Canadians with serious illnesses have opted for death only after years of failing to obtain proper medical care.
MAID is routinely practiced within the Canadian prison system.
Oh yeah but tell me more about how satanic and evil fucking CHINA is.
Damn, 42% approve of it for Mental Illness, and a whopping 50% approve of it for Disability.
However, 9 cases of MAID in prisons in 7 years isn't exactly what I'd call "routinely practiced". I'm conflicted about them apparently just not releasing data on the prisoners, because people have a right to privacy, but it feels shady when there are doctors like the one that allowed a woman in poverty to get it.
Amazing how the healthcare system in this country is rotting from the inside and out, and the only "healthcare" the Canadian government seems interested in making more accessible is MAID
Nuclear hot take: I don't think Canada's MAID rules are wrong. There's a huge difference between a doctor prescribing you to die as a cure for poverty and an uncoerced person wanting a dignified exit on life based on shit life syndrome. While there have been some troubling and shitty missteps in the system that have gotten a lot of news coverage, the questions in the survey linked are NOT asking if people think doctors should be prescribing unlife to people for being poor or homeless, they're asking if people should be allowed to request MAID for these reasons, and no big shocker, 60% are not okay with that.
I absolutely agree that people should be able to request MAID for disability or mental illness. If it was an option for me, I would have chosen it years ago.
I have no serious physical illnesses but do have severely treatment resistant depression that leaves me unable to live a normal life. I have an extremely low quality of life, and it's all but impossible to retain meaningful or gainful employment, extract even basic enjoyment out of life, or to maintain relationships with other people. I've been wanting to pursue MAID for years but live in the US where it's basically impossible.
It's social murder, they won't offer sufficient care for mental health or disability because that costs money and they, in this long era of neoliberalism, are cutting the states capacity to provision goods and care in favor of lifting declining profits.
But they WILL let you "choose" to end your life.
Sure, it isn't as egregious as the eugenics movement was. But it also, somehow, leads to the same outcomes and arguably for the same reasons. There are those who the upper class has determined are acceptable losses and are not profitable and so they must be eliminated to preserve the logic of the status quo.
MAID as it is offered cannot be viewed context-less. I've had adult patients who went through enormous suffering while at end stage cancer because their family decided they wanted them to hold on a while longer - it's obvious sometimes that a peaceful death on their own terms would have been better than their prolonged suffering and ultimate demise (that the family didn't even fucking show up for in this case).
But MAID is being offered as a legitimate alternative to dealing with a social system that chooses not to provision adequate care. It is offered to veterans in Canada. It's offered people as an alternative than fighting for adequate housing. And so on. All of that is social murder.
Especially when it comes to mental health.
Like I'm sure no one had actually sat down at a spreadsheet and said "ah yes, we'll simply allow people with schizophrenia to choose MAID rather than setting them up with social workers, social assistance, and healthy housing." Because all of that could go a long way to alleviating the suffering they're feeling that is leading them to consider premature death.
But it's also very affordable to healthcare system and the governments budgets overall if all these pesky social assistance seeks and recievers could just... die... and no longer be a line item on the budget or agitate for assistance.
It's also worth pointing out that several countries in Europe, like the Netherlands, Belgium or Switzerland, have very similar regulations without producing the same kind of "woman with disabilities opts for MAID because she can't afford an accessibly built appartment " bleakness.
Yes, I agree that it shouldn't be used as an alternative to having a social system. I just think Canada's issue with this is not with MAID itself, rather that it's not an issue inherent to MAID as a concept, but rather an issue with an insufficient social system that's being actively dismantled. Kind of like how the issues with marijuana dispensaries aren't an issue of marijuana legalization as a concept.
uncoerced
Love to be told about voluntary transactions under neoliberalism from "maidthrowaway". Fuck off.
I'm a longstanding user of the site, since it was chapo.chat, but felt uncomfortable posting this on my main account for exactly this reason. I'm not saying that neoliberalism is all about voluntary transactions or some bullshit, but that it's disingenuous to say that answering yes to a question asking if people should be allowed to choose to die is the same as saying yes to forcing them to die.
I think the issues with Canada's MAID system are not issues with the laws themselves, given that several other countries have the same sorts of MAID laws but don't have the same problem with doctors suggesting it to people or people choosing it because they can't get their ghoul landlord to put in a wheelchair ramp.
"The laws themselves" in a vacuum don't matter almost ever, there is only the circumstance in which they are applied.
MAiD in contemporary Canada is eugenics and social murder.
Nah, I'm a long-time user, I just don't want to get badgered on my main for my controversial opinions on whether or not the "being allowed to die" treats are bourgeois.
It says 20% of people support it basically on demand regardless of the reason, so that might be a baseline of "let people kill themselves" types that don't necessarily have antipathy to the homeless.
