Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Please sign and share our petition opposing Ontario Bill 4: Peter Kormos Memorial Act. (Petition Link).
Ontario NDP MLA France Gélinas introduced Bill 4 on April 16, 2025. Bill 4 has not yet been debated in the Ontario legislature. Bill 4 states:
The Gift of Life Act currently requires that consent be obtained before tissue can be removed from a human body and used for therapeutic purposes, medical education or scientific research. Under the proposed amendments, consent is no longer required except from parents or guardians on behalf of children under 16 years of age. A person may object to the removal and use of the tissue prior to the person’s death or a substitute may object on the person’s behalf after the death has occurred.
Bill 4 would change The Gift of Life Act (Ontario), which requires consent to obtain organs and tissues and replaces it with presumed consent. The Ontario government would consider you to be an organ donor unless you have stated otherwise.
Bill 4 also changes the Connecting Care Act 2019for the planning,
co-ordinating, undertaking, supporting and promoting of activities relating to
the removal, donation and use of human tissue, including the co-ordinating and
supporting of designated facilities in connection with the removal and use of
human tissue for transplant.
Please sign and share the following petition (Petition Link).
To the Hon Sylvia Jones, Ontario Minister of Health
As a citizen of Ontario I oppose Bill 4, Peter Kormos Memorial Act (Saving Organs to Save Lives). This bill that would institute a system of presumed consent for organ donation in Ontario.
A study by the US Department of Health and Human Services examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that 103 of the cases may have violated the dead donor rule.
The government does not own my organs. I consider organ donation as a voluntary gift of life that is made after I have died.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports the Dead Donor rule,
meaning, the person must be dead before organs can be removed from a
person. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is calls for a re-affirmation of the dead donor rule.
On July 23we published an article about The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) media release concerning the American organ transplant system. The HHS examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that in 103 cases their were concerns that either ethics or the dead donor rule was violated.
In 2023, an effort to legitimize harvesting organs from living people was prevented when The Uniform Law Commission stopped an effort to revise the UDDA. The revision to the UDDA would have redefined death to permit organ removal when a person, is not yet dead but has an irreversible condition.
Roger Foley needs to be able to leave the hospital and go home.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has followed the plight of Roger Foley for a long time. In June, 2025; EPC promoted the online petition - Roger Foley needs to be fed (Petition Link).
Roger Foley, who lives with spino-cerebellar ataxia type 14, has been living at the London Health Sciences Centre for almost 10 years. Previously, Roger lived in his home and received attendant services from an agency that was contracted to provide care. Roger ended up in the hospital based on the substandard care that he received from the agency.
Roger applied for inclusion in the Self-Managed Attendant Services program that would give Roger direct funding to enabled him to hire his own care-givers. This is a program that exists in Ontario. Roger was turned down by the Ministry of Health for this program.
Hon Sylvia Jones, has been Ontario's Minister of Health and Deputy Premier since June 2022. In June, 2008; Sylvia Jones, as a member of the Conservative opposition, expressed strong support for self-managed home care funding.
Contact Hon Sylvia Jones at: sylvia.jones@pc.ola.organd state:
Roger Foley has been living at the London Health Sciences Centre for almost 10 years. Roger wants to leave the hospital and receive care in his home.
Now is the time to implement change and approve him for Self-Managed funding for Attendant Services.
Self-Managed direct funding will provide him the right resources for less money and enable him to leave the hospital and move home. Hospitals are the most
expensive setting for health care service delivery and, quite frankly,
not the best type of care for stable individuals with a disability. Allowing him to go home with self-managed funding for attendant services will enable him to fully participate in the community.
Here is the video of her June 2008 speech in the Ontario Legislature:
Here is what Sylvia Jones says in the (legislature) video:
Ms. Sylvia Jones: It's a pleasure to rise today to support the member for Wellington Halton Hills on this important resolution to add attendant services to the provincial wait time strategy.
For many years, experts in health care have told members of all three parties that our health system is too focused on hospital beds. Hospitals provide wonderful acute care for the citizens of this province, but it is the most expensive setting for health care service delivery and, quite frankly, not the best type of care for stable individuals with a disability.
