Disability Groups Launching Charter Challenge Against MAID Law
Disabled people are fighting Track 2 of Canada's assisted dying law
Image Description: Hands form a circle around the wheelchair disability icon.
Since I don’t have a disability history event for today, I’m going to take the opportunity to comment on something that came up recently that has the potential to become a historical event. On September 26 in Canada, several disability advocacy groups joined forces to challenge Track 2 of Canada’s MAID law, on the basis of its implications for disabled people.
What’s MAID?
MAID stands for “Medical Assistance in Dying”. It’s a process by which people who are found eligible can receive medical assistance to die. The original eligiblity criteria for receiving MAID, as developed in 2016, were quite clear, with safeguards against abuse, including that those requesting had to:
Be over 18 and able to make their own medical decisions
Have a “grievous and irreversible medical condition”
Voluntarily ask for MAID and consent to receiving it
More details are available here.
I am in support of MAID in principle. I think that it’s important that this option be available to people, because sometimes it is the most humane option for people who, despite everythng that medicine can do, are in a great deal of pain as they fight a medical condition where their death is imminent. But MAID’s eligibility criteria have expanded since it became legal in 2016 in ways that are problematic for the disability community.
The Issue - Track 2
In 2019, Quebec challenged whether it was consitutional not to allow people with mental illness to request MAID. The Canadian government responded by introducing Bill C7, which “removed the prior exclusion of those who have with nonterminal chronic illnesses and permitted euthanasia for those whose psychological or physical suffering is deemed intolerable and untreatable.” (Psychiatric Times)
In 2021, the Bill C7 expansion, or Track 2 of MAID, passed with a “provision to sunset the mental illness exclusion after two years.” (Psychiatric Times)
The two years has since been delayed to 2027, to ensure that provinces develop the appropriate safeguards around it prevent abuse, but Track 2 raises concerns that aren’t going away:
Other countries who have extended their euthanasia criteria to include nonterminal conditions have quickly found themselves considering extending it further to include seniors over 75 who feel they have gotten what they wanted from life or are tired of living.
The disability community’s very valid concern that making it possible people with chronic, disabling (but non-terminal) conditions ask for MAID implies that disabled lives aren’t worth living.
And that’s what’s at the crux of this Charter challenge - that Track 2 of MAID criteria puts disabled people at risk. It’s not that the MAID in its original conception was ableist in principle, but in an ableist society, with the Track 2 expansion, it can be used that way. It can become dangerously ableist when assumptions about disabled people and whether they can live in communities, work, have relationships, and contribute to all of those in the way that they choose, dictate:
The nature, intensity, and duration of medical treatments and general support offered to them before MAID is presented as an option
Whether MAID is even appropriate at all.
Disabled people are coming forward with their stories of feeling that they’re having MAID pushed on them by the medical community, which activists feel reflects a reluctance to create and provide the proper supports required for disabled people to thrive in their communities.
“The executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada…says there has been an alarming trend where people with disabilities are seeking assisted death due to social deprivation, poverty and a lack of essential supports.” - CBC.ca
I was Slow to Come Around on This
I remember, back in the days when I first started to do disability blogging, before MAID was available in Canada, people in the disability advocacy community talking about how the legalization of assisted death would mean the murder of disabled people. I thought they were exaggerating. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that some people really do still believe that society is better off without disabled people.
But after reading stories of disabled children being euthanized, or hospitalized adults having “Do Not Resucitate” orders put on them without their consent or even their knowledge, or denied organ transplants because of disability, I wasn’t shocked when disabled Canadians started to talk about MAID as dangerous. I didn’t quite understand it at first. But I wasn’t at all shocked.
And as if we need more proof that this could all be heading in a dangerous direction, there’s this story of Valerie Daigle, the mother who believes that MAID should have been granted for her disabled child, Gregory, who died in August. The 11-year-old, who can’t communicate verbally, developed an infection and an abcess in his stomach after surgery to fix a shunt, that would have required another major surgery to treat. He was put in palliative care, where he went without with water and nutrition for weeks before he died. The CBC article doesn’t say why the hospital didn’t attempt the surgery to repair the stomach abcess.
I can empathize with Valerie, on the one hand. I’m not a parent, but I have children in my life that I love, and I can’t imagine that there’s anything more heart-breaking than seeing your child in pain that doctors can’t seem to do anything to do anything about.
But you can’t tell me that if a non-disabled 11-year-old (or their parents on their behalf) came to a doctor and said, “This hurts and I don’t want surgery and I’d rather die” that palliative care would have been the option offered. Generally, we fight to keep children alive (non-disabled ones, at least.) I don’t think that MAID for minors is the answer.
The Dangers of MAID Expansion
I don’t think that MAID for non-terminal illness generally is the answer. I think that society still has work to do on biases and assumptions. Also, given that it’s too late to insist that the medical community be committed to keeping eligibility tight to the program’s original 2016 guidelines, we ask for close vigilance in light of MAID’s Track 2 criteria, to make sure that MAID requests aren’t about ableism and a lack of support for disabled people to live fulfilling lives.
Disabled people need society to take us seriously about these concerns and not just brush them off because it doesn’t understand them or doesn’t agree there’s something there worth worrying about. MAID shouldn’t be a treatment option.