A group representing organizations that support people with disabilities has launched a Charter of Rights challenge to changes in the Medical Assistance In Dying law, saying it abandons people with disabilities and forces them to see death as the only option.
The coalition filed a Charter challenge against “Track Two” of the MAID law, which allows patients whose natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable, but whose condition leads to intolerable suffering, to apply for assisted death.
Under Track One, the original MAID law, only those whose natural death is foreseeable could apply for an assisted death.
“A law that allows people with disabilities to access state-funded death in circumstances where they cannot access state-funded supports they need to make their suffering tolerable is grossly disproportionate,” the group claimed in its filing against the federal government in the Ontario Superior Court.
“There is no deprivation that is more serious and more irrevocable than causing someone who is not otherwise dying to die,” it said.
A Canadian Press story quotes Krista Carr, executive vice president of Inclusion Canada, which is part of the coalition, saying people with disabilities are ending their lives prematurely because the federal government refuses to support them.
“This isn’t compassion. It’s abandonment,” she said.
Few would argue with the original intent of MAID. Allowing terminally ill patients to exit this world on their own terms, without prolonging pain and suffering, seemed a humane thing to do.
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Recent amendments have sent assisted dying down a path not everyone is comfortable with. It shouldn’t be seen as a convenient out for those with physical or mental disabilities.
Assisted dying involves not just the patient, but health-care professionals. Doctors and nurses signed up originally to ease the suffering of people whose death was imminent. Some of those people may not wish to be involved in assisting Track Two deaths that aren’t imminent. The way we go about MAID also speaks to the kind of society we want to be.
People with disabilities are not an inconvenience to be disposed of. They should be supported and cared for. Mental illness is not a life sentence. It can be treated.
We must take care that what was once seen as a compassionate and caring measure doesn’t become a death sentence.