Preventing Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide Symposium - November 14.

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition & Physicians for Compassionate Care

Register for our online Symposium on Saturday, November 14 

From (10 am to 2 pm Eastern Time)  (7 am to 11 am Pacific Time)

Register for free in advance for the event: (Registration Link)

Speakers:

Wesley J Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to The Corner at National Review and is the author of more than 14 books, in recent years focusing exclusively on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley’s most recent book is his updated and revised Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

• The importance of language and ideas in the assisted suicide debate.

Alex Schadenberg, has been the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition since 1999. He has been published world-wide, including published several books, co-produced five video's and the EPC blog is the most complete location for research on euthanasia and assisted suicide. (epcblog.org) Alex has done speaking tours, spoken at conferences throughout North America and several European countries.

• Canada's euthanasia law and a post mid-term US election assessment.

Dr Sharon Quick, President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation. Dr Quick is a retired pediatric anesthesiologist/critical care physician. Dr Quick will be making two presentations.

• Pain and symptom management.
• How the lethal poison cocktails works?

Gordon Friesen: President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Gordon lives in Montréal QC and has actively opposed medical homicide for many years.

Gordon will soon publish the book - Medical Homicide: The Poison and its Antidote.

• Medical Homicide: The Poison and its Antidote.

Register for free in advance for the event: (Registration Link).

We must demand real end of life care --not killing.

Gordon Friesen
President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gordon Friesen

In the past weeks there has been much discussion of a particular Ontario case involving an elderly patient who deliberately chose a Palliative Care facility where medical homicide was allegedly not practiced, but where she was nevertheless subjected to several very aggressive proposals for euthanasia; where, under worsening circumstances she was actually told that no other relief was possible; where faced with outrage, from her supporting entourage, it was finally admitted that palliative sedation did, in fact, remain an option; but where such sedation was ordered, not at once, but only for a future date; and where the patient died a natural death in the meantime. There are clearly several disturbing elements to this story.

First is the profound penetration which medical homicide has apparently achieved in the past ten years.

The Palliative care facility chosen has officially exercised its right to refuse medical homicide on grounds of moral principle. No euthanasia procedures are performed in that place. And yet notwithstanding this clear mandate: the doctors and nurses working in that institution are apparently relying on euthanasia as their go-to, first choice treatment.

Second, is the aggressive nature of this professional steering towards medical homicide.

In this case, professionals not only refused to take "No" for an answer (returning multiple times to the charge) but they actually went so far as to pretend that they possessed no other options to relieve the patient's distress. And, even after they were forced to admit that other measures (such as palliative sedation) are, in fact, available, they did not actually initiate appropriate procedures at once, but projected that initiation for some days farther off. And so it is that the patient's discomfort was only ended by natural death, not by the care of her physicians.

It is difficult to read that description without suspecting that medical homicide is literally the only "treatment" in which these professionals are now interested, at least for difficult cases, and that both pain and time are cynically seen as allies in obtaining consent to provide it. Or in other words: the apparent inability to relieve symptoms is not a failure, but a strategy.

And yet, what should most concern us about such evident malpractice, is the normalization of medical homicide, which it indicates, and the effects of that normalization --not only for Palliative Care, but for the entire medical industry.

For if patients are only sent from Long-term to Palliative Care in order to die, then doctors will soon ask why they should not kill those patients right now, and save them the journey.

And, indeed, the circle of this pessimism is already much wider than that. For we now see medical homicide adapted as a style of Preventive Medicine, whereby people are killed --not to relieve suffering-- but to avoid that suffering in the first place (such as at the moment of difficult diagnoses where consent is obtained under the weight of shock, contextual despondency and a pathetic trust in physician benevolence).

So also, we now see medical homicide proposed before major surgery, in cases of catastrophic accident, an in rehabilitation.

In the end, it is to prevent these outcomes that we must patiently wait: even at the very end, and even where death occurs under profound palliative sedation.

We must be willing to wait, because we do not wish the normalization of medical homicide --at the very end of Palliative Care-- to become the normalization of medical homicide before patients even arrive in that place.

Clearly, none of this is done to benefit the people. Let us not be fooled! Medical homicide is NOT OK where it is (at least for now). We must demand real end of life care --not patient liquidation. It is what normal patients want. It is what normal doctors wish to provide. It is what we all deserve. It is what we have handsomely paid for with our tax dollars.

Assisted suicide, suicide - There is no mushy middle.

