What Does ‘Suicide’ Have to do with the Oregon assisted suicide Model?

By Meghan Schrader

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

Meghan Schrader

One time when I was testifying at an Oregon model assisted suicide hearing I decided to describe one of my episodes of psychotic depression in detail, to try to get legislators to observe parallels between what I was describing and the experiences of terminal illness that the proponents were describing. It struck me as a way to illustrate the overlap between the Oregon Model proponents’ logic that assisted suicide is a valid response to end of life suffering, and expansionists’ logic that “psychiatric assisted suicide” is a valid solution for extreme mental suffering.

Also, the Oregon assisted suicide model proponents describe disturbing physical symptoms at hearings all the time. So it should be ok for me to describe my past severe psychiatric symptoms, right?

The legislators looked at me kind of like I was high and then made comments along the lines that what I had described had nothing to do with the proposed law, but they appreciated my bravery in sharing my story.

I feel kind of silly about that testimony now. After all, I was describing severe mental illness, not a terminal illness like cancer. Also, maybe providing all those details came across as trauma dumping and attention-seeking. Perhaps it would have sufficed to say, “Having experienced mental illness in the past and observed expansionists efforts to legalize psychiatric euthanasia, I think society should not take another step towards that world by legalizing the Oregon model.”

But I still think that talking about severe mental illness and suicidal ideation during discussions about the Oregon model is less ridiculous than those legislators seemed to think. As disability rights opponents of assisted suicide have pointed out, the distinction between “terminally ill” and “disabled” can be blurrier than the Oregon model proponents would like it to be. There are some people who can live for years with their disabilities with the proper support, yet would die quickly if that support were withdrawn. And some of those people experience suicidal ideation. Moreover, there have been instances of people with mental illnesses like anorexia nervosa dying by assisted suicide. This abuse thins the distinction between “suicide” and assisted suicide” that the Oregon model proponents perceive.

Furthermore, some proponents have openly admitted that they want to medicalize disabled people’s suicides; famous euthanasia activist, Thaddeus Mason Pope told me so.

Nevertheless, I’ll entertain the position that there may often be meaningful distinctions between the “Oregon assisted suicide model” and “regular” suicide, with respect to the reasoning behind the decision, the possibility of graphic violence, the typical impact on family members, the length of time that the person had left to live, etc. So, I can understand why there are a lot of people who think that equating the Oregon assisted suicide model and suicide is “silly.”

I’ll again use my former pastor as an example. This pastor was a wonderful person and a dedicated faith leader. She did a lot of great work with marginalized people. She was also very anti-suicide. One time when I was sobbing in front of her about how much pain I was in during a bad bout of depression, she asked, “I don’t want to scare you, but as your pastor I need to know: are you having any thoughts about hurting yourself? Is there anything that we need to do to keep you safe?”

I wasn’t planning to harm myself, but I appreciated the compassion behind the pastor’s question.

This pastor also did a lot of terrific work with terminally ill people, and she disagreed with me about the Oregon assisted suicide model. When we had a friendly debate about the issue, she said, “Having been with people who have experienced a horrible death from Glioblastoma, I strongly reiterate my comments. And I hope that I would have the grace to make a similar choice.”

Obviously I disagree with the pastor, but I feel able to respect her motivations and logic. After all, she had had years of working with terminally ill people and I hadn’t. And she had worked with a lot of people experiencing suicidal ideation. So although assisted suicide and “regular” suicide both involve dying by one’s own hand (and hence meet the technical definition of suicide) I can “get where she was coming from.”

Unfortunately, not all assisted suicide proponents think like my former pastor. Some of them would like to expand assisted suicide to disabled people who aren’t dying. And that’s a situation where I think proponents’ distinction between assisted suicide and suicide is indisputably linked to ableism.

Disabled people are already systemically excluded from suicide prevention. Peer-reviewed research shows that there is a high suicide rate among people with disabilities and that people are more likely to think suicide is acceptable if the victim is disabled. There is also a lack of suicide prevention resources designed for people with disabilities. In that context, suicide prevention organizations equivocating on whether disabled people’s assisted suicide deaths are suicides falls into a longstanding pattern of abandonment.