As the Ontario Community Support Association highlighted in their August 13 press conference, people on the attendant services wait list put pressure on the health care system because they remain inappropriately stuck waiting in long-term-care homes, acute care beds, chronic care hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, all at a much higher cost to taxpayers. It's important that members in this House recognize that a failure to support today's resolution to make attendant services a priority by adding it to the provincial wait time strategy will result in higher costs to the taxpayer.
At the same news conference in August, the Ontario Community Support Association told us that the wait list for attendant services is four to 10 years. For four to 10 years, individuals with disabilities and their families are not getting the services they need. They remain in hospital or long-term-care beds, or their families, many with aging parents, struggle to continue to provide for their daily care needs. So even though we know that it is more cost-effective and more appropriate to have individuals cared for at home and even though we know attendant services allow people with physical disabilities to actively participate in their communities, go to school, get a job and contribute in other ways, we continue to focus our health care dollars in other areas.
This issue is most important across the province, but it also touches specific families in Dufferin Caledon. This summer, I met with a constituent from Honeywood who receives the Ministry of Health's direct funding for attendant services. I suppose you could call her one of the lucky ones. The program is administered by the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto. She tells me it took four years for her application to be approved, and this year, when she applied for a slight modification of her level of care because her health had changed, she was told that the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto was not even considering 2008 applications; they were still reviewing 2007 applications. Why is that? The Centre for Independent Living has a huge waiting list, and this Liberal government has not increased their funding since they were elected in 2003. So CILT is trying to serve as many Ontarians as it can with too few resources. In fact, my constituent believes that something needs to happen long-term care or worse for an individual with direct funding before the next person on the waiting list can receive funding for attendant services. My constituent wanted me to know that she feels this is a wonderful program that allows her to routinely participate in the community and live in her home. For example, I know that she is an active member of the Dufferin county accessibility advisory committee, and the Honeywood community. She came to see me because she wanted to brief me on this issue, and she believes that other people with a physical disability need to have the same opportunity that she has.
In addition to direct funding not being a priority for the Ministry of Health, my constituents are also having issues with funding from community care access centres. The boundary change introduced by the Liberal government has resulted in my constituents being asked to do with less service. Their disability has not changed, but the level of service being provided has.
An Orangeville resident who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car accident had been receiving home care since 1995. Under the former Waterloo-Wellington-Dufferin CCAC, he received morning and night visits, seven days a week, to assist with personal care. Under Central West CCAC, he was discharged from nursing and occupational therapy. Respite care was eliminated. His case is under review to determine what other services can be cut. The minister responded to us in correspondence by suggesting that he use the CCAC complaint process and to call the long-term-care action line.
Another constituent who happens to suffer from ALS has been told he was receiving too much care from the Waterloo-Wellington-Dufferin CCAC. He's been told his CCAC hours are being cut and a referral has been made to the March of Dimes to make up the care hour difference. That's right. The CCAC is referring people to a non-profit agency and expects them to provide front-line care, rather than our universal health care system. The March of Dimes also has a waiting list. So now the Central West CCAC has agreed to provide attendant care hours, but only until the March of Dimes can implement its services. He also needs respite care hours, but of course there's no support for his wife.
All three of these examples are alarming. I'm sure that members of all three parties have similar experiences from their own ridings. So what are we going to do about it? Now is the time to look at implementing the change that health care experts have been advocating for more than a decade. Now is the time to provide Ontarians with physical disabilities with the services they deserve. These citizens can either be taken care of at home with the right resources for less money or be forced into long-term care, or a hospital setting, which puts added strain on an already beleaguered health system and doesn't allow individuals with disabilities to fully participate in our communities.
I encourage all members to support the resolution of the member from Wellington Halton Hills. Let's make attendant care services a priority by adding it to the provincial wait time strategy.
Hon Sylvia Jones, has been Ontario's Minister of Health and Deputy Premier since June 2022. Why has she abandoned Roger Foley by forcing him to live at the London Health Sciences Centre rather than enabling him to be cared for at home?
