Disability rights groups launch Charter challenge against MAID law

Disability rights groups launching Charter challenge against MAID(medically assisted in Dying) law [Canada]

A coalition of disability rights groups says it's launching a Charter challenge against part of Canada's law on medical assistance in dying (MAID). Inclusion Canada’s Krista Carr is part of the coalition launching this challenge. She says Track 2 MAID singles out people with disabilities and suggests their lives aren’t ‘worth protecting or saving or even living.’

By Rianna Lim, The Canadian Press

Posted September 26, 2024 10:31 am.

Heather Walkus, national chair of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, said the government needs to do more to listen to people with disabilities.

“People with disabilities are being not just pushed to the margins, but driven off the cliff unless services and supports are in place,” she said in an interview.

Walkus, who has multiple sclerosis and vision loss, said she recently sought treatment for a hip injury and was asked by a medical professional, unprompted, if she’d considered accessing MAID – something she found “stunning.”

“I don’t suffer because of my disability,” Walkus said. “It’s other people’s perceptions, it’s the physical environment, the attitudinal environment, the policies and the support services, or lack of them – that’s what disables me and puts me in a position of suffering, not my disability.”
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With Labour looking to push through assisted dying and benefits being hit on again its likely we'll need something like that here in the UK before long.

 

Track 1: refers to the procedural safeguards applicable to a request for MAID made by a person whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

Track 2: refers to the procedural safeguards applicable to a request for MAID made by a person whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.

Track 2, “is only available to one particular group of people: people with disabilities,”

Important: On February 29, 2024, legislation to extend the temporary exclusion of eligibility to receive MAID in circumstances where a person's sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness received royal assent and immediately came into effect. The eligibility date for persons suffering solely from a mental illness is now March 17, 2027.

Many doctors have rejected the inclusion of people with mental illness.

 

What's wrong with people?

 

Published March 14, 2024
Disparities in public awareness, practitioner availability, and institutional support contribute to differential rates of MAiD utilization: a natural experiment comparing California and Canada

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Disabled women are more at risk for assisted suicide than men in Canada. Here's why.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) received a powerful brief from The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s Centre for Faith and Public Life (“CFPL”) on September 9, 2024, which documented the disproportionate effect of euthanasia and assisted suicide on women with disabilities in Canada.

There have been studies noting that women seek euthanasia and assisted suicide more often than men because of their more sensitive nature and desire not to “become a burden” on their family members and community. These studies appear to support the CFPL’s analysis. The other reasons for a disproportionate utilization by women include more “gaslighting” by medical providers and less stability in securing long-term family physicians than men.
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