Important insight into decision to reject euthanasia for mental illness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD): Mental Disorder as the Sole Underlying Medical Condition: A Complex and Challenging Conversation Among Canadians was released on June 17, 2026, which is also the 10th Anniversary of the legalization of euthanasia in Canada.

The AMAD Committee decided that Canada should not implement euthanasia for mental disorders as the sole underlying medical condition on March 17, 2027. The report concluded:

That the Government of Canada amend the Criminal Code to indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from eligibility for medical assistance in dying.

It is great news that the AMAD Committee decided that Canada should not implement euthanasia for mental illness, but the battle is not over.

Possibly the most interesting parts of the AMAD Committee report were the supplemental reports from the members of the Committee. 

Dr Marcus Powlowski MP

The supplemental report (starting at page 63 of the report) from AMAD Committee Chair, Marcus Powlowski, (Liberal MP from Thunder Bay - Rainy River) and a physician is most interesting. Powlowski's arguements may influence Canada's future euthanasia debates.

Powlowski first examined Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) with regard to not permitting euthanasia for mental illness alone. he writes:

Unfortunately, the discourse about whether to allow MAiD for mental illness seems to have been largely reduced to the somewhat simplistic question of whether not allowing it is a violation of the Charter. The argument being if we allow MAiD for physical illness, but do not allow it for those with mental illness, we discriminate against those with mental illness (under s.15) and inappropriately restrict their liberty or threaten their security (s.7)...

Powlowski explains his position on Canada's Charter:

I think the courts ought to conclude, as did our committee, that not allowing MAiD for mental illness, until such time as some fundamental concerns are addressed, is a reasonable limitation under s.1. These fundamental concerns are the difficulty/perhaps even impossibility of determining irremediability of mental suffering (a core requirement under the law), and the lack of ability to distinguish suicidality from rational decision making in someone with a mental illness (I will return to this issue, and explain why it is so important, at the end of this submission). Numerous witnesses cited these concerns as reasons why we should decline to expand MAiD to this population.

The Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision did not obligate the government to permit euthanasia for mental illness alone, but even when interpreted in that manner, I agree with Powlowski that not permitting euthanasia for mental illness is a reasonable limitation.

Powlowski then deals with the question of "readiness" to expand euthanasia to people with a mental illness alone.

In addition, although some, perhaps a majority, of MAiD providers assured us of their readiness to provide MAiD for mental illness, and the adequacy of existing safeguards, we also heard disturbing stories of questionable conduct by some MAiD providers. Given what we heard it is hard not to conclude that some providers take an exceedingly expansive interpretation of what constitutes "serious and incurable illness, disease or disability", what constitutes an "advanced state of irreversible decline in capability"; and what constitutes "enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable". Furthermore, we heard stories of doctors with a seemingly cavalier attitude towards ending a life. 

Although we were assured that mechanisms, such as Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, would provide adequate safeguards, we were presented with scant, if any, evidence to indicate that such bodies have, as of yet, seriously pursued allegations of misconduct by MAiD providers. This does not mean that colleges have not received complaints or looked into them. As the president of the Nova Scotia College of Physicians and Surgeons pointed out- colleges only publish the reports of hearings when there has been a finding of wrong doing. That being said the paucity of any prosecutions of providers, combined with the suggestion by a number of witnesses that in fact there seems to be a lacunae of law enforcement when it came to MAiD ought to give rise to concern. Several witnesses suggested the criminal system, the medical colleges, and at times government Ministry's responsible for MAiD provision (BC), all allegedly treat enforcement as someone else's responsibility. Given the lack of evidence to the contrary it is frankly difficult to believe that the system is ready to expand.

This may be the most important comment by Powlowski. As the chair of the committee he recognizes that Canada's euthanasia law lacks effective oversight and is saying that expansion to people with mental illness alone would not be safe.

Further to that, his comments are important to the argument by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) that Parliament needs to completely review the law. The evidence suggests that the law lacks oversight, but further to that, the original law required a complete review and that has not happened.

Powlowski then argues that since Canada's law requires a person to have an irremediable medical condition, that the law would need to be amended to approve euthanasia for mental illness alone. He wrote:

But perhaps we will never be ready for MAiD for mental illness as the law is currently written. Numerous very experienced psychiatrists told us of seemingly irremediable cases where for some reason patients, after prolonged periods of seemingly irremediable suffering, the person eventually got better and started to enjoy life again. Furthermore, what evidence there is seems to suggest psychiatrists can not accurately predict who will not get better. 