The Oregon assisted suicide model proponents’ argument that assisted suicide is never suicide would be on much firmer ground if the Oregon model had never been used to kill people with anorexia, and if it were the only assisted suicide model that existed anywhere in the world. But it isn’t. Moreover, the Oregon model movement leaders routinely do things that normalize discussions about expanding assisted suicide such as by rubbing elbows with assisted suicide expansionists who have said that medicalizing the suicides of disabled people is ok. Compassion and Choices leaders cannot possibly have missed People Magazine and the New York Times’ enthusiastic platforming of people with chronic mental illnesses who would like to die by assisted suicide. Compassion and Choices leaders have published statements declining to take a position on whether Canada’s euthanasia (MAiD) program is ok, even though the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of People With Disabilities says that it’s not.

In short, although the Oregon model is ostensibly limited to terminally ill persons, it is helping to normalize the expansive proponents’ position that disabled people’s suicides are therapeutic.

Author Note: For a nuanced discussion of why what the Oregon Model proponents call "MAiD" is best described as “Assisted Suicide,” and why such “MAiD” is most accurately understood as a variation of suicide, read Harold Braswell’s article, “In Defense of "Physician-Assisted Suicide": Toward (and Back to) a Transparent, Destigmatizing Debate.”

Is it a choice when a veteran with PTSD can’t see a way out?

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren her substack on June 24, 2026.

Kelsi Sheren rebuts Catherine Ford’s recent piece: Everyone should have the same or equal rights

Why would we deny him his right to suicide prevention?

Catherine Ford of the Calgary Herald wants equal rights. So do I.

But here’s the question she didn’t ask in her June 24th column: equal right to what, exactly? Because the right she’s describing the right to a medically assisted death when your pain is psychiatric is not the only right on the table. There’s another one. The right to be fought for. The right to have the system stand between you and the worst moment of your life instead of handing you a form.

That right is called suicide prevention and in Canada right now, it is not equally distributed.

I served in Afghanistan. I came home. I watched what the system did and didn’t do for the people I served with. I have testified before Parliament on veteran suicide, on MAID, and on the gap between what we promise the people who put on a uniform and what we actually deliver. So when Ford writes about choice, I need her to sit with something specific.

A veteran with PTSD who cannot see a way out is not making a free choice. He is making a choice inside a tunnel. His nervous system has been altered by what he witnessed. His access to quality psychiatric care has been inadequate because Veterans Affairs wait times are documented, the underfunding is documented, the failures are documented. The tunnel he is standing in was partly built by institutional neglect.

Ford calls the parliamentary committee’s recommendation to exclude mental illness as a sole criterion “cruelty.” I call it the first responsible thing a committee has done on this file in a decade. Not because people with mental illness don’t suffer. They do. Profoundly, but because “irremediable” is doing an enormous amount of work in that sentence, and we have not been honest about what it means.

Irremediable compared to what treatment? The treatment we haven’t provided yet? The therapy that has a two-year waitlist? The psychiatrist who isn’t available in the rural community where this person lives? We are declaring conditions irremediable in a system that has never fully tried to remediate them. That is not a medical standard. That is a budget decision dressed up as compassion.

Ford anchors her argument in autonomy. Fine. Then let’s apply that standard consistently and see where it takes us.

A thirteen-year-old girl is targeted by an algorithm. Instagram surfaces content specifically calibrated to deepen her body dysmorphia. She develops an eating disorder. She wants to harm herself. Her suffering is real. It is documented. By the logic Ford is advancing that mental pain is pain, that psychiatric suffering deserves the same access as physical suffering, that we cannot treat some Canadians as “dependent children incapable of making their own decisions” on what principled basis does that girl not qualify?

I already know the answer Ford would give. She would say that’s not what she meant. That there are safeguards. That minors are different.