By Gordon Friesen
President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gordon Friesen

Those of us who are committed to the prevention of medical homicide have frequently felt betrayed by the unfortunate adoption of pro-death policies, by those very organizations whose natural mandate is to oppose such practice without reservation.

Our latest example involves the American Association of Suicidology, which has apparently reposted the following policy statement on its website: 

“the practice of physician aid in dying ... is distinct from the behavior that has been traditionally and ordinarily described as “suicide”.[1]

According to this incongruous theory: people blowing their brains out should be seen as an evil to be prevented; but achieving the same result by consulting a doctor, should not! Regardless of any possible subtleties, the blunt effect of such a doctrine would greatly limit the scope of suicide prevention, and potentially, render that effort irrelevant altogether.

In their own defense the authors of AAS policy embrace (or feign to embrace) political neutrality: 

"...The document does not speak for or against legalization of this practice..."

However, there can be no neutrality in such a case. For to cease opposition to medical homicide is to implicitly support its practice.

Indeed, Such pretended neutrality is strongly reminiscent of the false language offered by the Canadian Medical Association, in 2014, and the British Medical Association, in 2021. In these cases, also, the pretense of political neutrality was a complete refusal of fundamental duty.[2] [3] Both of these announcements significantly took the wind out of medical homicide resistance, and greased the pole for future acceptance.

To explain their own extraordinary self-destructive position, the authors of AAS policy (again like those of the CMA and BMA) claim pragmatic political necessity: 

“The final document accepted by the AAS Board is the product of an effort to try to resolve the tension, evident within the AAS over a period of many years, between commitment to suicide prevention and the recognition that medical aid in dying is now legal in multiple jurisdictions.” [4]

And yet why should legality dictate acquiescence? Mere legality does not make actions right; and that fact is even more certain in the realm of medical ethics. 

Personally, I do not credit this alleged motivation of pragmatic expedience. On the contrary, I believe that a more experienced reading reveals a carefully scripted process, apparently dominated by elements whose ideas are closely aligned with the death lobby itself; and where the reasons given to support their final position might well have been copy/pasted from generic death lobby websites.

And yet (however that may be) our most important concern should not be with those few States where medical homicide is legal. That concern should be with the effects of medical-homicide-enabling doctrine upon the majority of AAS members, in jurisdictions where that practice is still prohibited by law. For as Wesley J. Smith has recently described in detail: the legalization of medical homicide represents an absolute disaster-in-waiting for any effort at suicide prevention.[5]

In short: it is of no benefit, for anyone in such a State or Country, to belong to an Association whose ideology is aimed at undermining the very ground upon which they themselves are standing; an Association, in effect, which is preparing them for extinction.

On the contrary! What we require now is the formation of representative groups dedicated to the protection of basic principles; groups prepared to dispute every inch of ground; groups committed to providing a living model of conceptual integrity, even (and especially) in places where less positive visions have temporarily gained ascendance.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is proud to take an unambiguous stand on medical homicide (as do also: the World Medical Association, the American Medical Association, and many others).

Moreover, recent victories in Slovenia, Alberta and the UK, show that a proactive, morally repugnant submission, is not justifiable on grounds of pragmatic expedience. This fight has not been lost! We have barely yet begun! And the progress of our adversaries is visibly grinding to a halt. 


[1] American Association of Suicidology, Statement Clarifying the Distinction Between “Suicide” and “Physician Aid in Dying”, first posted October 2017, withdrawn 2023, reposted 2025 (Article Link).

[2] Somerville, Margaret, There’s no “mushy middle” on euthanasia, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, October 3, 2014 (Article Link).

[3] Macdonald, Gordon M.D., BMA goes Neutral on Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, September 21, 2021 (Article Link).

[4] Battin, Margaret P. Phd, Development of the AAS Statement on “Suicide” and “Physician Aid in Dying”, The American Association of Suicidology, June 2019 (Article Link).

[5] Smith, Wesley J., World Suicide Prevention Day Hypocrisy, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, September 10, 2026 (Article Link).

VSED is part of the assisted suicide agenda.

Gordon Friesen

By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

One of our great friends and allies, Wesley J. Smith, has recently written about the British Medical Association's newly minted policy and other bioethics articles which require doctors to collaborate with patients who are attempting to kill themselves through hunger and thirst.

This practice is commonly euphemized as ‘voluntarily stopping eating and drinking’, which ungainly expression is then replaced with the more slick-sounding acronym ‘VSED’. However we must unfortunately note (as usual) that the most important facts of this matter are absent from that deceptive formulation: first, the primary fact of suicide does not appear at all; and second, a misleading confusion is suggested between this specific method, of suicide, and traditionally familiar practices of fasting.