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Elaina Plott Calabro wrote an exposé on Canada's euthanasia law that was published in the September edition of the Atlantic titled - Canada is Killing Itself. The article is too long to comment on in one article, so I have written a series of articles covering the important points.
One of the topics that Calabro tackles in are article is the question of further expansions of euthanasia in Canada. Calabro first tackles the topics euthanasia by advance request and euthanasia for children "mature minors" and writes:
Despite all of the questions surrounding Track 2, Canada is
proceeding with the expansion of MAID to additional categories of patients
while gauging public interest in even more. As early as 2016, the federal
government had agreed to launch exploratory investigations into the possible
future provision of MAID for people whose sole underlying medical condition is
a mental disorder, as well as to “mature minors,” people younger than 18 who
are “deemed to have requisite decision-making capacity.” The government also
pledged to consider “advance requests”—that is, allowing people to consent now
to receive MAID at some specified future point when their illness renders them
incapable of making or affirming the decision to die. Meanwhile, the Quebec
College of Physicians has raised the possibility of legalizing euthanasia for
infants born with “severe malformations,” a rare practice currently legal only
in the Netherlands, the first country to adopt it since Nazi Germany did so in
1939.
Calabro then focusses on euthanasia for mental illness alone, which is currently scheduled to go into practise in March 2027.
As part of Track 2 legislation in 2021, lawmakers extended
eligibility—to take effect at some point in the future—to Canadians suffering
from mental illness alone. This, despite the submissions of many of the
nation’s top psychiatric and mental-health organizations that no evidence-based
standard exists for determining whether a psychiatric condition is
irremediable. A number of experts also shared concerns about whether it was
possible to credibly distinguish between suicidal ideation and a desire for
MAID.
After several contentious delays, MAID for mental illness is
now set to take effect in 2027; authorities have been tasked in the meantime
with figuring out how MAID should actually be applied in such cases. The debate
has produced thousands of pages of special reports and parliamentary testimony.
What all sides do agree on is that, in practice, mental disorders are already a
regular feature of Canada’s MAID regime. At one hearing, Mona Gupta, a
psychiatrist and the chair of an expert panel charged with recommending
protocols and safeguards for psychiatric MAID, noted pointedly that “people
with mental disorders are requesting and accessing MAID now.” They include
patients whose requests are “largely motivated by their mental disorder but who
happen to have another qualifying condition,” as well as those with “long
histories of suicidality” or questionable decision-making capacity. They may
also be poor and homeless and have little interaction with the health-care
system. But whatever the case, Gupta said, when it comes to navigating the
complex intersection of MAID and mental illness, “assessors and health-care
providers already do this.”
Alan Nichols
The argument was meant to assuage concerns about clinical
readiness. For critics, however, it only reinforced a belief that, in some
cases, physical conditions are simply being used to bear the legal weight of a
different, ineligible basis for MAID, including mental disorders. In one of
Canada’s more controversial cases, a 61-year-old man named Alan Nichols, who
had a history of depression and other conditions, applied for MAID in 2019
while on suicide watch at a British Columbia hospital. A few weeks later, he
was euthanized on the basis of “hearing loss.”
Euthanasia for mental illness is already happening in Canada, but the person is required to have another medical condition to be approved. As Mona Gupta stated:
“people with mental disorders are requesting and accessing MAID now.” They include patients whose requests are “largely motivated by their mental disorder but who happen to have another qualifying condition,” as well as those with “long histories of suicidality” or questionable decision-making capacity. They may also be poor and homeless and have little interaction with the health-care system. But whatever the case, Gupta said, when it comes to navigating the complex intersection of MAID and mental illness, “assessors and health-care providers already do this.”
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Elaina Plott Calabro wrote an exposé on Canada's euthanasia law that was published in the September edition of the Atlantic titled - Canada is Killing Itself. The article is too long to comment on in one article, so I have written a series of articles covering the important points.
Calabro explains out how fast euthanasia has been normalized:
It is too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option in Canada, but from the outset it has proved a case study in momentum. MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who were already at the end of life. The law was then expanded to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to minors.