Perhaps the simplest solution to the legal question is to recognize the requirement of irremediability as being dispositive of the issue. The law as written requires irremediability. If there is really no way to accurately determine irremediability it would seem we would need to change the law if we want to allow for MAiD for mental illness.

Jocelyne Downie

Powlowski suggests that based on irremediability that many euthanasia deaths for physical illness also do not qualify within the law. He writes:

We did, I would acknowledge, hear the argument that perhaps with some physical illness irremediability is not certain either (the argument was most forcibly made by Professor Downie- a law professor not a medical clinician). To the extent that there are such cases I would suggest it would be more appropriate to question whether MAiD is appropriate in any such case where there is uncertainty over the medical prognosis - rather than to accept the conclusion of those practitioners who suggested they were "comfortable" with making a decision about irremediability even if there was inherently some inability to come to that conclusion with reasonable certainty. 

Powlowski then answers the question about the role of parliament and the role of the courts. He writes:

I would suggest the elected legislature is totally justified in drawing a line, in deciding that we are unwilling to support the state enabling physicians to taking the life of someone who, perhaps, would have gotten better. The decision of whether we do so is a moral decision and very much a reflection of what we value as a society. As such it is a decision more appropriately made by those of us who are elected by the members of society, and who are ultimately accountable to the people- at the poll box, rather than the unelected courts.

This is important since Claire Brosseau and the euthanasia lobby are seeking an emergency court decision that would approve Brosseau for death by lethal poison based on mental illness alone. The euthanasia lobby want the court to legislate from the bench by approving that Brosseau be killed. 

EPC is intervening in the Brosseau court case concerning euthanasia for mental illness alone.

Powlowski made many more important comments but his closing argument is important:

In recommending that we not extend MAiD to those with mental illness we are not suggesting embarking on a new path of prohibiting suicide, or further trying to limit people's autonomy. We are suggesting the state decline to provide assistance to people with mental illness ending their lives and decline to allow medical professionals to actively do it for them.

EPC opposes killing people but we are not limiting a persons autonomy but rather we oppose the state giving doctors and nurse practitioners the right in law to kill people. When a doctor or a nurse pracitioner kills you, it is not about autonomy, it is about someone else killing you.

The EPC presentation to the AMAD Committee on May 5 urged Parliament to do a complete review of the 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) 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 April 2026, Canada surpassed 100,000 euthanasia deaths since legalization. Many of these deaths have been controversial and were outside the intent of the law.

EPC urges the government to consider the many stories associated with our euthanasia law that have been publicized world-wide and recognize that the law needs to be reviewed.

We look forward to presenting to the AMAD Committee when they provide a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law.

EPC Press Conference: Suicide and Euthanasia for Mental Illness

Welcome to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition press conference.

Alex Schadenberg

My name is Alex Schadenberg. I am the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

I want to express our deepest sympathy to the many families who have lost loved ones to euthanasia. Canada is surpassing 100,000 deaths by euthanasia this month, a very sad milestone.

I remember Gaetan Barrette, then the Quebec Health Minister, stating in the Quebec National Assembly in 2014 that euthanasia would be for extraordinary cases, likely 100 per year. Euthanasia now represents 8% of all deaths in Quebec.

Suicide and Euthanasia for Mental Illness

Jocelyn Downie, a long-time euthanasia academic told Canada's Parliamentary Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying that is studying euthanasia for mental illness alone, that parliament must stick to the March 17, 2027 timeline and permit euthanasia based on mental illness alone. Downie threatened the committee by stating:

“What will happen, if there is an extension or an exclusion, is that people will die by suicide”

Downie is saying that the answer to suicidal ideation is suicide and people will die by suicide if they do not have access to euthanasia.

The threat that people who are denied euthanasia will die by suicide is a false pressure tactic.

The Supreme Court of Canada accepted the “suicide argument” in Carter when it struck down Canada's laws that protected people from being killed by euthanasia, but the Supreme Court was also wrong.

If the premise that people will die by suicide if euthanasia is not available to them is correct then the suicide rate should go down after euthanasia became an option for Canadians who are not terminally ill.

But Canada's suicide rate has increased.