But that’s the problem. Once you accept that the state’s role is to facilitate death for those whose psychiatric suffering is deemed irremediable, you need a bright, defensible line about who qualifies. Canada does not have one. Belgium and the Netherlands, which have had this framework longer, do. They’ve used it on minors. They’ve used it on people whose primary diagnosis was depression and social isolation. That is not a slippery slope argument. It is what the data shows actually happened.

Ford writes that forcing some Canadians to live is cruel. I’d ask her to consider the inverse. Is it not cruel to build a system where the answer to “I can’t go on” is “we can help with that” rather than “why not, and what haven’t we tried?”

The veteran with PTSD deserves every resource this country has. He deserves peer support workers who’ve been downrange. He deserves access to treatments including psychedelic-assisted therapy, which has shown significant clinical results for treatment-resistant PTSD and which Canada has been unconscionably slow to make accessible. He deserves a system that exhausts every option before it considers the last one.

What he does not deserve is a country that skips to the end because the beginning and the middle are expensive.

Ford is right that successive Canadian governments have punted this question down the road. But she has misidentified the punt. The failure wasn’t in delaying MAID expansion. The failure was in never building the mental health infrastructure that would make “irremediable” a meaningful word rather than a bureaucratic shortcut.

Equal rights. Yes. I’m for it.

Every Canadian equally deserves a system that fights for their life before it ends it. Every Canadian equally deserves a psychiatric care system funded at the same level as emergency cardiac care. Every Canadian equally deserves to have their crisis treated as a crisis — not a decision.

That is the equal right we are not having the conversation about and until we do, I am not prepared to call a death-first system compassionate.

Kelsi Sheren is a Canadian disabled combat veteran, Author of Do No Harm? and host of The Kelsi Sheren Perspective. She has testified before Parliament on veteran suicide, MAID, and psychedelic therapy.

Americans Are of Two Minds About the ‘Moral Acceptability’ of Suicide?

This article was published by National Review online on June 9, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Gallup just issued its annual poll on “moral acceptability.” I was struck by the dramatically different results in the two questions about suicide.

The first question asked about “doctor assisted suicide.” Close to a majority, 49 percent, of respondents answered that committing suicide with a doctor’s help is morally acceptable, while 45 percent responded that it is not.

The other question asked simply about the moral acceptability of “suicide.” Strikingly, only 21 percent said that it is morally acceptable to take one’s own life, while a whopping 70 percent said it is not. Indeed, suicide was one of the lowest “morally acceptable” behaviors in the entire poll. Only cloning humans, polygamy, and extramarital affairs had a lower moral acceptability rating.

That’s quite a paradox. So, what’s going on? Why the wide disparity in answering two questions that are about the same issue?

Some thoughts.

First, the doctor part of the “doctor assisted suicide” brings the authority of the medical profession into the question, which I think grants the act added moral acceptability.

Second, many people judge the “why” of the deed as much as they do the “what.” I think that when suicide is or seems to be motivated by serious or terminal sickness, chronic pain, or disability, many people believe that self-killing becomes less morally questionable. But if motivated, say, because a business failed or a beloved spouse died, it remains morally problematic.

Third, there has been a several-decades-long social and political campaign — supported ubiquitously by the media and popular culture — to valorize doctor-assisted suicide, while these same social institutions still (weakly) promote suicide prevention in cases not involving illness.

Finally, it seems to me that asking about “moral acceptability” when pondering this issue is the incorrect question. I think that suicide is wrong — there is always hope for a better tomorrow, a moment of joy, a change of mind and heart — even in the most extreme situations of illness. I have seen it up close and personal.

But I don’t think it is “immoral,” per se. (It would be for me because of the teaching of my church.) None of us knows what could drive us to such depths of despair that we kill ourselves, and thus, I don’t judge people who attempt or do it. (That said, I do understand that the moral stigma against suicide prevents many deaths — which is why assisted suicide activists don’t call it suicide).

But do you know what I think is immoral? Encouraging, validating, facilitating, or assisting suicide. People who do that are not mired in the depths of despair, and their support for someone’s self-termination may make the difference between life ending or continuing.