There are many problems with the implementation of Canada's euthanasia law. Calabro writes:
There have been unintended consequences: Some Canadians who cannot afford to manage their illness have sought doctors to end their life. In certain situations, clinicians have faced impossible ethical dilemmas. At the same time, medical professionals who decided early on to reorient their career toward assisted death no longer feel compelled to tiptoe around the full, energetic extent of their devotion to MAID. Some clinicians in Canada have euthanized hundreds of patients.
Calabro explains how Canada's euthanasia law is vague and undefined.
The law, in other words, was premised on the concept of patient autonomy, but within narrow boundaries. Rather than force someone with, say, late-stage cancer to suffer to the very end, MAID would allow patients to depart on their own terms: to experience a “dignified death,” as proponents called it. That the threshold of eligibility for MAID would be high—and stringent—was presented to the public as self-evident, although the criteria themselves were vague when you looked closely. For instance, what constituted “reasonably foreseeable”? Two months? Two years? Canada’s Department of Justice suggested only “a period of time that is not too remote.”
Madeline Li
Calabro interviews Madeline Li, an early euthanasia pioneer who had developed the euthanasia program at the University Health Network in Toronto in 2017. In 2018 Li started questioning the euthanasia program.
It was not long into her practice, however, that Li’s confidence in the direction of her country’s MAID program began to falter. For all of her expertise, not even Li was sure what to do about a patient in his 30s whom she encountered in 2018.
The man had gone to the emergency room complaining of excruciating pain and was eventually diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis was good, a surgeon assured him, with a 65 percent chance of a cure. But the man said he didn’t want treatment; he wanted MAID. Startled, the surgeon referred him to a medical oncologist to discuss chemo; perhaps the man just didn’t want surgery. The patient proceeded to tell the medical oncologist that he didn’t want treatment of any kind; he wanted MAID. He said the same thing to a radiation oncologist, a palliative-care physician, and a psychiatrist, before finally complaining to the patient-relations department that the hospital was barring his access to MAID. Li arranged to meet with him.
Li explained that the prevailing view was that:
A medical condition was incurable if it could not be cured by means acceptable to the patient.
In other words, the law was completely subjective. Someone who has a treatable condition can be killed by euthanasia. Li told Calabro that she agreed with this. Calabro continues:
This had made sense to Li. If an elderly woman with chronic myelogenous leukemia had no wish to endure a highly toxic course of chemo and radiation, why should she be compelled to? But here was a young man with a likely curable cancer who nevertheless was adamant about dying.
What was Li left with? According to prevailing standards, the man’s refusal to attempt treatment rendered his disease incurable and his natural death was reasonably foreseeable. He met the eligibility criteria as Li understood them. But the whole thing seemed wrong to her. Seeking advice, she described the basics of the case in a private email group for MAID practitioners under the heading “Eligible, but Reasonable?” “And what was very clear to me from the replies I got,” Li told me, “is that many people have no ethical or clinical qualms about this—that it’s all about a patient’s autonomy, and if a patient wants this, it’s not up to us to judge. We should provide.”
Li killed her patient but she regretted it:
And so she did. She regretted her decision almost as soon as the man’s heart stopped beating. “What I’ve learned since is: Eligible doesn’t mean you should provide MAID,” Li told me. “You can be eligible because the law is so full of holes, but that doesn’t mean it clinically makes sense.” Li no longer interprets “incurable” as at the sole discretion of the patient. The problem, she feels, is that the law permits such a wide spectrum of interpretations to begin with. Many decisions about life and death turn on the personal values of practitioners and patients rather than on any objective medical criteria.
Calabro explains that by 2020 Li had already participated in hundreds of euthanasia deaths.
Li then explains that the concept of a "completed life" is controversial in Europe but a reality in Canada. Calabro writes:
Li explained. “There’s no standard here; it’s just kind of up to you.” The concept of a “completed life, or being tired of life,” as sufficient for MAID is “controversial in Europe and theoretically not legal in Canada,” Li said. “But the truth is, it is legal in Canada. It always has been, and it’s happening in these frailty cases.”