To be clear on this score, our subject has nothing to do with fasting (even to the point of death). For our bodies are well adapted to suffer the naturally frequent periods of famine to which we have been exposed throughout our evolution.

That is what makes fasting so comparatively easy (as long as fluid intake is properly maintained). For after a brief period of normal hunger (familiar to all occasional fasters), our bodies literally hunker down to wait out the interruption of nourishment.

Indeed, dying of hunger takes approximately one day for every pound of fat on our bodies, followed by another day for every three pounds of muscle. Hence, suicide by fasting is relatively painless, but takes a very long time, which generally provides plenty of opportunity for second thoughts.

Deprivation of fluids, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. In this case, death follows in a few days only. And for that practical reason, our bodies are not adapted to quietly suffer thirst. Indeed, thirst is a biological emergency, and our bodies ring the alarm on this emergency through the communication of insufferable discomfort.

It is this unbearable discomfort, in turn, which death-friendly doctors happily propose to alleviate, through the provision of various medications (which also heavily impair critical thought). In other words: because suicide by dehydration is virtually impossible to endure, it is only the assistance of doctors which make such deaths possible, by numbing both the body and the brain.

For that reason, so-called ‘VSED’ is clearly an instance of assisted suicide, not mere comfort care and because doctors are professionally responsible for their acts in a way that ordinary people are not, it is also a form of medical homicide.

In truth, while so-called ‘VSED’ might appear very similar to terminal sedation, it is also much more problematic. For palliative sedation is only to be used in the most difficult of medical cases. But suicide by dehydration may be chosen, by any person, for any reason. It thus represents a truly radical departure from accepted norms, by providing suicidal persons with a voluntary entry point to the practical equivalent of palliative sedation, but without the need of medical justification. 

In reporting on the decision of the British Medical Association (to force the collaboration of doctors with this practice) the headline message has quite properly been centered upon the serious attack, thus produced, upon individual and institutional rights of conscience. For dissenting doctors, and institutions, are thus robbed of that crucial medical status, of independent moral agent, upon which all patients rely for proper care.

It is also worthwhile, however, to recall the importance of medically assisted suicide by dehydration, even in those jurisdictions where no such compulsion has yet been contemplated.

In the simplest of terms: so-called ‘VSED’ is definitely a form of medically assisted suicide, and yet its practice is legal in all States. Which means that even if you live in a State where assisted suicide is illegal, medically assisted suicide (VSED) is still being practised, in your State.

Furthermore, all of the terrible harms of medical homicide are enabled through this practice. For if there is nothing illegal about informing patients of the dehydration suicide option (and there is not) then there is similarly no check on any death-practitioner's ability to energetically market their product, and thus to professionally deliver as many people from the pains of human existence, as they possibly can.

In fact, unlike any other form of medical homicide (in the US or even in Canada) medically assisted suicide by dehydration is already available for dementia patients, through professionally solicited advance requests (similarly legal in all States).

Such, then, is the portrait of that formidable Trojan Horse, medically assisted suicide by dehydration (aka ‘VSED’).

Becoming aware of this practice, as yet another finger on the hand of medical homicide (and by no means the least of these) is a powerful first step in pushing back.

And while we may understand the zealous actions of fully devoted death-cult physicians, it is less easy to understand why our leaders, as in this latest British example, are so keenly committed to the promotion, and facilitation, of that extreme death agenda.

Euthanasia is 'Medical Homicide' not Medical Assistance in Dying.

Gordon Friesen

Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Why euthanasia and assisted suicide are properly spoken of as ‘medical homicide’ , not ‘medical assistance in dying’

It is a great advantage to use the plain language of common speech. For simple words, themselves, enable us to clarify our thoughts, and to communicate those thoughts effectively to others.

One obstacle, for example, to building a unified worldwide campaign in opposition to medical homicide, springs from a misunderstanding of the essential unity between ‘euthanasia’ and ‘assisted suicide’. In the US, in particular, medical homicide promoters routinely claim that foreign experience with ‘euthanasia’ does not matter, because they are only trying to install ‘assisted suicide’.

Indeed, this distinction makes intuitive sense to us, because we see a real difference between ordinary ‘suicide’ (where people kill themselves), and ‘homicide’ (where they are killed by others). However, to think in this way is to misunderstand what it means for suicide and homicide to be treated as truly ‘medical’ acts. For when coherently observed from a medical perspective, there is actually no fundamental difference between them.