Here’s my bottom line: All life matters, including the lives of people who want to die. All suicidal people deserve to have their lives saved, if possible, just as do people who are drowning in a river or trying to escape a burning building.

Thus, the morally acceptable answer to all suicide ideations should be universal, regardless of the “why”: rescue and prevention, which is to say, love.

“Emotional Support Animals, Assisted Suicide And Suicide Prevention”

Content Warning: Discussion of A Disabled Person’s Death By "Suicide" 

 

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader
Disability activist and member of the EPC-USA Board

As I’ve said, I think it’s important for euthanasia opponents to understand how disability policy impacts disabled people’s lives, how euthanasia can relate to those policies, and do what they can to advocate for better disability supports. So I am going to comment on the USA Office of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to not enforce/eliminate the Fair Housing Act’s protections for Emotional Support Animals.

My cat, Lucy, is my Emotional Support Animal. She is one of the best things in my life. Every night when I go to sleep, she curls up on the pillow next to mine. I place my hand against her smooth, soft fur and listen to the gentle rumbling of her purr. Often the anxiety and insomnia I struggle with eases and I am able to drift off to sleep. Every morning Lucy wakes me up by tapping me with her paw and nuzzling my face, as she makes little grunts and trills.

Lucy

Lucy also greatly contributes to my understanding of myself as a fully functional adult: Yes, my mental illness and neurological disabilities sometimes cause independent living struggles, but my cat is still alive and doing well, so I must be doing some things right.

So, Lucy is essentially a furry antidepressant that compliments the effects of pharmaceutical intervention. Residual symptoms of depression would be much less controlled if I did not have Lucy.

Unfortunately for people like me, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has decided not to enforce the Fair Housing Act’s provision for emotional support animals.

In addition to no longer investigating ESA Fair Housing Act complaints, HUD has indicated that it intends to update the FHA’s 1989 assistance animal regulations to exclude ESAs.

HUD now only wants to enforce the part of the FHA requiring landlords to accommodate service animals who perform specific tasks.

Service animals and ESAs are not the same thing. Service animals are trained to do complex tasks to accommodate specific symptoms of a person’s impairment that inhibit independent living. ESAs do not perform specific tasks but have long been recognized as important tools for people with emotional disabilities.

HUD’s actions increase my risk of having to choose between housing and my precious Lucy.

For instance, my low income makes it difficult to afford the pet fees that are waived for ESAs. My landlord could decide that since HUD no longer recognizes ESAs, I could not have Lucy in my apartment. Limiting protections for ESAs means that if I wanted to move to a new apartment for an education or job opportunity, landlords could deny me housing because of Lucy.

According to HUD’s memo, it might still be possible for tenants to seek redress under Section 504 and the ADA. But, one of the flaws in those laws is that neither contains explicit protections for ESAs. The ADA restricts its definition of assistance animals to service animals. This is the template HUD will now base its policies on.

I think some readers may perceive a proliferation of spurious disability complaints, especially around ESAs. But I can tell you from experience that the process of resolving any legitimate disability discrimination complaint tends to be drawn out and burdensome for the filer. HUD’s new blanket policy striking the Fair Housing Act’s provisions for ESAs makes any remaining ESA protections even more difficult to invoke. HUD has removed an important tool for ensuring that vulnerable people who need ESAs can have them.

Perhaps the best way to explain how this policy change relates to euthanasia prevention is to tell the story of “Jane.” Jane was a disabled Canadian woman with autism and depression that I met on #DisabilityTwitter. Jane’s severe depression, autistic dysregulation and various traumas caused chronic housing instability. When I met Jane, she did have an apartment, but the environment wasn’t suitable for someone with her disabilities. Jane was isolated from her family and experiencing poverty. One of the only sources of joy in Jane’s life was her cat.

At first, Jane was angry that Canada had legalized “Track 2 MAiD” instead of funding disability supports; participating in viral hashtags like #AidNotMAiD. But Jane’s mental health and housing situation gradually became more precarious. As Jane’s anguish intensified, she evolved into one of the only disabled Canadians I met on X who thought “Track 2 MAiD” was a good idea.