According to the Government of Canada suicide mortality statistics, there were 3,978 recorded suicide deaths in 2016, the year that Canada legalized euthanasia. In 2021, there were 3,927 recorded suicide deaths in 2021 the year that the euthanasia law expanded to Canadians who are not terminally ill. In 2023, two years after extending euthanasia to people who are not terminally ill, there were 4,735 reported suicide deaths in Canada, representing a greater than 20% increase from 2021.

I am not arguing that Canada's increase in suicide deaths was directly related to Canada's expansion of euthanasia, but I am saying that if Jocelyn Downie was correct, the suicide rate should have decreased, whereas in fact it has significantly increased.

Canada has had a massive increase in deaths by euthanasia.

Health Canada released their Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada on November 28, 2025 (2024 deaths) which indicated a 6.9% increase from the Fifth Annual report (2023 deaths).

The 2024 report indicates that there were 16,499 reported (MAiD) euthanasia deaths which was up by 6.9% from 15,427 in 2023.

In 2025, we know that euthanasia increased by 7.3% in Ontario and 11% increase in Alberta. I predict that in 2025, the increase in Canadian euthanasia deaths was greater than 7% with the number of euthanasia deaths being approximately 17,700.

Clearly, there is no indication that the massive growth in Canadian euthanasia deaths has resulted in a lower rate of other suicides.

Suicide rates do not decrease in jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide.

In December 2020 I responded to a statement by Senator Stanley Kutcher who said:

in jurisdictions, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, where assisted death is legal, that the suicide rates have decreased. He then stated that there is no link between assisted death and the rate of suicide in jurisdictions where it is legal.

The problem with Senator Kutcher's statement was that he was absolutely wrong.

In the article I explain that there are no jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide, that over a long period of time, have experienced a decrease in suicide deaths.

In February 2022 bio-ethicist David Albert Jones published an article titled: In Europe, suicides rise after ‘right-to-die’ is legalised. Jones provided a comparison between European countries that have legalized assisted dying and those that had not legalized it and found that countries that had legalized assisted dying experienced an increase in suicide rates compared to countries that had not legalized assisted dying who generally had a lowering of their suicide rate.

In other words, Downie is using a false argument to scare monger Members of Parliament into approving euthanasia for mental illness alone. Downie uses court decisions to uphold her position but the Justices are not suicide prevention experts and in fact are wrong in their assumption that legalizing euthanasia will prevent suicide.

Minimally speaking, legalizing euthanasia does not lead to a decrease in suicide rates and the data suggests that legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide has a suicide contagion effect leading, long term, to higher suicide rates.

Once again, if Downie is correct, based on the massive numbers of euthanasia deaths in Canada, the Canadian rate of other suicides should have gone down, but in fact they have gone up.

We mourn 100,000 euthanasia deaths in Canada, since legalization, and we challenge the federal government not to expand Canada’s euthanasia law but to launch a study by neutral researcher on the effect of Canada’s out of control euthanasia regime.

Euthanasia activist says that Canada must allow euthanasia for mental illness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Jocelyn Downie

Tristan Hopper reported for the National Post on April 9 that Jocelyn Downie, a long-time euthanasia academic told Canada's Parliamentary Committee on euthanasia, that is studying euthanasia for mental illness alone, that parliament must stick to the March 17, 2027 timeline and permit euthanasia based on mental illness alone. Downie threatened the committee by stating:

“What will happen, if there is an extension or an exclusion, is that people will die by suicide”

Downie is saying that the answer to suicidal ideation is suicide and people will die by suicide if they do not have access to euthanasia.

The threat that people who are denied euthanasia will die by suicide is a pressure tactic that is not true. 

The Supreme Court of Canada accepted the suicide argument in Carter when it struck down Canada's laws that protected people from being killed by euthanasia, but the Supreme Court was wrong.

If the premise that people will die by suicide if euthanasia is not available to them is correct then Canada's suicide rate should have gone down after euthanasia became an option for people who are not terminally ill.

But Canada's suicide rate has increased.

According to the Government of Canada suicide mortality statistics, there were 3,978 recorded suicide deaths in Canada in 2016, the year that Canada legalized euthanasia. In 2021, the year that Canada expanded the euthanasia law to people who are not terminally ill, there were 3,927 recorded suicide deaths. In 2023, two years after extending euthanasia to people who are not terminally ill, there were 4,735 reported suicide deaths in Canada, representing a greater than 20% increase from 2021.