Medicine is an art, which is practiced according to well established rules. First the doctor makes a diagnosis. Then he (or she) will propose clinically indicated treatment. And so it is --that although all patients are free to make whatever demands or suggestions they may desire-- real choices are always limited to those measures which are actually endorsed by their physicians.

Beyond any ambiguity, therefore: physicians (not patients) bear full responsibility for any treatment proposed, prescribed or provided.

Furthermore (and again from a strictly medical perspective) it is irrelevant whether physician prescribed, pharmaceutical remedies are administered orally, or by injection. The doctor is equally responsible for both.

Hence, although administration methods may differ, the poisons necessary for medical homicide are always administered under doctor authority. And thus, when American promoters of medical homicide make a great show of limiting their legislative proposals to ‘self-ingestion’ only, the implied assertion --that patients are autonomously killing themselves (as opposed to being killed by their doctors)-- is simply unjustified. From a medical viewpoint: it is definitely doctors killing their patients, in all cases.

But these facts can only be easily conveyed when we use proper vocabulary.

To speak rationally about our subject, at all, we must always have the courage to plainly speak of ‘killing’ (not ‘assistance in dying’). However, even the term ‘killing’ is not specific enough.

‘Homicide’ is the only word in the English language which uniquely denotes the taking of human life (whether that homicide be considered culpable or non-culpable). Building from that base, the phrase 'medical homicide’, precisely denotes the killing of any person, in any fashion, for medical purposes. It is not pejorative. It is accurate. And as we have seen, it may correctly be used to denote both medically assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Unfortunately, however, just as clear thinking is enabled by clear language: vague language breeds confusion. The clarity achieved above is only possible when we honestly look at the meaning of those plain words ‘suicide’ and ‘homicide’ and then see how they are modified by adding the crucial term ‘medical’.

Most mischievously, this crucial question (of who is killing who) can never be elucidated using the artificial vocabulary of conventional debate, because politically imposed euphemisms like ‘medical aid in dying’ are designed to avoid any reference to ‘killing’ at all; and with a simple wave of that magic linguistic wand, both ‘suicide’ and ‘homicide’ are deemed to disappear.

It is under the banner of this misleading vocabulary that death friendly physicians are now busily normalizing their macabre practice --one way or another-- through the standard professional sequence of diagnosis, proposal and prescription. And in the meantime (with a complete, and oblivious contempt for truth), the promoters of new legislation continue to propose both euthanasia and assisted suicide as ‘medical aid in dying’ , but they still rely upon public gullibility to pretend that the two are completely different.

‘Medical homicide’, I believe, is the term perfectly adapted to dispel these myths, and thus, the perfect term to sustain a meaningful, unified and stable conversation, across borders, and over time.

Gordon Friesen, Montreal, August 21, 2026

Previous similar articles:

• Medical Homicide as Psychiatric Treatment (Link).
• Medical Homicide is a discriminatory oppression for the sick and disabled (Link).

We demand a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law. We want real medical care.

*Please sign and share the link to our EPC petition (Petition Link)

By Gordon Friesen & Alex Schadenberg

President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

EPC has an online petition and post-cards to be sent to members of parliment as well as a traditional paper petition demanding a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law. 

*Please sign and share the link to our EPC petition (Petition Link)

Contact EPC at: info@epcc.ca to order post-cards or paper petitions at no cost.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) is petitioning the government to undertake a complete, and long-promised review of Canada's euthanasia (MAiD) law.

Events have unfolded in a completely unexpected and alarming fashion; that current policy has little to do with its originally stated intent of the law; that such policy is in fact led to a horrific course that no one anticipated (or very few) but which is now evolving under its own anti-human economic logic and impetus.

Even our organized resistance to euthanasia did not anticipate Canada's euthanasia law becoming so extreme. Canada has always made it a priority to champion fair treatment of the most vulnerable, in terms of access to needed care and services. For we all immediately understand that legal medical homicide threatens safety. What we did not understand is just how bad the law would become.

Very simply put, the "most vulnerable" narrative assumes that disputed benefits actually exist; that people are generally able to access appropriate services; that only certain groups (defined perhaps by economic, racial, gender, or ability criteria) are not. However, as the situation now exists in Canada, real health care --meaning truly life-affirming care, free of the pressure to accept euthanasia-- is hard to attain (in so far as that availability depends upon the State).