Madeline Li explains why Canada's vague euthanasia law has become the most permissive killing law in the world. Even the controversial concept of a "completed life" is permitted in Canada based on lack of definition in the law.
Elaina Plott Calabro wrote an exposé on Canada's euthanasia law that was published in the September edition of the Atlantic titled - Canada is Killing Itself. The article is too long to comment on in one article, so I am writing a series of articles covering the important points.
Calabro first explains out how fast euthanasia has been normalized:
It is too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option in Canada, but from the outset it has proved a case study in momentum. MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who were already at the end of life. The law was then expanded to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to minors.
There are many problems with the implementation of Canada's euthanasia law. Calabro writes:
There have been unintended consequences: Some Canadians who cannot afford to manage their illness have sought doctors to end their life. In certain situations, clinicians have faced impossible ethical dilemmas. At the same time, medical professionals who decided early on to reorient their career toward assisted death no longer feel compelled to tiptoe around the full, energetic extent of their devotion to MAID. Some clinicians in Canada have euthanized hundreds of patients.
Calabro interviews several of the euthanasia doctors about their experiences. Some of the doctors consider euthanasia to be the "most meaningful work" of their career.
Stefanie Green compares her euthanasia deaths to baby deliveries. Calabro explains:
Stefanie Green, a physician on Vancouver Island and one of the organization’s founders, told me how her decades as a maternity doctor had helped equip her for this new chapter in her career. In both fields, she explained, she was guiding a patient through an “essentially natural event”—the emotional and medical choreography “of the most important days in their life.” She continued the analogy: “I thought, Well, one is like delivering life into the world, and the other feels like transitioning and delivering life out.” And so Green does not refer to her MAID deaths only as “provisions”—the term for euthanasia that most clinicians have adopted. She also calls them “deliveries.”
Gord Gubitz, a neurologist from Nova Scotia to Calabro that:
He finds euthanasia to be “energizing”—the “most meaningful work” of his career. “It’s a happy sad, right?” he explained. “It’s really sad that you were in so much pain. It is sad that your family is racked with grief. But we’re so happy you got what you wanted.”
'I love my job, I've always loved being a doctor and I delivered over a 1000 babies and I took care of families but this is the very best work I've ever done in the last seven years.'
There are many problems with Canada's euthanasia law. The first being that it gives doctors and nurse practitioners the right in law to kill people. Another is that some doctors and nurse practitioners actually enjoy killing people.
You are not 'safe' when somebody is happy to kill you.
Does Canada's euthanasia law enable healthcare seriel killers? (Link).
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
I receive daily updates from the Hospice News. Usually this news service provides updates about funding issues, legislative initiatives or it will report on the business of Hospice.
The article is written in a neutral manner and begins with information. The articles states that 11 US states have legalized assisted suicide, that Delaware is the most recent state to legalize assisted suicide and New York is considering assisted suicide. The article doesn't state that the New York bill passed in the legislature and is held up by Governor Kathy Hochel who is deliberating on whether or not to veto the bill.
Vossel quotes Jessica Empeño, national director for clinical engagement at Compassion & Choices, America's leading assisted suicide lobby group, who states:
Discussions about medically assisted deaths can allow for greater insight into some of the unmet patient needs, such as unmanageable symptoms and the sources of discomfort or distress, Empeño indicated. Even questions related to MAID can “open the door” to valuable conversations about what’s most important to patients and their families, which can improve goal-concordant care delivery, she stated.
From a neutral point of view Empeño is correct that discussions about assisted suicide can provide insight into unmet patient needs, such as unmanageable symptoms and the sources of discomfort or distress, but Empeño is wanting Hospices to discuss assisted suicide with patients to create greater demand for assisted suicide and normalize it as a Hospice "option."
Vossel then quotes Yelena Zatulovsky, vice president of patient experience at AccentCare who states:
“We have policies and protocols in place on how to have conversations related to MAID, and these have evolved a lot,” Zatulovsky said. “For questions related to medical aid in dying, it’s having a solid, very strong process so that our teams feel equipped and empowered to handle any kind of ethical dilemma. Ultimately, everything around these are nuanced cases — the complexities, the challenges, the discord, the stigmatization — is related to conversation. It’s about what their good death looks like.”
