among US citizens with disabilities. Hence, the Final Rule helps prevent disabled Americans from experiencing Canada-like tragedies.

And, given that the Final Rule prohibits federal funding recipients from “from denying or limiting medical treatment based on the provider's belief that the life of a person with a disability has a lesser value than a person without a disability, or that life with a disability is not worth living,” it precludes turning disabled people’s suicides into a “medical procedure.” Think of the efforts we will have to expend against assisted suicide in the future: wouldn’t you like to use the Final Rule to fight those bills?

I urge other euthanasia opponents to do what they can to defend the Final Rule. Time is of the essence, because many of the regulations in the Final Rule are supposed to take effect this month and federal officials have already eliminated or delayed some of them. For instance, officials have rescinded new provisions requiring adequate staffing in nursing homes. New rules about internet access and home and community based services have also been paused. Therefore, the aforementioned anti-death provisions could soon be paused or eliminated as well.

So, if you are someone in Washington DC who interacts with officials at HHS or the Department of Justice, make the importance of the Final Rule part of your conversations. If you live in one of the states that is bringing the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, write to your attorney general and ask them to drop it.

The Final Rule furthers compassion and dignity for disabled persons. It is also one of the USA’s most urgent anti-euthanasia issues in decades.

Author Note:

For information about how to contact your attorney general to ask them to drop the lawsuit, see this link.

To write to the US Department of Justice, go to this link.

To write to the Department of Health and Hunan Services, use this link.
For a quick explanation of what Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is, see this Drunk History video about the history of the law. 

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

Man who sold suicide poison online will plead guilty to aiding suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kenneth Law

Kenneth Law, a Canadian who sold a suicide poison kit online to as many as 1200 people world-wide, will plead guilty to multiple counts of aiding suicide. 

Based on a plea agreement, the Crown Prosecutor will drop the 14 counts of murder, that if convicted, would have resulted in 25 years in prison, for an agreement where Law pleads guilty to aiding the suicide of his victims, a charge that would likely result in a 14 year sentence.

In other words, Law may get off with a 14 year sentence for knowingly selling a suicide substance to 1200 people that resulted in 100's of deaths. Since he has been in custody since May 2023, he may be free in 8 years.

On May 3, 2023; I reported that Law, had been arrested and charged with two counts of assisted suicide and was believed to have assisted the suicide of at least 7 people in the US and the UK.

Lucas Casaletto reported for City News that:

Peel Regional Police announced the arrest of a 57-year-old Ontario man stemming from the online distribution of ... across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that resulted in two deaths.

Authorities in Peel Region opened an investigation following a report from the Times of London in the United Kingdom. It mentioned that a GTA resident named Kenneth Law had been selling ..., a legal but lethal drug, to people in the U.K. and the U.S., which resulted in seven suicides.

On March 31, officers in Peel Region began investigating the circumstances of a sudden death in Ontario. It is believed that Law distributed and marketed the substance online to target individuals at risk of self-harm.

Law was arrested by Peel police ... and charged with two counts of counselling or aiding in suicide. He appeared briefly in a Brampton court ... 

Neha Raju (23) and Tom Parfett (22)

On May 9, 2023 CTV News journalist, Jon Woodward reported that Law was facing two counts of aiding and abetting the deaths of two people in Peel Region, allegedly through the online sales of a legal substance that is lethal in high concentrations. Law sold the substance world-wide for the purposes of aiding suicide.

Woodward reported that 23-year-old Neha Raju and 22-year-old Tom Parfett died in the U.K., and 20-year-old Noelle Ramirez died in Colorado, and 17-year-old Anthony Jones died in Michigan and the police were investigating 1200 people who were sent the lethal substance online.

Imogen Nunn

Euronews reported on August 25, 2023 that Law was being investigated by UK authorities in the suicide deaths of 88 people and it was suspected that Law had shipped the suicide substance to at least 232 people in the UK.

On August 27, 2023 Jon Woodward further reported on  CP24 on the Law investigation that the death of Imogen Nunn was also connected to Law. Woodward stated that:

Louise Nunn

The British mom of a TikTok star is coming forward demanding justice after she found out her daughter died using a so-called suicide kit allegedly sold by a Canadian man, as deaths possibly tied to Kenneth Law rise to over 100.

Louise Nunn said it was sickening to learn that the death of her daughter Imogen, known as “Deaf Immy” to 710,000 TikTok followers, was one of 88 British people local police say died after ordering products from Law’s websites over a two-year period.

Nunn said it was heartbreaking to learn of other deaths months and years before Imogen’s, and believes many lives could have been saved if authorities had acted earlier.

“I can’t even say how angry it makes me feel. It’s sickening. Why did they let it go on for so long? They could have stopped this a long time ago,” Nunn said.

Imogen Nunn died suddenly in January, 2023 and the family didn't know how she died until the toxicology report confirmed that she died from the suicide substance.  Woodward also reported that the youngest victim connected to Kenneth Law was 17.

Many of those who died were in their 20s, according to family members. The youngest was 17-year-old Anthony Jones in Michigan. The earliest known case is a 21-year-old named Jaden, who died in February 2021 — his family said they went to police in B.C. almost two years before Imogen Nunn’s death.

Some of Kenneth Law's victims.

On December 12, 2023 CBC News Toronto reported that Law was charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder. The CBC news report stated:

Law was charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder, in addition to the 14 counts of counselling or aiding suicide that he was already facing. CBC News Toronto stated that York Regional Police Insp. Simon James, who heads up a multi-service task force investigating Law confirmed the charges at a news conference today. The new charges are related to the same alleged victims in multiple Ontario municipalities, from Toronto to Thunder Bay.

On October 7, 2024, Jon Woodward reported for CTV news that Law was challenging the second-degree murder charges to the Supreme Court of Canada. Woodward reported:

“Assisting suicide is not murder,” Law’s lawyers, Matthew Gourlay, Stephanie DiGuiseppe, and Taylor Wormington wrote in a brief filed Friday.

"Mr. Law is not alleged to have been present at any of the deaths. He is not alleged to have deceived the victims into unwittingly ending their own lives. It would impermissibly warp the language of the Code to assert that someone who mails a toxic substance that another person later voluntarily consumes in another location with suicidal intent has “actually committed” their murder," they write.

Woodward's report indicates that at least 130 people died after consuming the poison.

Charges against Law included a 16-year-old death in Ontario. CBC News reported on May 8 that 17-year-old Anthony Jones from Michigan allegedly died in connection to Law's suicide kit.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will continue to report on this horrific case.