Good and decent doctors and nurses do exist, of course! And they are clearly among the most influential part of our Coalition. However, our chances of being treated properly as patients should not be dependant upon the personal moral compass of individual professionals who are now forced to operate as dissidents within a hostile system.

That is not at all how things were intended to be. We have always been taught to expect proper medical care as a right of citizenship. Our universal Canadian system was established with the precise goal of making such care available to all.

Shockingly, the true calamity we are now experiencing involves nothing less than the cynical replacement of that time-honoured medical ideal, with a radical, euthanasia-based, veterinary-style system of population management.

In this scheme, advanced medical treatment will indeed be provided for those briefly incapacitated persons who may easily be restored to full productive status. But a radically different path is marked out for everyone else, which is to say: for anyone at all whose physical or mental status --for whatever reason-- might cause their expected economic contribution to fall below the cost of their upkeep. In these cases, illness, disability, and even simple aging itself, are now to be collapsed into the smallest social dimension possible, by actively steering all such individuals towards the newly discovered medical "treatment" of euthanasia.

Indeed, the only easy way to escape this trap requires personal resources large enough to privately make up the difference. For our ruling elites there is obviously no difficulty. Simply jump in the plane, and off they go, to state-of-the-art facilities provided by dynamic extra-national organizations dedicated to the satisfaction of every client whim (medical or otherwise) in settings of luxury.

However, in Canada few individuals possess such options. The available earnings of the entire working and middle classes are already fully committed to the spending policies of which medical care is by far the greatest component. For the individual taxpayer, that money cannot be spent twice. No personal budgetary room remains for typical Canadians to pay, out of pocket, for real medical care.

To repeat the essential: service deprivation is now the norm, not the exception. To portray this as a "most vulnerable" issue (wholly, or even primarily) would require the redefinition of "most vulnerable" to include any person whose speedy recovery cannot guarantee prompt return on investment. And in the normal experience of accident and aging (while excluding our rulers) this is a category which includes the entire population.

Alex Schadenberg May 5 presentation

The EPC presentation to the AMAD Committee on May 5 stated that Canada needs to do a complete review of it's euthanasia law, which was actually part of the original euthanasia law that was implemented in June 2016. I stated:

...Parliament needs to examine how the current law has led to outcomes like the death of Kiano Vafaeian (26) who died by MAiD in Vancouver on December 30, 2025. 

Parliament needs to completely review the euthanasia law.

More broadly, Canada’s assisted dying law is vague. While Health Canada provides guidance, the legal framework allows for wide interpretation and it lacks effective oversight.

Because of time constraints, I will highlight one key issue.

Sections 241 (3) and 241 (3.1) of Canada's Criminal Code states that medical practitioners or nurse practitioners are required only to be “of the opinion” that the eligibility criteria are met. That, in practice, makes accountability extremely difficult, even impossible to prosecute a medical or nurse practitioner in Canada, even when the MAiD death is clearly wrong or deeply disturbing.

The MDRC reports and cases that have already been submitted to you speak to that reality.

Canada should not be considering the expansion of the euthanasia law to include people with mental illness alone but rather Parliament needs to fully review the law.

In short, the problem of euthanasia affects every person at certain seasons in their life. Our common problem is the deliberate promotion of euthanasia by the State. It is the shameless presentation of medical homicide as a legitimate solution for many problems. Nor have we seen the worst. We may now expect decision-makers to actually lower care standards on purpose. For if suffering is assumed to have a cure --in euthanasia-- then suffering can no longer be allowed to impede rationalization.

In retrospect, I think it is fair to say that very few people could have suspected that a supposedly limited access to voluntary euthanasia might ever devolve into the scale of industrial destruction, of human life, to which we are now witness. Quite naturally, many people have come to question the "why" and the "how" of such a calamitous outcome.

And that is why we are calling for a complete review of Canada's euthanasia policy.

*Please sign and share the link to our EPC petition (Petition Link)

We demand a full review, as originally promised in the original law but never happened: an open and unfiltered scrutiny of current practice, accompanied at each stage by questions of past decisions. Everything must be on the table.

We further believe that serious changes must result. For we want real medical care.

 

Link to our letter to federal and provincial parliaments (Link to letter).

Join the EPC zoom event on June 17. Ten years of killing, what's next?

Join the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition on June 17, 2026 at 2 pm (Eastern Time)  (Registration Link) for one hour of information followed by discussion as we reflect on 10 years of legal euthanasia (poisoning people to death) in Canada.

