"I always thought legalizing euthanasia was a no-brainer. 

It always seemed to me like an individual choice people ought to have, akin to legalizing abortion or same-sex marriage. 

If someone is in such pain that they decide to end their life, I thought, who are we as a society to tell them they can’t? 

There’s also a harm reduction component. If someone is dead set on ending their lives, shouldn’t we give them a relatively safe, effective option under medical supervision? It would be cruel not to. 

This was the rationale behind the 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Carter v. Canada, which determined prohibition of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) was unconstitutional. 

But the legalization of MAiD has brought to the fore some disturbing moral calculations, particularly with its expansion in 2019 to include individuals whose deaths aren’t “reasonably foreseeable,” which opened the floodgates for people with disabilities to apply to die rather than survive on meagre benefits. 

I’ve come to realize euthanasia in Canada has become the ultimate neoliberal policy — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life, demand you pay back pandemic aid you applied for in good faith, and if you don’t like it, well, why don’t you just kill yourself? 

The problem with my previous perspective was it held individual choices as sacrosanct. But people don’t make individual decisions in a vacuum. They’re the product of social circumstances, ones often out of their control.

Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, told the Associated Press that Canada’s MAiD policy is “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”

This sounds hyperbolic, but there are endless examples of people with disabilities who were offered euthanasia rather than live a life of pain and exclusion. And with the impending expansion of MAiD to include people with mental illnesses, the problem is only going to get worse."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

In today's update of Canada Loves Eugenics, 10,064 people died in 2021 through medically assisted death in Canada, and while MAID supposedly exists to allow people with severe, incurable illnesses to die with dignity on their own terms, MAID is generally used because disabled and mentally ill people cannot access governmental assistance and are living in poverty.

The Canadian government is actively pushing poor, disabled people to death.

oh and by the way, Canada performs more organ transplants from MAID donors than any other country in the world.

"Six disability rights and religious advocates told Reuters that the pace of the planned changes to the assisted death framework in Canada brings additional risks of people opting for MAID because they are unable to access social services - the lack of which could exacerbate their suffering." - source

Anyway, it's basically like this: the USA has the Americans with Disabilities Act and Canada has MAID

I wanna talk about Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) for a second.

I work in Palliative-Hospice Care. And let me tell you that there are people out there with cancer and other conditions approaching the end of their life naturally who are severely suffering, because their pain and symptoms are beyond what medicine can control. Or maybe they’re at a huge risk for a catastrophic haemorrhage and it’s known by everyone that this is the most likely, hugely traumatic way they are going to die. Whatever the case is, if someone’s prognosis is already less than six months, I am fully in favour of them being able to choose MAiD as how they want to die.

MAiD does have a place in Canada. It should be considered a medical procedure like any other.

However, when MAiD expanded to cover those not imminently dying already, that was nothing but a thinly veiled “solution” to the government not wanting to care for disabled people. So people are forced to chose MAiD as an alternative to homelessness. It’s a terrible no good very bad situation. Now it will be expanded further to cover those dealing with mental illness as their sole reasoning for request. And this will do nothing but exacerbate the issue.

When talking about the health care crisis in Canada, do not forget about MAiD and how killing off vulnerable patients is not the answer.

the government might not be willing to give me enough disability support to move out of my parents' house, but at least they'll euthanize me

note: this is phrased to make you uncomfortable because it should. when the only options are poverty and death, you should be uncomfortable. when half my disability money goes to paying for medications, and the alternative is euthanasia, that's eugenics. I'm not planning on choosing death, but it shouldn't be my only way out of a life of poverty due to being disabled

This was originally a reblog to another post but I think it deserves its own post. So.

Let's talk about MAiD.

The original purpose of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) was to give people that were already dying the choice to die in a dignified and painless manner. That original purpose has shifted so far that it's now being used for people with non-terminal disabilities, mental illness, and even people experiencing poverty.