I am not arguing that Canada's increase in suicide deaths was directly related to Canada's expansion of euthanasia, but I am saying that if Jocelyn Downie was correct, the suicide rate should have decreased, whereas in fact it has significantly increased.

Canada has had a massive increase in deaths by euthanasia.

Health Canada released their Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada on November 28, 2025 (2024 deaths) which indicated a 6.9% increase from the Fifth Annual report (2023 deaths).

The 2024 report indicates that there were 16,499 reported (MAiD) euthanasia deaths which was up by 6.9% from 15,427 in 2023.

In 2025, we know that euthanasia increased by 7.3% in Ontario and 11% increase in Alberta. 

 

I predict that in 2025, the increase in Canadian (MAiD) euthanasia deaths was greater than 7% with the number of euthanasia deaths being approximately 17,700.

 

Clearly, there is no indication that the massive growth in Canadian euthanasia deaths has resulted in a lower rate of other suicides.

Suicide rates do not decrease in jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Senator Stanley Kutcher

In December 2020 I responded to a statement by Canadian Senator Stanley Kutcher who said:

in jurisdictions, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, where assisted death is legal, that the suicide rates have decreased. He then stated that there is no link between assisted death and the rate of suicide in jurisdictions where it is legal.

The problem with Senator Kutcher's statement was that he was absolutely wrong. 

In the article I explain that in jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide, there are no jurisdictions, that over a long period of time, have experienced a decrease in suicide deaths.

Further to that, in February 2022 bio-ethicist David Albert Jones published an article explaining that: In Europe, suicides rise after ‘right-to-die’ is legalised. Jones provided a comparison between European countries that have legalized assisted dying and those that had not legalized it and found that countries that had legalized assisted dying experienced an increase in suicide rates compared to countries that had not legalized assisted dying who generally had a lessening of the suicide rate.

In other words, Downie is using a false argument to scare monger Members of Parliament into approving euthanasia for mental illness alone. Downie uses court decisions to uphold her position but the Justices are not suicide prevention experts and in fact are wrong in their assumption that legalizing euthanasia will prevent suicide. 

Minimally speaking, legalizing euthanasia does not lead to a decrease in suicide rates and the data suggests that legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide has a suicide contagion effect leading, long term, to higher suicide rates.

More articles on this topic:

• Legalizing assisted suicide does not decrease other suicide deaths (Read).
• Suicide rates in jurisdictions that have legalized assisted death are not decreasing (Link).
• Legal assisted suicide encourages other suicide (Link).
• The Supreme Court of Canada was wrong on assisted dying (Link).

Canada's euthanasia law was no slippery slope; it was a cliff.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Yuan Yi Zhu

An article by Yuan Yi Zhu, a Canadian academic, that was published as a Special to the National Post on February 18, 2025 explains that 10 years after the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision (that legalized assisted death in Canada) that Canada's MAiD law was not a slippery slope; it was a cliff. 

Zhu writes that the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision claimed that no slippery slope would happen, which is exactly the opposite of what has happened. Zhu wrote:

February marks the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), in which the court unanimously ruled, against both basic logic and its own precedents, that the right to life, guaranteed by the Constitution, included the right to a state-assisted suicide through what came to be known euphemistically as “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD).

At the time, the court dismissed evidence from other jurisdictions that the legalization of euthanasia inevitably led to its open-ended expansion as well as abuse against the vulnerable. Belgium’s disastrous euthanasia experiment, which saw children and people with psychiatric disorders dying at the hands of doctors, was, the court said, the “product of a very different medico-legal culture…. We should not lightly assume that the regulatory regime will function defectively, nor should we assume that other criminal sanctions against the taking of lives will prove impotent against abuse.” There would be no slippery slope, the court promised us.

Zhu examines his assertions about Canada's euthanasia law.

In 2016, Parliament legalized MAiD for people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable.” A short five years later, unnoticed in the midst of the pandemic, Canada’s euthanasia regime was expanded to cover those with chronic conditions whose deaths were not imminent. At the same time, Parliament legalized euthanasia for mental illness alone to come into force in 2023 (it has since been postponed to 2027), making a mockery of our society’s commitment to mental health and suicide prevention.