Lack of accommodations for depression and autism gradually eroded Jane’s sanity, until her tweets became a combination of volatile despair and heartbreaking pleas for help. Jane tweeted about having loud autistic meltdowns.

Rather than show compassion, neighbors fought to have Jane evicted from her apartment.

Many of Jane’s panicked tweets about impending homelessness were about her fear that she wouldn’t be allowed to take her cat to a homeless shelter, and she would have to surrender her cat to an animal shelter, “And then I’ll never see her beautiful face again!”

So, once she had enough evidence that homelessness was inevitable, Jane killed herself “the old fashioned way.”

HUD’s new policy increases the risk of these kinds of scenarios. HUD’s decision to restrict disabled people’s access to beloved emotional support animals will cause the USA’s most marginalized disabled people to suffer more. And that suffering will be just as real as the suffering of disabled Canadians having “MAiD” suggested to them in emergency rooms. Policies like HUD’s recent decision will contribute to the high rate of suicide in the disabled community. And those “regular” suicides will be just as tragic and preventable as the coerced “MAiD” suicides in Canada.

It is important that euthanasia opponents not support policies like this. If you want to save disabled people’s lives, protect our access to the things we need and love.

Author Note 1: For another essay about what Lucy means to me, see my blog post, Society Should Treat Disabled People Like My Cousin Treats Me and “It.”

Author Note 2: Apparently HUD website's entire page about assistance animals, archived by the Wayback Machine as recently as May 23, 2026, has been removed.
 

Author Note 3: Here is HUD’s memo about the rule change.

Author Note 4: Here is the Disability Rights Education And Defense Fund’s briefing on the rule change.

Canadian man pleads guilty to aiding suicide in 14 deaths.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Some of Kenneth Law's victims.

Kenneth Law, a Canadian who sold suicide poison kits online to as many as 1200 people world-wide, pled guilty to 14 charges of aiding and abetting suicide in a New Market court (today), May 29, 2026..

Jon Woodward and Codi Wilson reported for CTV News that:

Law was arrested in 2023 in connection with 14 deaths in Ontario after he was accused of aiding and abetting those suicides by supplying the victims with ... which is typically used to preserve meat but is deadly when consumed in high concentrations.

At the time of his arrest, police said Law sent more than 1,200 packages to 41 countries, selling the deadly chemical and other items that can be used for self-harm through multiple websites.

The youngest victim in Ontario was just 16 years old.

Based on a plea agreement, the Crown Prosecutor dropped the 14 counts of murder for an agreement where Law pled guilty to aiding the suicide of his victims, a charge that would likely result in a 14 year sentence.

Woodward and Wilson reported that: prosecutors said the victims in England and Wales will be included as “part of Mr. Law’s sentencing in Canada.”

 Joseph Brean reported for the National Post that:

Court has heard details of the 14 Ontario deaths that are the subject of his pleas, and details of his business by which he would ship products to customers, mostly a culinary curing salt that is toxic in sufficient quantities, but also asphyxiation masks. He would also offer consultation phone calls, and sent documentation saying his businesses “will be held harmless for the end use of its products.”

Court is now hearing details of 79 similar deaths in the U.K., details of which were shared by British authorities and will be considered in sentencing later this year in September. Assisting suicide has a maximum jail term of 14 years.

His online material said he would not sell to minors, but court has heard two Canadian children, and another in Britain, successfully placed orders.

He shipped 1,209 packages to 41 countries.

An agreed statement of facts indicates that from 2020 to his 2023 arrest, he received nearly $300,000 from this business, roughly equally between Shopify and PayPal. 

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.

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.

Neha Raju & Tom Parfett

Woodward reported that 23-year-old Neha Raju and 22-year-old Tom Parfett died in the U.K., 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 poison online.

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 poison to at least 232 people in the UK.

Imogen Nunn

On August 27, 2023 Jon Woodward reported on CP24 on the Law investigation that the death of Imogen Nunn, in the UK, was also connected to Law. Nunn died suddenly in January, 2023 and the family didn't know how she died until the toxicology report confirmed that she died from poisoning.