Plenty of people have heard of the disabled veterans that were offered MAiD when they requested a ramp but have you heard about the man with an undiagnosed illness choosing MAiD because doctors weren't able to diagnose him? Death is the only option he sees and it's the best one they can offer him.

What about this disabled woman who is opting for MAiD because she can't afford the medical care she needs? This is a colossal failure of the system. This woman has a kid, a family, and wants to live but she sees no other options here. The government will pay for her to die, but not for the care she needs to live.

This man is applying for MAiD because the alternative is homelessness. He doesn't want to die, he's afraid to die. But with the way he is living now, this is the only choice he sees.

This is a form of eugenics. Keep the disabled and mentally ill from getting the help they need and offer us death instead. And hey, if you save some money along the way that's just a fun little bonus.

Over $30 billion is going to the military while people are choosing to die because they can't get access to the most basic social supports they need. It is easier and quicker to access MAiD than it is to access disability support.

We are living in a dystopia and not enough people realize.

Bill C-7, an act to change the Criminal Code to expand medical assistance in dying (MAID), is currently before the Senate. Next week, it’s expected that senators will propose and debate several significant amendments to try and address constitutional concerns that have been raised about the current bill.

The bill was put forward in reaction to a Quebec Superior Court decision that found Canada’s MAID legislation to be unconstitutional because it denies the right of people “whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable” to access MAID.

Disability rights activists, especially those who are Black and/or Indigenous, have been sounding the alarm, warning that the bill poses a threat to people living with disabilities who must contend with inadequate and dehumanizing supports, terrible living conditions, and horrifying abuse. They argue that due to racism and ableism, expanding MAID will simply lead to more people with disabilities ending their lives. 

On a recent CBC “Canada Tonight” panel, Sarah Jama, co-founder of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, said, “Disabled people are overrepresented in our long-term care homes, and are dying en masse due to this pandemic, and have been given pennies when it comes to […] government supports.”

“It looks as though the government is rushing legislation to allow people the right to die without also supporting the right to live, and that’s where I get worried,” Jama added.

Great new video from Live Action

@plannedparenthood

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Definition of "medicalism"

the practice of approaching a (typically, pervasive) state or condition of a person or people from the medical model of disability while ignoring sociological aspects and/or issues of autonomy and choice; often used as a critique of the practice

Examples below

(1) purportedly stopped in 1974, but persisting through today, treating "homosexuality" (or any queerness) as a mental illness;

(2) requiring dysphoria, surgical and hormonal treatments, or all of the above for a trans person to be considered "trans";

(3) "treating" autistic individuals via behaviorism practices such as conversion therapy;

(4) most instances of eugenics, if not all

(5) believing racial disparities in IQ scores reflect the intrinsic intelligence of a people;

(6) IQ scores in general, for that matter;

(7) The U.S. approach to the CoViD-19 pandemic;

(8) The U.S./capitalist approach to healthcare in general;

(9) Medical Assistance in Dying as currently implemented in Canada

... These are only the examples off the top of my head. Definition courtesy of me. It's a word I've been using a lot more lately and I felt it needed a good definition if I was going to keep using it. Please add your questions or examples!

Health Minister Mark Holland says some of his provincial counterparts have concerns about whether Canada is ready to extend medical assistance in dying to people with severe mental illnesses. Holland shared the feedback at a Liberal cabinet retreat just weeks before the federal government must decide if it will go ahead or delay implementation a second time. Medical assistance in dying has been legal in Canada since 2016, but those whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder are not currently eligible.

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

I am so absolutely sick of the narrative that life with a disability is just “different” in a completely neutral way and that the struggles that come with being disabled, no matter what they are or how severe, are inherently not that big of a deal.

I am painfully aware every minute of every day of every way in which my limitations and abnormalities negatively impact my life. I wish every day that I had the luxury of being unaffected by them. And it is perfectly healthy, okay, and within reason for me to feel this way, because it is perfectly healthy, okay, and within reason for people to wish to be able to live their lives how they want, and to have a similar experience with life to their peers. The idea that no disabled person wants to be non-disabled or that disabled people who want to be non-disabled just have the “wrong attitude” is profoundly dehumanizing. If I asked you if you would be happy with being unable to get a degree or work or make friends or form romantic relationships or live independently, would you say yes? The idea that people like me must or should be okay with such circumstances, because we must or should have fundamentally different standards for happiness than everyone else, is predicated on the assumption that we are in some way less than human.