Christine Gauthier

Zhu examines several of Canada's euthanasia horror stories, such as Paralympian, Chritine Gauthier:

The horror stories Canada’s euthanasia regime has generated — the Paralympian who was offered MAiD by a government employee when she asked for a wheelchair ramp, the disabled woman living on welfare who opted for MAiD because she could not secure adequate housing, the cancer patient who chose to kill himself because he could not access chemotherapy in time — have become so commonplace that they have blunted our sense of decency, of what is the minimum we owe to our fellow citizens. Meekly, we have accepted that such horrors, and many more unreported ones, are part and parcel of Canadian society.

We have no answers to the contradictions raised by the legalization of MAiD. The civil servant who suggested it to Christine Gauthier was fired; but why did she lose her job, when MAiD is healthcare and when Gauthier, who is confined to a wheelchair, is eligible for euthanasia under Canadian law because of her disability? Was she not simply doing her job, providing information to those who may need it?

Zhu then comments on Canada's euthanasia statistics:

When it was introduced, proponents claimed MAiD would only account for a small number of deaths. In 2023, almost one death out of 20 in Canada was due to MAiD. In Quebec, which has adopted the practice more enthusiastically than virtually any other human society, the figure is 7.3 per cent, the highest such figure anywhere in the world. Last year, Quebec unilaterally legalized MAiD by advance directive — which under the Criminal Code is murder. The federal government’s reaction was to hold a series of national roundtables to discuss the idea more.

What about the “regulatory regime” on which the learned judges of the Supreme Court rested their hopes to protect the vulnerable? In Ontario, the chief coroner’s office recorded at least 428 cases of non-compliance with Canadian law by MAiD providers over a five-year period, in what was described as “a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation.” Most cases led to nothing more than an email to the provider; only four cases were referred to professional regulators. Not a single law-breaker was referred to the police.

Jocelyn Downie

To confirm how Canada's euthanasia law is being widely interpreted, Zhu refers to comments by Canada's leading euthanasia academic:

In the words of Jocelyn Downie, who received the Order of Canada for her promotion of MAiD, when doctors or nurse practitioners are assessing a patient’s eligibility for MAiD, “you can ask as many clinicians as you want or need” for a second opinion, allowing them to shop around until they find a colleague who will sign off on a MAiD request. On another occasion, she told medical professionals that, when it came to signing off on MAiD requests, “There is no certainty or unanimity required. There is not perfection required.” Legally, she was right: Canadian law does not require medical professionals to be right when they authorize MAiD for someone; they must merely have reasonable belief. The MAiD assessor does not even need to meet the patient face-to-face: a Zoom meeting is sufficient.

Finally Zhu refers to the role of the courts in Canada's euthanasia horror:

As for the courts, which opened a Pandora’s box, they have largely washed their hands from it all. Last year, an Alberta judge ruled that an autistic woman with no apparent diagnosis of a physical illness could receive MAiD, even though the judge himself did not understand how she came to be approved for MAiD and even though at least one doctor had turned down her request.

Some judges are even proud of the role they played in ushering in MAiD: in 2018, Richard Wagner, the chief justice of Canada, agreed the Carter decision and other rulings of its kind made the Supreme Court, as one Vancouver lawyer had characterized, “the most progressive in the world,” and added that he was “very proud of that.”

A decade on, there was no slippery slope; it was a cliff. 

Recent articles on this topic:

• Canada euthanasia: Unmasking healthcare and social failures (Link).
• Euthanasia is a national tragedy and it's only getting worse (Link).
• Family sues after British Columbia man dies by euthanasia while on a psychiatric day pass (Link).
• Canada: 13,343 reported euthanasia deaths in 2023 (Link).
• Ontario: At least 428 non-compliant euthanasia deaths (Link).
  

Meghan Schrader: Reflections on Juneteenth

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader 

Meghan is an autistic person who is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member.

This week the country celebrated Juneteenth, a holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States. I thought it would be a good idea to do a post marking the holiday, discussing the history of disabled African American slaves, considering the experiences of disabled BIPOC people, discussing trends in intersectional justice advocacy, and discussing how the intersection of race and disability is relevant to efforts to oppose assisted suicide. I know that I cannot do as good a job at this as Not Dead Yet Minority Outreach Director Anita Cameron or Keith Jones from Krip Hop Nation, but I will do my best.