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.

Bioethicists: ‘Terminally Sedate’ People Committing Suicide by Self-Starvation

This article was published by National Review online on May 25, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

In a newly released paper in the prestigious journal Bioethics, three prominent bioethicists argue that when someone decides to commit suicide via self-starvation and dehydration — known in euthanasia movement parlance as “voluntary stop eating and drinking” (VSED) — doctors should be allowed to “terminally sedate” the person trying to die when necessary to prevent intractable suffering.

Patients who commit VSED are often not terminally ill. In fact, euthanasia organizations promote self-starvation to the elderly who are not dying and as a means of becoming eligible for assisted suicide where it is legal by making oneself “terminal” via lack of sustenance.

VSED must be distinguished from the common circumstance when actively dying people stop eating. That’s a natural process and often peaceful because the body cannot assimilate food as organs shut down. VSED, in contrast, deprives the body of sustenance it needs to remain alive toward the end of causing death, i.e., it is a suicide method.

Without palliation, many people attempting VSED would abandon the attempt. The bioethicists know this and claim that once the decision to commit suicide is made, doctors are duty-bound to medically ameliorate the suffering that inevitably results:

If a patient is adamant in their refusal of food and water, the same physician must respect the competent refusal by not force‐feeding the patient and should offer standard palliative care, as they would for any other dying patient. Medical support for patients undertaking VSED should be adequate and proportionate to their symptoms, as per any other form of palliative care. This is arguably not assisted suicide.

No, it is precisely that. First, but for the self-starvation, many people who undertake VSED would not be dying. Second, palliation permits the patient to complete the suicide that would otherwise be abandoned. Hence, the palliating doctor is facilitating the patient in becoming dead, i.e., it is a form of suicide assistance.

The authors acknowledge that if a doctor’s assurance of palliation factors into the decision to undertake VSED, that could be deemed assisted suicide:

We acknowledge that there may be some cases in which combining these two practices could amount to assistance in suicide. Jox et al. identify two key factors which, if present, arguably classify VSED cases as assisted suicide: (a) the promise of medical assistance is instrumental to the individual’s decision to pursue VSED, and (b) the physician shares, at least in part, in the individual’s decision to pursue VSED (amounting to some level of encouragement).

The authors next argue that VSED patients should be allowed to be rendered permanently unconsciousness if experiencing “refractory delirium”:

We propose the following criteria for VSED with TS in the setting of refractory delirium:
1. The patient is experiencing unbearable suffering.
2. The patient has lost decision‐making capacity.
3. The patient has previously stopped all fluids.
4. The patient has previously indicated that they would not wish for fluid to recommence if delirious.
5. Other measures to address confusion/distress have been attempted (or refused in advance), such as antipsychotics.

Ah, the old “strict guidelines protect against abuse” scenario.

Let’s discuss this in the real world. Strict restrictions rarely stay strict. For example, needle “exchange” to prevent the spread of HIV eventually slouched into outright needle give away, no used syringes required.

The same kind of slippage would happen if sedating people committing VSED were allowed. Eventually, such drugging would become a standard technique, its availability amplified by assisted suicide advocates.

The authors’ answer to this objection? Let doctors predetermine whether to facilitate the suicide with sedation:

We believe that this harm can be reasonably mitigated through a thorough pre‐assessment of individuals requesting VSED. Prior to initiating physician involvement in the VSED process, physicians should seek to confirm that the individual (a) has decision‐making capacity, and (b) expresses a genuine intention to end their life. This pre‐assessment should also seek to confirm that the individual is fully informed, their decision is voluntary, their decision is consistent with their known values, and that the individual is free from mental illness compromising their decision.

Wait: The authors wrote earlier that when “the promise of medical assistance is instrumental to the individual’s decision to pursue VSED, and “the physician shares, at least in part, in the individual’s decision to pursue VSED (amounting to some level of encouragement),” that it would amount to assisted suicide. Pre-assessment would fit those very criteria, no?