Essentially this article urges Hospices to contact Compassion & Choices for training related to discussions about assisted suicide.
The assisted suicide lobby wants to normalize assisted suicide and Compassion & Choices wants to be the go-to group for training people on assisted suicide.
Let's understand this.
The group that lobbies to legalize assisted suicide is also the group that would provide information to Hospices about assisted suicide.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
On Saturday August 16, EPC sent out the following message:
EPC has followed the Roger Foley story since it began. In June, EPC launched the petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed. After launching the petition the hospital inserted an IV. Roger needs assistance to enable him to eat. After visiting Roger on August 6 and learning that he was only receiving water, we relaunched the petition. The hospital responded by feeding Roger. They then withdrew feeding and then reversed the decision and are feeding him again. It is ridiculous that an Ontario hospital has put a disabled man on a roller coaster ride over his basic right to eat.
Clarification of My Situation: LHSC is still not feeding me.
I only have limited access to fluids in order to stay off an IV. The Compleat 1.5 is not food — I am drinking it only to get by until my lighting accommodations are restored.
I remain blocked from eating and from accessing oral medications. Sometimes LHSC even restricts me to water alone.
To drink, I am forced to wear extremely heavy makeshift ski goggles that cause severe pain and further injury to my deformed cervical spine. With these goggles, I can only manage about 10 minutes of fluids three times a day, before my neck gives out. During that short window, I must bloat myself with as much fluid as possible to avoid dehydration. There will come a time when my neck can no longer tolerate the goggles, and then I will be forced back on an IV.
Roger is receiving Compleat 1.5, which is an improvement, but as he states, this is not food and since he is not being fed he is unable to receive oral medications, that are required to be taken with food.
Roger wears ski goggles to enable him to eat without reacting to the light, but as he states, he can only wear the goggles for 10 minutes because of his neck and his cervical spine.
The stand-off between the hospital and Roger concerns the level of lighting. The staff insist that it is not safe to feed Roger without more light but Roger insists that his reaction to the regular lighting is so intense that he requires special lighting. The CNIB confirmed that Roger has severe photo sensitivity.
The key issue is that London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) must accommodate Roger by changing the lighting. It is ridiculous that an Ontario hospital is not feeding a man with a degenerative neurological condition. Roger is capable of eating but he requires assistance.
Join the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Worth More film producer Bronwyn Gray on September 10, 2025 (World Suicide Prevention Day) as we provide a free online screening of the Worth More Film. The screening will be followed by an online discussion.
Date: Wednesday September 10, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm (Eastern Time) or 4:00 pm (Pacific Time)
What is your friend struggling with a mental illness worth?
What are you worth?
Loud voices in society convey that the basis of human worth is unstable, contingent on what a person can contribute to society.
The United Nation's Declaration of Universal Human Rights states that all human beings have “inherent dignity.”
Every human being is worthy of respect and love simply because they are human, and they exist.
The film Worth More has been produced because we believe Medical Assistance in Dying is an attack on human dignity, and we believe in contrast, that all human beings are worth protecting and loving to their natural end.
Euthanasia for mental illness alone is scheduled to be implemented in Canada in March 2027. Your life is worth more. Your life is worth living.
Alex Schadenberg and Marcel Lemmen are running a half-marathon on Sunday September 28, 2025 to raise money for the Compassionate Community Care charity (CCC) and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC).
Donations from the half-marathon (21.1 km) run are very much appreciated.
The Compassionate Community Care charity operates a help-line, a training program for visiting seniors, an advocacy training program and a calling service for lonely seniors.
Charitable donations can be made to Compassionate Community Care at: (Donation Link).
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition informs, educates, and supports opposition to killing by euthanasia and assisted suicide and endorses proper care for people in need.
Donate to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which is not a charity, at: (Donation Link).