First I thought it would be instructive for me to share a summary of the parallels between ableism and racism from a disability studies scholar who has studied the issue extensively. In a 2011 Society of Disability Studies Conference Presentation entitled "Expanding Our Theoretical Toolbox: The Politics of Dis(Ability) in Black Feminist Scholarship" professor Sami Schalk distinguished ableism, or the privileging of able-bodiedness, from “disableism,” or the network of practices that discriminates against people with disabilities. Schalk asserted that:

“Racism is discrimination against people of color while white supremacy is the overvaluing whiteness. Sexism is discrimination again women and femininity while patriarchy is the systematic privileging of men and masculinity. So, going back to those lovely days of standardized testing, we could think that disableism is to ableism as racism is to white supremacy and sexism is to patriarchy."

Schalk has since written a book on racial and disability justice that can be purchased on Amazon. I think that Schalk’s summary is an instructive starting point for the EPC blog’s readers to think about the parallels between ableism and racism, and how they intersect.

One thing to note when celebrating Juneteenth is that most discussions of slavery, like most discussions of history, leave out the experiences of slaves with disabilities. I think many of the EPC’s blogs readers may be unaware that kidnapped Africans on slave ships who were found to have disabilities were thrown overboard as “defective merchandise.” Harriet Tubman’s disability isn’t typically addressed the way it needs to be. Growing up I remember learning that Tubman had a traumatic brain injury, but that injury wasn’t discussed in the context of what 19th century disabled people or disabled BIPOC people experienced as a group. Other scholars have noticed this problem as well. Disabled people are still struggling to make our communal history visible to the predominant culture, and I think it is reasonable to conclude that this invisibility is helping to drive popular support for assisted suicide. 

If a disenfranchised people group’s history is erased from the public consciousness, lack of historical knowledge makes it easier for people to tolerate killing members of that group, and harder for people to think about how doing that will intersect with expressions of systemic racism. Lack of attention to how the history of slavery intersects with the history of disabled people is bad for disabled people of all colors, and for BIPOC people of all abilities.

Two other issues that Juneteenth provides the opportunity for EPC blog readers to think about are current trends in how intersectional justice advocacy approaches discussions about disability and race, and how people advocating for disability justice can best empower BIPOC people with disabilities.

It may surprise some EPC blog readers to learn that BIPOC disability justice advocates have asked white disabled people to please avoid race and disability analogies. To many people these analogies seem fine; just a handy way of pointing out how bad ableism is. I think that these analogies are particularly enticing when one is interacting with a vocally anti-racist person who is a virulent ableist. And, in the spirit of honesty I must admit that I am often sorely tempted to continue doing exactly this, especially in regard to mainstream bioethics and the assisted suicide, which so many progressive-identifying people ignore or support. I find myself wanting to scream, “You mainstream progressives wouldn’t tolerate the Ku Klux Klan, why do you tolerate Peter Singer, who compares disabled people to chimpanzees and thinks it’s fine to rape us? You presumably wouldn’t tell an ablebodied BIPOC person to die by suicide, why do you think it’s acceptable to send that message to disabled people of all creeds and colors? WHY???

However, I’ve been trying to learn not to frame my criticisms of people’s hypocrisy in that particular way nowadays, because people like Anita Cameron have asked me to stop doing it. And I respect and admire Anita and these other disability justice leaders so much, that I’m trying to learn other ways of illustrating the moral perils of ableism. 

My friendships with intersectional justice advocates and my exposure to the field of disability studies has taught me that BIPOC people with disabilities have their own history and experiences that are distinct from what what a white disabled person like me might experience. The need to foreground the experiences of BIPOC disabled people is where the X hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite and Anita Cameron’s project We Were There Too: Blacks in The Disability Movement come from. My interactions with BIPOC and intersectional justice advocates have taught me that many of the BIPOC people killed by the police have disabilities, and that many BIPOC migrants and incarcerated BIPOC people have disabilities. As such, effective and equitable disability justice work accounts for these intersections. In my Special Education program at the University of Texas, I learned that educational researchers had developed evidence-based practices for instructing and assessing BIPOC children with disabilities, because instruction and testing that does not take disabled culturally and linguistically diverse students backgrounds into account can lead to poor learning outcomes for those students, or to those students being overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed with disabilities. Considering the specific needs and experiences of BIPOC people with disabilities is an important contribution to establishing disabled people’s equal human right to live, which is what anti-assisted suicide advocacy is all about.