So, we see the slippery slope slip-sliding away in the very article calling for allowing sedation under strict guidelines to prevent abuse. If this proposal is implemented, the next step will be to quit beating around the bush and get on with the lethal jabs.

Why write about this, Wesley? Articles in professional journals are a means of constructing future public policy and people need to be warned about what is being planned before it is imposed from on high. Or to put it another way, these issues are too important to be left to the bioethicists.

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.

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.

Euthanasia can allow structural coercive forces to push people toward death.

The following presentation was made by Dr Ramona Coelho to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying on April 14, 2026. (Link to the meeting)

Dr Ramona Coelho

I am a family physician, Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and an adjunct research professor at Western University.

I served on Ontario’s MAiD Death Review Committee and have published extensively on MAiD, and I speak in an individual capacity.

For twenty years, I have cared for patients with complex disabilities, mental illness, chronic pain, and social vulnerability, many facing financial instability.

Suffering is complex, shaped by psychological distress, trauma, poverty, isolation, and lack of support. Addressing it requires careful assessment, time, and care.

Community life plays a large role in mitigating suffering.

Yet in Canada, some individuals receive MAiD where suffering is driven by these unmet needs.

In my practice, I observed troubling patterns in how MAiD is introduced and assessed.

Some patients were referred immediately after a new diagnosis, others were approached repeatedly during vulnerable hospitalizations, and some were assessed and approved quickly without meaningful exploration of suffering or supports.

Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee reports contain anonymized cases, which you should all have. Across these cases, there were individuals with untreated mental illness, suicidality, addiction, isolation, and unmet social needs, demonstrating premature eligibility, inadequate safeguards, and a failure to address suffering before ending lives.

In particular, Track 2 cases reflect social vulnerability and untreated mental illness. Statistics showed nearly 30 percent of recipients lived in poverty. More were women. Many listed a lawyer, physician, or friend, not family, as next of kin, indicating social isolation. Less than half received mental health or disability supports. Fewer than 10 percent were offered housing or income support.

Although framed as choice, MAiD can allow structural coercive forces to push people toward death.

With mental illness, it is not possible to reliably determine that someone will not recover. At the same time, many Canadians wait prolonged periods for specialized psychiatric care, extending suffering and delaying recovery.

Suicidality, lack of insight, and impaired judgment are symptoms of many psychiatric conditions. They fluctuate, and recovery often occurs with time and social support, with or without treatment.

Given the lack of evidence to guide MAiD assessments for mental illness, bias and discrimination will inevitably determine who receives MAiD and who receives suicide prevention.

I invite you to read my article: Discrimination-driven deaths – Analysing Ontario Coroner Reports on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

In response to claims that MAiD professionals consistently follow guidelines and that CAMAP guidance is sufficient, review the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee cases and read my article. They illustrate gaps between guidance and practice. Also consider the risks of expanding MAiD on suicide contagion; MAiD presents death as a solution to suffering and provides the means to achieve it, with clinician support.

One witness cited a documentary on MAiD for mental illness, noting that the individuals later died by suicide, and suggested that delaying MAiD contributed to these deaths.

But why might this have occurred? Repeated exposure to messaging that frames death as the best or “dignified” response to suffering can increase resolve to end one’s life and worsen suicidality.

Suicide prevention research shows that normalizing death as a response to life suffering, combined with access to lethal means, increases suicide risk.

Further, The CPA’s consensus statement on MAiD for mental illness reflects opinion, not evidence-based medicine.

It should not reassure us that we are ready for this, nor guide life-and-death decisions.

In contrast, the International Association for Suicide Prevention states that MAiD should not be provided solely for mental illness and that suicide prevention principles must continue to apply to those near death or living with disability.

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has advised repealing Track 2 MAiD, including expansion to mental illness.

There are good reasons why Quebec, Alberta, and other provinces are not moving forward with MAiD for mental illness.

We cannot continue to delay.

A government committed to protecting all Canadians must stop MAiD for mental illness.