They're Suing the Government for the Right to Die

March 17, 2025 6:38 AM

The ethics are muddy, the country is divided, and the world is watching Canada's next move. (TW/CW: suicide, self-harm, mental health issues, suicidal ideation)

(slMacLeans)

posted by Kitteh (13 comments total)

In principle, I support people's bodily autonomy up to and including the right to not be alive anymore. The difficulty with MAID in practice is that we're hearing examples of people being *encouraged* to seek MAID because they are old or disabled but not necessarily tremendously suffering in a long term way, but also because they are poor and the pitiful amount of disability support that's available in Canada is not enough for them to live on.

It's egregious to make people who don't want to live remain alive. It's egregious to try to convince people who do want to live to kill themselves. I don't think it is possible to reconcile those two things, especially in a system as racist and classist and ableist as ours.

Extending it to mental illness makes those questions another level harder but doesn't change the fundamental reality that until we properly support the aged, the sick, the disabled, we have no business counseling them on whether or not they should be alive.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:51 AM on March 17 [19 favorites]

annexation by amerikkka shd increase the number of requested euthanasias quite a bit
posted by graywyvern at 7:00 AM on March 17

1. I really think that the more MAID is extended, the more pressure there will be on the disabled and the frail elderly to kill themselves, and the more unspoken but real impulse there will be to cut disability and retirement benefits. As we've seen all around the world, you only need a permission structure for the most unspeakable things to be done extremely fast. Once there's a general sense that people who are "too unhappy" should be free to kill themselves, there will be a semi-conscious acceptance of the idea that unhappy people should just die rather than changing their conditions.

2. I wish this were not so, because I think people should have the freedom to dispose of their lives as they see fit, and I think it's entirely reasonable to want to do this as consistently and painlessly as possible.

3. The state really shows its tensions when you get Jordan Peterson coming out against MAID. On the one hand, eugenics and hatred of the poor, on the other hand, desperate fear that workers should be able to get free of work. If just anyone can kill themselves, you might either have to give people a living wage or let them die, and then who will pick the crops?
posted by Frowner at 7:25 AM on March 17 [7 favorites]

Which is the real reason the state tries to prevent suicide - it's the escape of last resort, and they want everyone to know that there is no escape. If the state wants to kill you or let you die, sure, but if you just want to get out of your life, don't think you are allowed.
posted by Frowner at 7:26 AM on March 17 [6 favorites]

Jordan Peterson is essentially a conservative Catholic in his views. Possibly heretical, ultraconservative, but still basically Catholic. Suicide is not OK to almost all Catholics.
posted by bonehead at 7:30 AM on March 17 [3 favorites]

Yep, and I contend that conservative ideology about suicide is mostly driven by the desire to keep people under control - working, having babies, then dying conveniently of neglect.
posted by Frowner at 7:47 AM on March 17 [13 favorites]

Death is just the beginning.
posted by Czjewel at 9:21 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]

The difficulty with MAID in practice is that we're hearing examples of people being *encouraged* to seek MAID because they are old or disabled but not necessarily tremendously suffering in a long term way, but also because they are poor and the pitiful amount of disability support that's available in Canada is not enough for them to live on.

I think this is conflating two issues. One is people being offered MAID who don't want it (and maybe in some cases the offering is edging into encouraging, but I think those cases are probably rare). The second is people who say they are choosing or may choose MAID because disability supports are insufficient (and disability supports are definitely insufficient, but it's not clear to what degree this is actually happening). I don't think there have been any solid examples of someone being encouraged to seek MAID because of the insufficiency of disability supports.

With such a difficult issue and a lot passionate opponents to MAID out there who have a history of using suggesting but not quite saying things in order to bolster their argument, I think it's important to be precise when we're talking about MAID.
posted by ssg at 10:03 AM on March 17 [7 favorites]

There are clear and good reasons to me for the state to make efforts on suicide prevention, the causes can be fixed, the act might not be thought out fully, and you certainly don't want to let a person with malicious intentions gaslight somebody into committing suicide.

But I also support MAID in full, when you have no quality of life and no hope of getting one, when you're constantly suffering and are incapable of acting yourself there should be a process by which you can end it, and it'll never not be sad and a tragedy, but this a choice we should be able to make for ourselves.

We were the 1st province to put this in place, after lengthy and a surprisingly non-partisan public process. I've yet to come across examples of people encouraged to seek it, all the stories are about people seeking it and having a really hard time obtaining it (I've haven't been looking for those contra examples though so...).

One thing I dislike though is going at this through the courts... it's a way to get social progress, but it only provides legality, it never provides acceptance (unless it's already there).
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:14 AM on March 17 [5 favorites]

MAID is a right that disabled people spent decades fighting for. It is paternalistic to argue that people shouldn't have access to their hard-won rights or their autonomy until we've replaced the present system with a well-resourced, non-oppressive welfare state. How much longer do you want to force people to wait?
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:37 AM on March 17 [13 favorites]

One of the nice things about living in Canada is that our Supreme Court is actually pretty good at moral reasoning. Two relevant cases:

The big recent case, legalizing MAiD
Carter v. Canada, 2015, SCC 5

Rodriguez v. British Columbia, 1993 SCC 519

It's egregious to make people who don't want to live remain alive. It's egregious to try to convince people who do want to live to kill themselves.

That's the balance of concerns that the court has been trying to address. Here's Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in Carter:

"An absolute prohibition on physician‑assisted dying is rationally connected to the goal of protecting the vulnerable from taking their life in times of weakness, because prohibiting an activity that poses certain risks is a rational method of curtailing the risks. However, as the trial judge found, the evidence does not support the contention that a blanket prohibition is necessary in order to substantially meet the government’s objective. The trial judge made no palpable and overriding error in concluding, on the basis of evidence from scientists, medical practitioners and others who are familiar with end‑of‑life decision‑making in Canada and abroad, that a permissive regime with properly designed and administered safeguards was capable of protecting vulnerable people from abuse and error. It was also open to her to conclude that vulnerability can be assessed on an individual basis, using the procedures that physicians apply in their assessment of informed consent and decision capacity in the context of medical decision‑making more generally."
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:30 PM on March 17 [3 favorites]

You can always go back and forth between the psychiatrically suicidal, the medically doomed, and the argument of "we need to keep people alive at all costs" and the argument of "we should let people die peacefully if they will only have an ugly end" and the argument of "it's cheaper to encourage people to die." For eternity.

The last one really freaks people out the most. Which I get, but as someone who's highly likely to get some horrendous long-term degenerative disease, I really hope there's some way to politely, painlessly, legally take myself out without having to wring every last drop of agony out of me for ten years by the time it happens.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:14 PM on March 17 [4 favorites]

I don't think there have been any solid examples of someone being encouraged to seek MAID because of the insufficiency of disability supports.

Sophia (born 1970 or 1971) is the pseudonym of a 51-year old Canadian woman who sought and received euthanasia in 2022 after failing to find alternative housing free from tobacco smoke and other environmental triggers

There are a number of other examples under the "handling of specific cases" section of this Wikipedia article as well.
posted by brook horse at 4:18 PM on March 17 [3 favorites]