So, what are the most direct ways that the intersection of ableism with racism is relevant to the issue of assisted suicide? According to a 2013 Pew Research poll, the majority of BIPOC people oppose assisted suicide, which makes sense, given that BIPOC people of all abilities have a history of being abused by the healthcare system. One can see the intersection of ableism and racism in the case of Michael Hickson, the quadriplegic black man who was forced to die in Texas during the COVID pandemic. Moreover, BIPOC people on Medicaid are more likely to be the target of futile care impositions, which provides a preview of how things would play out if people like Thaddeus Mason Pope get their way and the United States eventually allowing involuntary euthanasia. In considering the issue of race, disability and assisted suicide, it is also important to consider the issue of class. The fact that so many of the targets of futile care laws have been people of color on Medicaid indicates that while assisted suicide is supported by some middle and upper class BIPOC people, the practice would further oppress working class and disabled BIPOC people. All of these dynamics are why our Indigenous Canadian neighbors have generally come out strongly against that country’s “MAiD” program, and why Anita Cameron’s work organizing BIPOC opponents of assisted suicide is so important.

One of the most illustrative examples of the intersection between ableism and racism that I have come across is the work of Richard Hanania, a right wing conservative supporter of assisted suicide who used to be a fellow at the University of Texas’s conservative think tank the Salem Center. In a blog post entitled “Canadian Euthanasia As Moral Progress,” Hanania wrote:

“One could just as easily say that people who want to kill themselves after becoming disabled are seeing things more objectively, and when they accept their condition they’re coping and living under a kind of false consciousness. I’m pretty sure I would want to kill myself if I was ever paralyzed, and I grant it’s possible that maybe I would change my mind after a while. But I wouldn’t want to become reconciled to living with such a condition. The idea that I might accept it would for me be even more reason to commit suicide, lest I get used to accepting a defective version of myself.”

In response to this post, professor of Mental Health Law Isabel Grant tweeted, 

“How is this not hate speech?” 

Professor Trudo Lemmens tweeted back, 

“I thought the same. His vile suggestions about who is better off dead would definitely be treated as hate speech if you change who he is talking about. Yet some of our colleagues endorse this crap with enthusiastic fervor.”

Another X user called Brendan wrote, 

“This is honestly the most disgusting piece I’ve ever read on the topic of MAiD. I was half expecting the phrase “lebensunwertes leben” to show up somewhere in the piece.” 

Lemmens tweeted back, 

“It is there, just not in German, worded slightly differently, and adding “choice” to turn it into a liberal ideal.”

Exactly. Hanania’s pro euthanasia screed is hateful. He may as well republish the text of Life Unworthy of Life verbatim. And that’s not ok, even if Hanania doesn’t want to round unwilling disabled people of all creeds and colors up and gas them in vans.

Predictably, some of the leaders in the right to die movement thought that Hanania’s blog post was delightful. Canadian Queen of Expanding Euthanasia To Everything And Everyone Jocelyn Downie tweeted, 

“This thread. This piece on Substack. Antidotes to the recent waves of misinformation and flawed analysis of assisted dying in Canada.”

Downie was unaware of the rest of Hanania’s background. In 2023 The Huffington Post did an expose on Hanania that revealed that he had posted on white supremacist websites under a pseudonym, and he lost his post at UT. (In the tradition of disabled people being left out of social justice efforts, Hanania of course did not get in trouble for his retread of lebensunwertes leben, because apparently no one at the Huffington Post or UT thought to consider how that attitude affects BIPOC people with disabilities.) So, Downie wound up boosting the work of a white supremacist because the surrounding culture has enabled her to think that systemic ableism is fine. Hanania’s attitude towards disabled people of all colors and BIPOC people of all abilities elucidates what leading scholars of race and disability studies and the history of eugenics tells us: the legacies and ideologies of racism and ableism are intertwined like the roots of a tree. A government policy of helping disabled people die by suicide and the worst expressions of racism that disabled BIPOC people experience are part of the same ideological phylum: hating or ignoring the members of disenfranchised groups so much that you don’t mind if they die.

As we mark Juneteenth, I must admit I do not know exactly what solutions are the best for repairing the damage that both systemic racism and systemic ableism have done to the world, or how best to integrate anti-ableism with anti-racism. But, my relationships with people like Anita Cameron and others in the disability rights movement indicate to me that the process of doing that starts by compassionate listening and learning. It involves humility, open-mindedness and creativity. And integrating racial justice into disability rights advocacy involves a firm commitment to the ideal that no one should have to live in a world where they are so oppressed that they are encouraged to kill themselves. Marking the abolition of slavery should remind us that all people have an equal right to live with dignity and respect.

