I don’t know if you read the article, but I found some of the examples desperately sad, They illustrate how society has become fractured and how we put different worths on people.
"Rosina Kamis, who had fibromyalgia and chronic leukemia, along with other mental and physical illnesses. She presented these symptoms to the MAID assessors and her death was approved. Meanwhile, she wrote in a note evidently meant for those to whom she had granted power of attorney: “Please keep all this secret while I am still alive because … the suffering I experience is mental suffering, not physical. I think if more people cared about me, I might be able to handle the suffering caused by my physical illnesses alone.” She was put to death on September 26, 2021, via a lethal injection, at the age of 41.
"Michael Fraser, though not terminally ill at age 55, had become unable to walk and suffered from an array of medical problems—liver disease and incontinence, as well as mental-health issues after what he described as prolonged sexual abuse as a child. His monthly check from the Ontario Disability Support Program was barely enough to live on. “Some of the struggles he talked to me about was this feeling of not being worthy,” the doctor who gave Fraser a lethal injection on July 2, 2022, told the Toronto Star. “There’s a social aspect to poverty, a hierarchy, that affected his psyche. He told me that it did.”
“Tyler Dunlop is a physically healthy 37-year-old man who suffers from schizoaffective disorder and PTSD, and has no job or home or social contact. “When I read about medically assisted dying,” he told a local news websiteearlier this year, “I thought, well, logistically, I really don’t have a future.” Knowing that “I’m not going anywhere,” as he put it, he has started the process for approval under MAID.”
What about the mother of manipulative children who, as she ages, feels increasingly the horror of “being a burden”, and whose children encourage that idea? I know my mother felt that, and it required constant encouragement for hert to feel otherwise.
@Ancient_Mariner gives another example. I suppose we’ve all felt that, especially as teenagers.
What about the current Canadian recommendations by a ‘parliamentary committee … that would further broaden MAID eligibility, including to “mature minors” whose death is “reasonably foreseeable.” The influential activist group Dying With Dignity Canada recommends that “mature minors” be defined as “at least 12 years of age and capable of making decisions with respect to their health.” Canada is scheduled to move in 2024 to officially extend MAID eligibility to those whose only illness is a mental disorder."’
It may be that the slippery-slope nature of euthanasia - once you’ve accepted it in principle, where do you stop? - is inherent in it.