We will discuss how and why Canada expanded it's killing regime, what the law actual says, and where we should go from here.

Register for free in advance for this zoom event on June 17 at 2 pm (Eastern Time): (Registration Link).

The world is shocked by Canada's killing machine, it is time for Canada to provide a complete review of the law. It is time for Canada to begin to dismantle the killing machine it has built. 

This is a sad occasion as Canada surpassed 100,000 known euthanasia deaths, since legalization, in April 2026. The number of euthanasia deaths is disturbing. The reasons for these killings are often terrifying.

 We oppose killing people. 

Presenters will include: Gordon Friesen, EPC President, Alex Schadenberg, EPC Executive Director, and Kelsi Sheren. 

We will be sharing crucial information. Time will be provided for your questions. 

Register for free for this informative zoom event on June 17 at 2 pm (ET): (Registration Link).

The deeper meaning of an absurd demand

By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gordon Friesen

On May 5, 2026, Helen Long, CEO of the oddly named Canadian death-lobby flagship ‘Dying with Dignity’, expressed her desire that the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (which is presently reconsidering the 2027 implementation of medical homicide for patients with psychiatric conditions alone) might usefully hear testimony from those persons who are most immediately impacted. In making this observation, she quoted Claire Brosseau, who used the iconic disabled-rights slogan, "Nothing about us without us", which vigorously affirms the principle that no decisions, affecting disabled persons, should be taken without disabled input.

Article: Should EPC apologize to Helen Long from Dying With Dignity? (Read).

On May 7, Ms. Long's wish was eloquently granted when the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition published a commentary by Amy Hasbrouck, past President of the Coalition, Founding Director of Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet, and a pillar of Canadian Disability activism for many years. This I believe, is precisely the sort of personal, informed, and directly affected testimony that Ms Long's call for disabled voices might most beneficially have elicited.

Unfortunately for the thesis of Ms. Long, however, Ms Habrouck's conclusion is unambiguously (and unapologetically) opposed to any medical homicide at all, much less that for persons afflicted with mental illness. Indeed, Amy made her argument by generously referencing both collective and personal experience, to examine the ways in which this now scheduled extension of medical homicide would negatively impact persons such as herself. In doing so, she rather colorfully condemned Ms. Long's use of the phrase "Nothing about us without us", observing that it is (in her opinion) grossly inappropriate to parrot words so clearly associated with those individuals, and organizations, which are most vehemently opposed to the objectives of death-lobby operatives such as Ms. Long.

As it turns out, Ms. Long has not seen proper to respond --herself-- to the comments of Amy Hasbrouck, and that, I believe, most wisely (although I would dearly love see her try). However, persons closely associated with Ms. Long have indeed flown to her defense, actually demanding apologies from both Amy Hasbrouck and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

It is perhaps best to ignore the ridiculous basis of such a request, but I do believe it is useful to examine the assumptions of entitlement which seem to have made it possible, since those same entitled assumptions are more widely (and most perniciously) weaponized throughout the underlying debate regarding medical homicide.

Briefly stated: it is widely assumed that the suffering of those people seeking recourse to medical homicide cannot be questioned. And from that first assumption spring several others. First, we tend to accept that such people may make any extreme statements that they like (including the most egregious attacks on other individuals); and second, that any criticism (whatsoever) of such individuals, of their behavior, or of their statements, is simply unacceptable.

However, that which might provide a reasonable standard in private conversation cannot be transported to the realm of discourse surrounding public policy. Unfortunately, in the present case, to accept that individuals seeking medical homicide might benefit from a special "sufferers" privilege --which places their beliefs beyond the reach of any rational criticism-- is also to concede the main point in contention (that acceptance of medical homicide is indeed justified as public policy). And that, in all conscience, we cannot do. For we must also remember the people whose defense we are espousing in opposing such a policy (which paradoxically includes Claire Brosseau, who we hope will achieve recovery from her condition).

It thus becomes necessary for us to confront the uncomfortable fact that what may be spontaneous, in individual communication, becomes strategic at the political level; that without reference to any individual, the exploitation of compassionate sentiment becomes a political tool, or as Polonius so shrewdly remarks in Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't".

Without the slightest nuance, when those associated with the death-lobby tell us that we "do not understand", they are crassly attempting to impose upon the best sentiments of good people who do not, indeed, have such experience. But in so doing, they are also ignoring --and attempting to suppress-- the experience and desires of the lion's share of those people who actually do.

