MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Last month, investigators “found a layer of human ashes and bone remains several centimeters thick, measuring approximately 460 square meters” at “depths of 80 centimeters to 1.50 meters”  just outside Hartheim Castle near the Austrian city of Linz. The crushed and incinerated bodies were victims of the Third Reich’s T-4 euthanasia program, which ended the lives of between 70,000 and 20,000 people that the Nazis deemed “life unworthy of life.”

Hartheim Castle, which is now a memorial site, was one of the eight centers where Nazi doctors murdered people with disabilities, mental illnesses, and other people categorized as “useless eaters.” Between May 1940 and November 1944, around 30,000 people were murdered in gas chambers, burned in a specially constructed crematorium, and dumped in a tributary of the Danube, or, we now know, on the castle grounds. The victims also included Dutch Jews as well as prisoners from Spain, Poland, and France.

April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year.

She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada’s increasingly liberal laws.

A United Nations committee reviewing Canada’s treatment of disabled people is calling on Ottawa to repeal medical assistance in dying for anyone without a terminal illness, a procedure referred to as the “Track 2” option for MAID.

The new report from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also recommends Canada create a federal MAID watchdog to investigate complaints, and that the country invest heavily in addressing the systemic failures that lead disabled people to apply for assisted death in the first place.

An assisted dying clinic in Switzerland has helped a British woman to end her life without informing her family, despite reportedly claiming to have changed its practices after a similar incident in 2023.

Anne Canning, 51, from Wales, travelled to the Pegasos clinic near the Swiss city of Basel in January to end her life.

She chose to do so after the death of her son plunged her into depression, according to her sister Delia, who told ITV News that Anne had no terminal illness and had assured her family she was travelling to Switzerland for a holiday.

A sharp rise in cases of euthanasia to end psychological suffering in the Netherlands has prompted a debate about the practice among young people.

Almost 10,000 patients died by euthanasia in the Netherlands last year. Compared with 2023, there was a 60 per cent increase in cases involving psychological suffering and a 10 per cent rise in deaths overall.

In the United Kingdom, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s trainwreck assisted suicide committee is making daily headlines as the pro-euthanasia majority votes down safeguard after safeguard. Safeguards have been rejected for those with disabilities; for those with suicidal ideation; for the homeless; even for those who may not be able to fully give consent (a safeguard mandating that the victim must have capacity “beyond a reasonable doubt” was rejected 15-8).

Euthanasia activists promised that the path to a lethal injection would be narrow with high guardrails and intermittent checkpoints. Leadbeater’s committee is creating a virtually unpoliced four-lane highway with no speed limit.

Few recent pieces of British legislation have proved as controversial as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater. Despite assisted suicide being decisively rejected by parliament multiple times in past years (including by 330-118 votes in 2015), Leadbeater has pushed on with her bill in the face of mounting opposition.

The bill was published only days before its second reading and one of its supposedly “robust” safeguards was a requirement for sign-off from a High Court judge for each individual case. For many MPs, who were denied the chance to take more time over this life-and-death issue, this so-called ‘safeguard’ was central to its appeal, and they saw judicial oversight as a vital check.

When a Canadian child was rushed to the hospital after nearly drowning, his parents say doctors threatened to take the child off life support and suggested harvesting his organs.

“We had 14 days to prepare his funeral and say goodbye to him,” Nicolas Tétrault, the boy’s father and a former Montreal politician, told The Federalist in English, his second language. “They were promoting to harvest the organs and give them away.”

Are med school admission standards favouring ghouls?

Amid news that some Canadians have been asked, unprompted, if they wish to seek euthanasia, a B.C. group has developed a “defence kit” for people to ensure they don’t get pressured into receiving medical assistance in dying (MAID).

The Delta Hospice Society (DHS) has designed a Do Not Euthanize (DNE) Defence Kit, legally vetted and distinct for each province and territory.

Your great and good National Post published an important story on assisted suicide on Thursday, chronicling a startling change in policy by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. The left-libertarian BCCLA was the most important institutional force behind the litigation efforts that led to euthanasia legalization in Canada (under the rancid euphemistic cover of “medical assistance in dying,” or “MAiD”). Up until recently, every member and contributor of that group would have unquestionably cited legal suicide as its single most impressive accomplishment, its firmest and proudest stamp on Canadian history. Now … not so much.

The civil liberties group that led the push for the 2015 decriminalization of physician-assisted suicide in Canada is now warning it has become too easy to obtain MAID, and the government must enact safeguards.

The family of a B.C. man with bipolar disorder and chronic back pain is suing the federal and provincial governments after he allegedly used a day pass from hospital to end his life with medical assistance.

In a lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court, the man’s family claims the 52-year-old — known as JMM — fell into a group of people whose concurrent physical and mental illnesses leave them “vulnerable” under Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAiD) framework.