Last month, Canada’s government introduced legislation to extend temporary exclusion of eligibility for medically assisted death, otherwise known as MAiD (medical assistance in dying), where people who are eligible for this treatment have a mental illness. In short, the laws allow for medically assisted suicide by physicians and nurses by injecting the person with a substance that kills them or perscribing the substance to be self-administered. This is heavily unpopular with most Christians, stating that it goes against their system of beliefs. In the five years sense the adoption of this law, 31,664 medically assisted suicides have taken place. MAiD accounts for 3.3% of all Canadian deaths. It is important to note that if the only medical condition someone is suffering from is mental illness, then they are not eligible for MAID, but this will change next year in March.
This is important to the region because it raises concerns about what the underlying effects of laws like MAiD can bring, such as concerns that it may harm groups that are vulnerable and may be unable to have access to medical treatments. From a moral stand-point, MAiD is questionable at best and harmful at worst. MAiD was created to give Canadians who were suffering while dying, giving them the option to have a medically assisted death. Currently, medically assisted death in the U.S is legal in a lot of states. Before Canada legalized MAiD, the Netherlands passed a law that legalized euthanasia in 2001. Other countries who also legalized MAiD include Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and Colombia.
Though the Canadian government is in full support for MAiD, the UN fully opposes it. The United Nations believes that disability should not be reason enough to be eligible for MAiD. Many experts from the UN say that they are ‘alarmed’ by the rising trend of medical assisted dying for non-terminal patients. The UN’s expert on the rights of persons with disabilities say that this type of legislation tends to be full of “ableist” assumptions referring to a disabled person’s quality and worth of life. The UN has also found that because Canada has been increasing the scope of MAiD, they are putting less effort into meeting the needs of people with disabilities.