Euthanasia Activists want to force Catholic hospitals to provide euthanasia (MAiD)

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An article by Thomas McKenna that was published in the National Review on February 3, 2024 explains that Dying with Dignity Canada and a group of law professors, intend to sue St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver with the intention of forcing all Catholic Hospitals to provide euthanasia (MAiD) on their premises. McKenna reported:

“It would be my hope the case would pave the way for ending the ability of religion to dictate health care,” said Daphne Gilbert, vice chairwoman of Dying with Dignity Canada and a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Gilbert and Dalhousie University law professor Jocelyn Downie have assembled a legal team to file a constitutional challenge against St. Paul’s Hospital, which is operated by a Catholic medical organization, Providence Health Care. St. Paul’s does not allow medical assistance in dying (MAID) within its walls, but the hospital arranges transfers to other facilities that provide MAID for patients who request it.

Gilbert, Downie and Dying with Dignity want to force St. Paul's as well as every Catholic hospital in Canada to kill their patients by (MAiD) euthanasia at their facilities.

According to a recent article published by The Walrus, Dying with Dignity, Canada's largest pro-euthanasia lobby group (which also happens to be a charity) is working to prepare the lawsuit.

McKenna reports Gilbert as stating:

The challenge is a “test case,” Gilbert said, for compelling religious medical institutions to provide abortions and “gender-affirming care,” in addition to assisted suicide.

“It would pave the way for the secularization of medical care in Canada,” Gilbert said. “Religious institutions would either have to decide to get out of the business of offering medical care — and it could be taken over by the province — or these institutions would have to align their care with the Constitution, even if it opposes their values.”

St Paul's Hospital Vancouver

On December 1, 2023 I wrote an article stating that the British Columbia government will be building a euthanasia center next to St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver in response to a complaint that palliative care patients did not have access to euthanasia at the Catholic hospital. The British Columbia government expropriated land from St. Paul's Hospital in order to build the euthanasia center.

I also reported on June 27, 2023 that the euthanasia lobby group, Dying With Dignity, was lobbying the British Columbia (BC) government to force Catholic hospitals to provide euthanasia.

At that time I reported that Alex Muir, the Chair of the Metro Vancouver chapter of Dying With Dignity wrote in a letter to the editor in the Vancouver Sun announcing their campaign to force Catholic hospitals to kill their patients rather than transfer their patients.

McKenna reported Gilbert's strategy:

The constitutional challenge will cite the Canadian Charter’s fundamental freedom of conscience and religion, Gilbert said, and argue that patients have a “conscience right” to choose euthanasia. St. Paul’s, she said, must provide MAID on-site.

“My argument would be that there is no freedom of religion for an institution,” Gilbert said. “Bricks and mortar don’t have conscience and religious beliefs. People within them might — and those people need to be respected and accommodated — but the four walls of the building are publicly funded health-care institutions.”

Brian Bird, a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law told Mckenna:

...the high court’s treatment of religious liberty has been on the wrong track. The St. Paul’s case, he said, could be “an opportunity to correct course.”

 “It seems to me that what reconciliation could look like is allowing a health-care institution like St. Paul’s or other healthcare institutions to provide 99.5 percent of legal health-care services, but for conscientious or ethical or religious reasons, not provide certain procedures,” Bird said. “It’s quite a heavy-handed argument to say they must provide everything.”

Phil Horgan, with the Catholic Civil Rights League told McKenna 

“The government says ‘we’re providing the funding, you can’t deny a service,’” 

“But follow that to its logical conclusion. What does that mean for the expression of religious views in the public square? What does that mean to various other possible tax exemptions available to religious institutions?”

The Archdiocese of Vancouver responded after the BC Government expropriated land from St Paul's hospital to build a euthanasia center next to the Catholic hospital by stating that euthanasia and assisted suicide will not be permitted in Catholic Healthcare Institutions.

The euthanasia lobby is committed to eradicating opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide and eliminating any "safe space" that doesn't provide euthanasia, that is doesn't kill their patients.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports any institution, group or individual that provides support for people in a "safe space" from being killed by euthanasia.