And then there is the issue of silencing disabled voices who do not support this narrative. The people who say, “I’ve been in a wheelchair for five years, and it’s been the worst five years of my life,” or “my incurable chronic pain is severe enough that I no longer wish to live with it,” are not only not given attention, but are actively dismissed. They are, as I said, accused of simply having the “wrong outlook on life,” because of this damaging, incessant fixation on diminishing the negative and presenting disability in a positive light at all times. But their feelings of pain and upset are just as legitimate and significant as any other disabled person’s feelings of joy or contentment. And it should not be a controversial statement to say that sometimes despair, anger, and/or a desire for things to be different are appropriate and normal ways to respond to unfortunate circumstances.

And when care options like MAID are denounced as “evil” and “eugenics” and fought against by non-disabled people in the name of people with disabilities, the voices of disabled people who have themselves fought, sometimes for decades, for the right to such options are cast aside and spoken over. Yes, many people who seek medically assisted death would not seek it were they receiving excellent care in a society that was willing to properly accommodate their needs, but we are not talking about some hypothetical alternate dimension versions of people, we are talking about people alive right now who will never live under such circumstances, and what rights they should have regarding their own lives. We can work towards a future where people with disabilities are given better access to care and are more comprehensively supported by their governments and communities while also acknowledging the reality and wishes of the people who have to exist in between that future and now. And regardless, no matter how bothered you may be by this fact, there are some disabled people who would wish to have the option of MAID even if they were given all of the support, care, and accommodation in the world, and their voices matter, too.

Disabled people are not emotionally deficient animals who are too ignorant of their circumstances or too simple minded to be capable of longing for anything better, their feelings matter even when those feelings make non-disabled people uncomfortable, and there is no disabled person's perspective on their own life and experiences that is "incorrect" or that is not deserving of consideration.

MAiD and abortion are both fruits of the same rotten tree - the underlying belief behind them both is that people are only valuable when they’re wanted.

“Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them "It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise is quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing.” - G. K. Chesterton

We don't talk nearly enough about how critically important the right to choose medically assisted death is. Most people only think about it in the context of cancer patients or people who are chronically suicidal, but honestly this is something that is relevant to everyone.

Most of us will experience a decline in quality of life leading up to our death. Most people will have a general idea of when their death is coming and what is going to do them in. And for most people, the process of dying is not pretty. It is slow, and horrible, and full of suffering and dread. They have to watch as their mind and/or body deteriorate and know that there is nothing that can be done about it. They have to watch their loved ones watch them slipping away and see the pain on their faces and hear the grief in their voices over months or even years.

And do not forget that there are many horrible fates worse than death in this world. Horrific injuries, extensive 3rd degree burns, severe brain damage, debilitating chronic pain conditions, etc. There are many things that can happen to anyone, including you, that can render life unbearable and unlivable.

Some people are able to make their peace with this. Some people don't mind. And that's okay. But no one, absolutely no one, should be forced to endure a prolonged natural death or a miserable life. It could be you one day. It likely will be you one day. You, and everyone you love, and everyone in the world should have the right to go out peacefully and painlessly on their own terms.

"I have clinical depression"

Canadian government:

This subject is very touchy for me, having experienced some of the depths of depression and suicidal ideation myself. Canada is somehow speedrunning the route to late capitalist dystopia while still maintaining its rhetoric around being a liberal country.

What’s that? The failures of the Canadian government and welfare system have led you to be cut off from mental/physical health resources and you can barely survive on the piddly unemployment insurance? That’s alright! Instead of fixing that, we’ll just help you kill yourself. And we’ll save a ton of money doing it, too!

Jesus fucking christ.