When we read Claire Brosseau's passionate diatribe in support of Helen Long (while savagely attacking Amy Hasbrouck, M.P. Andrew Lawton, and by extension so many others) we must remember that Ms. Brosseau's "suffering" cannot reasonably trump that of Ms. Hasbrouck.

More generally, it is simply not true that those who would seek medical homicide are suffering any more than their surviving counterparts. For there is, in fact, no correlation in this regard. Quite to the contrary: the number of people persisting in their struggle to survive (in objectively similar medical circumstances) is vastly greater than those who seek assisted death. For there is no medical circumstance, whatsoever, in which consent to medical homicide might be represented as normal.

When we are told, therefore, that we do not “understand” the suffering of that small minority who would allegedly benefit from assisted death, we must reply that this is false. For we (or at least a great many of us) do indeed understand.

However, unlike the death-lobby we also understand the suffering of the overwhelming majority, whose access to real medical assistance in their own wilful quest to survive, will be significantly degraded by the institutional acceptance of that practice.

Given the need to protect the vital interests of this majority, it is my firm opinion that the suicidal (and their ideological supporters) should be fully satisfied with the simple decriminalization of suicide. It is enough, I believe (and indeed more than enough) that society might view their choice in a morally neutral fashion. It is not desirable that the conceptual ramifications of that choice should be permitted --through official validation-- to pollute the social and medical landscape for the non-suicidal majority.

And indeed, this principle is even more evident when we remember that the dead are truly gone, and that our validation of them has no meaning to themselves.

But those who are struggling --with the consequences of socially validated suicidal acts-- remain among us now, and must continue to live in the world which this ill-advised cult of suicidal adulation has poisoned.

Gordon Friesen,

No medical homicide for mental illness. Support Bill C-218.

Patient autonomy meets the ‘Groningen Protocol’ (euthanasia of newborns)

Killing of the incapable increases lethal pressure on capable patients.

Gordon Friesen

By Gordon Friesen

It has been repeatedly and fallaciously claimed that medical 'assistance in dying' is (and always shall be) an exercise of patient autonomy; that it poses no threat to incapable patients.

However, the legalization of medical homicide, in the alleged context of choice, has also sparked the rapid advancement of other variations, where autonomy is either limited, or impossible, and whose justification depends, not upon choice, but upon the objective judgment of medical circumstances.

This point is most emphatically illustrated by present Canadian consideration(1) of the Dutch ‘Groningen Protocol’,(2) which practice originally included the infanticide of babies up to 12 months, and is now being considered to include children up to 12 yrs (3). Clearly, no one might pretend that such deaths reflect autonomous choice.

Normalized infanticide, of course is extremely problematic on its own. For decisions which doctors (and parents) might previously have worried over, long and hard, will now become routine. Crucial enabling concepts which echo the worst phase of twentieth century eugenics, that is, concepts such as ‘incompatibility with life’,(4)  will become increasingly elastic.

From a situation analogous to the historically extreme (and exceedingly rare) destruction of clearly inedible food, prospective parents will inevitably pass to the capricious practice of modern shoppers at the supermarket, disdainfully rejecting any fruit with the slightest blemish.

However our present interest with legal infanticide most closely concerns its relation to the evolution of medical homicide more generally.

Unsurprisingly, our adversaries simply deny any connection. According to the mendacious sophistry thus employed: infanticide cannot be an extension of MAID, because MAID is legally defined to require an informed consent, of which infants are incapable!

However (as we must reply) infanticide by doctor is clearly a form and extension of medical homicide (of which MAID was only the first permitted instance). And this fact both underscores, once again, the importance of employing proper language; and irrefutably demonstrates the expansion of medical homicide beyond the capacity border.

But there is more. For just as the assumed legitimacy of poisoning capable patients suggests a similar legitimacy for the incapable, so also, this allegedly objective justification of medical homicide turns back upon itself: to increase the pressure upon non-compliant, capable patients, to more readily accept their proffered fate.

For once the principle is openly proclaimed --that imperfect life does not deserve to live-- how can people be expected to accept imperfection in others, or in themselves?

In other words: to protect the incapable is also to protect ourselves.