This is the sixth consecutive year that Alex and Marcel are doing a half-marathon fund-raising run for CCC and EPC.
By Gordon Friesen President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition What's in a name ?
"That which is called a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"
Thus runs the amazingly fertile thought of the single most quoted speaker of the English language. And within the context of Romeo's love for Juliet we are happy to approve. However the exact correspondence of words to their objects is crucial to coherent thought, and doubly crucial when those words are found in written texts of law. When two words are assumed to refer to the same object, but actually point to different things, we have a problem. And when one key word is legally enshrined, and charged with marking the limits of stable policy --but is none-the-less in a state of dynamic flux-- we have another. Sadly, with "Assisted Suicide" and "Medical Aid in Dying" (and indeed with all of the terms surrounding the assisted death debate) we have both of these problems in spades.
Voluntary euthanasia drops its defining adjective
All the way back to the beginnings of modern euthanasia discussion (1870)[1] it has been commonly understood that our subject is the voluntary death, of a dying patient in unbearable suffering, at the hands (or with the help) of his or her doctor. This is what the public believes, and this is the basis on which the results of polls and votes have been consistently returned. However, recent changes in vocabulary are by no means accidental, and by no means innocent. The new words do not have the same meaning. Most importantly, without any widespread understanding, the "thing" we are discussing has changed dramatically. And the most dramatic change lies in the progressive removal of the requirement that any such death be "voluntary". To demonstrate this change, one common theme in the semantic component of the assisted death debate concerns a vigorous (even indignant) rejection of the word "suicide", under the charge that it's use is pejorative and disrespectful to those who avail themselves of a doctor's assistance to die. And yet the most common definition of suicide ("an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally") is no more than a technical description of fact. Similarly, the time honoured term "voluntary euthanasia", is no longer anywhere in use at this time. The last instance I am aware of occurred in the pivotal Canadian Supreme Court "Carter" case, where it was decided that a complete ban on all forms of assisted death was not compatible with Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. During that trial, counsel representing the litigants used the then novel term "Medical Aid in Dying". When challenged to show how the meaning of that phrase (as defined in that trial) differed from the old term "voluntary euthanasia", it was grudgingly admitted that there was no difference. However, in hindsight, that answer was either disingenuous, or ill informed. For the practice of "Medical Aid in Dying" has now departed considerably from "voluntary euthanasia", not in detail, but in the fundamental character of its voluntary nature. For MAID, if rigorously admitted as a true medical procedure, can not be fundamentally voluntary. And, indeed, MAID as currently practised, does not (necessarily) require even capacity to consent, let alone voluntary intention. For that is the true meaning of "medical aid in dying" as it is now evolving in practice: not an "option" to autonomously request and self-administer lethal substances, exercised by fully competent individuals at the extreme end of life (as the context is still so carefully delimited to this day), but entirely differently... a standard medical response to suffering in virtually any circumstance whatsoever. Certainly the practice in Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, where patients are now euthanized as infants or young children, as demented adults (with advance directives), and for mental illness as sole underlying condition (including even for drug addiction),[2] would suggest this as the logical direction of policy. It would appear, then, that the abandonment of assisted (or physician assisted) "suicide" and "voluntary euthanasia" for the umbrella term "medical aid in dying" is simply the linguistic component of what remains (for many) an unsuspected --but radical-- shift in real policy.
This, to be clear, is precisely the meaning of claims that ingesting poisons under a doctor's supervision is "not suicide". The affirmation is that there is something else, "something" requiring a different name, which is neither "assisted suicide" (where the voluntary nature of the act is inherent to the definition) or "voluntary euthanasia" where the word "voluntary" is actually part of the literal term employed.
It is, in sum, precisely the excision of this voluntary component which is the key to substituting the term "medical aid in dying".
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
I have bad news. Slovenia has legalized assisted suicide and Uruguay's lower house passed a euthanasia bill.
Slovenia
Roselyne Min reported for Euronews on August 13 that Slovenia became the first Eastern European country to legalize assisted suicide. Min wrote:
In Slovenia, eligible patients will have access to assisted suicide, where they would have to ingest or inject a substance themselves, local media reported.