Gordon Friesen, May 19, 2026

       (1) Schadenberg, Alex, Is Euthanasia of Newborns with Disabilities next?, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, January 16, 2026 https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2026/01/is-euthanasia-of-newborns-with.html
    (2) Verhagen, Eduard, M.D., J.D., and Sauer, Pieter J.J. , M.D., Ph.D., The Groningen Protocol — Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns, N Engl J Med 2005;352:959-962, March 10, 2005 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp058026
    (3) Schadenberg, Alex, The Netherlands plans to extend euthanasia to children, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, April 14, 2023 https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-netherlands-to-extend-euthanasia-to.html
    (4) Zhuang, Zara, ‘Stop saying fetuses with disabilities are incompatible with life, The Irish Times, Nov 25 2014, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/stop-saying-fetuses-with-disabilities-are-incompatible-with-life-1.2014538

“Club Sandwich Mayonnaise” a play about Quèbec euthanasia.

All the World's a Stage! 

By Gordon Friesen
President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

We have some very good news to report, from the cultural front, in the Province of Quebec.

This good news concerns the recent production of a stage play which might not actually condemn --but does seriously criticize-- the practice of medical homicide in that Province.

The arrival of “Club Sandwich Mayonnaise”, by Manuelle Legare, is encouraging for a number of reasons.

First of all, this is not a marginal production.

Mme. Legare is the daughter of local performance icon Pierre Legare, and was thus born into the Quebec cultural aristocracy, a status which she has successfully built upon through her own efforts in television and documentary cinema.

Furthermore, the participating dramatic production company, Porte Parole, was the first group to pioneer what has become the dominant Quebec stage formula, of 'dramatic documentary', and remains a leading reference in this style.

For these reasons, the Quebec opinion establishment have had no choice but to take this phenomenon seriously. And they have done so in spades. For after each (sold out) performance from April 8 to 18, leading authorities were on hand to participate in audience question and answer sessions, beginning, on opening night, with none less than Véronique Hivon, herself, the veritable Queen of euthanasia in Quebec, political Godmother, and author, of the original “Law Concerning End of Life Care”.

In terms of Quebec politics and society, this is a big deal.

Quebec does not have the same sort of litigious, political division seen elsewhere. All Quebec politicians, journalists, and influencers share certain crucial positions which they consider as universal social "consensus", and which it is assumed that no "serious" thinker might oppose. These currently include: an eternal resentment for Quebec's previous conquered status within the British Empire, certain extreme views on religion (or fossil energy) and most recently: an unfailing support of medical homicide.

Indeed, author Manuelle Legare states that the dramatic stage has become the only remaining public space in which any questioning of the medical homicide consensus might still be permitted.

However, as history shows, apparent (and rigorously enforced) unanimity of opinion often blocks the evolution of real and necessary criticisms, which subsequently explode in peoples faces. And it is this fact which explains the enthusiasm of both pro, and anti, medical homicide factions in embracing Club Sandwich Mayonnaise along with the indirect opportunity of discussion which it provides.

For the first time, after ten years of lockstep support, it would appear that there is at least some political willingness to entertain the thought that mistakes might have been made, or failing that, to concede that some small improvements might be desirable to limit unforeseen harms.

Returning to the author's description of her own intentions: Mme Legare lends official credence to the consensus belief in medical homicide as "social progress", but then speaks of "blind spots in the mirror", which in her case meant the profound psychological distress of hearing her father joke, one day, that he could order up his death as easily as "a club sandwich with mayonnaise", and then actually seeing his corpse laid on a slab, 48 hours later.

This, in short, is the sort of personal experience --implying enormous social rupture-- that no political "consensus" may prevent its partisans from questioning. And it is also a glimpse into the bottomless social abyss that so many of us have been warning against from the beginning.

To be realistic, of course, there is no scenario, whatever, in which one might imagine Quebec decision-makers ever showing sufficient humility to actually admit that they were simply wrong about the practice of medical homicide. And it may well be that pro-euthanasia forces will succeed in co-opting this first criticism as a positive opportunity of "healthy" adjustment. However, a definite breach in messaging unanimity has indeed been made.

As our ally Catherine Ferrier, President of the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia has described it:

"... all came out in the play. Rushed assessments, lack of access to other options, psychosocial suffering, priority of MAID over palliative care, etc. It mentioned the opposition of disability groups and the UN recommendation against MAID for people not at the end of life."

In short, the public airing of such concerns, in the undisputed ‘Belly of the Beast’ of Canadian euthanasia, can only be a good thing. And although the wheels turn slowly, and although no open admission of error will ever be made: Quebec politicians have also shown themselves to be extremely adroit in making 180 degree policy changes while firmly pretending to stay the course.

Let us all hope that we will eventually see that skill masterfully displayed, with regards to medical homicide.