Patients will be required to express their intention to their doctor twice before submitting a formal request, which must be approved by an independent doctor. Their ability to make a decision will also be assessed by a psychiatrist.
Min reported that a group called Coalition Against the Poisoning of Patients has already collected 15,000 signatures and needs to collect 40,000 signatures in a little more than a month to launch a binding referendum on whether to repeal the law.
In June 2024, I reported that the Slovenian people passed a non-binding referendum (55% to 45%) based on the concept of assisted suicide. The next referendum will be based on the language of the legislation.
Min reported that Dr Bojana Beovic, president of the Medical Chamber of Slovenia stated:
“Their life is coming to an end, they are elderly, they do not feel they are useful in society, and the best thing is that they leave this world and their family members,” she said.
It sounds like Beovic believes that certain people are better off dead.
The euthanasia bill requires two doctors to approve the euthanasia death, but when one of the doctors disagrees, the decision would be reviewed by a medical board.
The Uruguay Upper House has not voted on the bill yet.
All of these countries should look to the Canadian experience before considering the legalization of euthanasia or assisted suicide. Once legal, the law will inevitably expand, as has happened in Canada and in almost every state in the US that has legalized assisted suicide.
More articles about Slovenia assisted suicide debate (Link).
More articles about Uruguay's euthanasia debate (Link).
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
An article that was published by Harper's Magazine that was written by Michel Houellebecqand translated by Robyn Creswell and under the title: The European Way to Die - On Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide has a very philosophical tone but it also touches on some very poignant arguments.
Houellebecq, who is an agnostic who opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide is essentially writing about the experience with assisted suicide. He philosophically examines several issues but then gets to his topic and states:
An assisted suicide—in which a doctor prescribes a lethal cocktail that the patient self-administers under circumstances of his own choosing—is still a suicide... When I hear that someone I know has committed suicide, what I feel isn’t respect—I don’t want to exaggerate—but neither is it disapproval, nor derision.
Houellebecq continues:
Groups that advocate for the legalization of voluntary euthanasia argue that the procedure is the only humane alternative when the final days or weeks or months of a person’s life will otherwise be filled with unbearable pain. This argument is predicated on two lies, all the more effective for being at once terrifying and rarely articulated. The first has to do with suffering—physical suffering. I may be fortunate, but in all the cases of physical agony I’ve experienced, morphine has been enough to relieve my pain. This wonder drug was discovered at the outset of the nineteenth century and since then much progress has been made; opioid derivatives far more powerful than the original morphine molecule have been synthesized. In our own day—this needs to be said clearly and constantly repeated—physical pain can be vanquished.
The second lie is more insidious. It’s only on television (American television in particular) that a doctor is asked, “How much time do I have left, doc?” and will respond with appropriate gravity, “Three weeks at most.” In real life, doctors are more circumspect. They know, because their basic training is scientific, that the time we have left conforms, like so many things in this world, to a bell curve.
Houellebecq then comments on the film Soylent Green and writes:
American science fiction written during the Fifties and Sixties explored with an impressive, visionary power an array of issues that now feature, or have begun to feature, in our daily lives: the internet, transhumanism, the quest for immortality, and the creation of intelligent robots. For such writers, the idea of euthanasia, conceived as a solution to the economic problems posed by an aging population, was an obvious subject—almost too obvious. The best-known work of the sort is undoubtedly Make Room! Make Room!, largely because of the film version Soylent Green, with an extraordinary performance by Edward G. Robinson.
Yet my own favorite is “The Test,” a moving short story by Richard Matheson, curiously never adapted into film, as far as I know, though the cinema has been friendly to Matheson and the story would be easy to adapt. In the world of the story, old people are given regular competency tests that they must pass in order to avoid being put out of their misery. Meanwhile, their descendants sit at home, quietly hoping for the result that will free them from the burden of the aging. Once you have read “The Test,” it seems to me, there is nothing more to say against euthanasia; the story says it all.
I sadly agree that Houellebecq's argument, within the context of Canada's euthanasia law, is correct.
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