(LifeSiteNews) — On March 21, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published a report calling on Canada to repeal “Track 2 MAiD” and to stop the scheduled 2027 expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from mental illness. Vice-Chair Rosemary Kayess called Canada’s euthanasia regime a “step back into state-sponsored eugenics.”
On December 29, the New York Times published a nearly 4,000-word puff piece for the deadliest excess of Canada’s euthanasia regime: the planned eligibility expansion for those with mental illness. The title itself makes the propagandistic point clear: “Claire Brosseau Wants to Die. Will Canada Let Her?”
To translate: Claire Brosseau is suicidal. Will Canada affirm, facilitate, and fund her suicide?
Brosseau is 48, and although she says she has had a life full of “riches” and is “deeply loved,” she suffers from “debilitating mental illness” and has attempted suicide several times. According to the NYT, when Canada first legalized euthanasia for mental illness, she “felt a small, tentative, tendril of relief” that she “could die in a way that did not involve pain or violence, or horror for the people who love her.”
In short, she could die by a doctor-administered lethal injection. There is much evidence, however, that the grief and suffering of those who lose someone to assisted suicide is excruciating – but the NYT is repeating the standard deceits of Canada’s well-funded death lobby, Dying with Dignity. In fact, Brosseau is referred to as an “inadvertent player” in the debate over offering suicide to the suicidal.
Brosseau is physically healthy (the NYT noted that she could live “for decades”) but has suffered through dozens of rounds of treatment for multiple mental health diagnoses, including manic depression and chronic suicidal ideation. She planned to apply for death by doctor on March 17, 2023, when assisted suicide would become available for those with mental illness; the government, however, delayed the expansion in response to widespread outcry and a steady stream of euthanasia horror stories in the press.
Stephanie Nolen followed Brosseau for the long-form report; she notes that Brosseau’s psychiatrists disagree on whether she should be euthanized. Dr. Robinson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, said her desire to die is a reasonable choice, even though “I would love to change her mind.” To deny her assisted suicide, according to Robinson, is to discriminate based on the nature of her chronic condition. Her other psychiatrist disagrees:
But for Dr. Mark Fefergrad, Ms. Brosseau’s other psychiatrist, the nature of mental illness means assisted death must be considered differently. He knows Ms. Brosseau has endured periods of intense suffering, but he has also seen her improve, for a time, with some treatments.
“I believe she can get well,” he said. Using the common Canadian acronym for medical assistance in dying, he added, “I don’t think MAID is the best or only choice for her.”
This debate has simmered in Canada for years. It has roiled the field of psychiatry, and the larger circle of professionals who care for people with mental illness. It has become a public flashpoint, in a country where there is broad support for assisted suicide but also an underlying unease with the practice’s increase in the decade since legalization.
Brosseau’s story is heartbreaking to read – especially for those of us who know and love people who have also suffered from debilitating mental illness, which, I suspect, is most Canadians. Nolen details her tumultuous life in show business (drugs, promiscuity, late-night comedy clubs; a sexual assault is mentioned), with intermittent depressive episodes, treatment, and severe flare-ups. An episode in a psychiatric ward in which she was pinned down by orderlies appears to have destroyed her trust in the mental health care system and led to her unwillingness “to try to work through the post-traumatic stress.”
Now, Brosseau wants to die. “I’m not a person,” she told Nolen. “I can’t be in the world.” She has withdrawn from her loved ones and only rarely sees her family, who still love her even when she lashes out. “No one in her life with whom I spoke, friends or family, regretted pitching in during those difficult times,” Nolen writes. But Brosseau is humiliated by her behavior during such episodes and has withdrawn further.
I am grateful that even in a report framed as a David-and-Goliath battle between a suicidal woman and a government insufficiently eager to facilitate her death that the insights of Dr. Fefergrad are still included. He, like many of Canada’s mental health experts – most of whom are opposed to the legalization of “MAID for mental illness” – explained that it is simply impossible to say that mental illness is “irremediable”:
“People get better in ways we don’t expect—and surprising, unexpected things happen every day,” he said. “That doesn’t really happen with a big brain cancer.”
He told me about a patient he had treated for a decade who was deeply unwell and who would have most likely qualified for an assisted death under the guidelines for eligibility that were then proposed. That patient found connection in an unexpected romantic relationship. “And their life was completely different thereafter,” he said.
New treatments and medications come along, he said, and they make a difference for some of his patients who previously didn’t make progress. What if Ms. Brosseau chose to die and then a new drug or procedure was developed that might have been transformative for her. “That weighs on me as a philosophical question,” he said.
Robinson disagrees, and affirms Brosseau’s suicidal ideation, saying she’s attempted many times, and that she now understandably wants to have assisted suicide as a “nice, gentle” death. Her parents were “initially aghast,” and her sister was “furious”; Nolen says they’ve now come around, even though none of them want her to die by assisted suicide. Nolen also noted the lack of available resources for the struggling, which has proven a significant motivator for the “choice” of assisted suicide.
Dying with Dignity has now taken Brosseau’s case to court. Should euthanasia for mental illness become available, the floodgates will open. The NYT piece concludes, almost farcically, with a website and phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
During the debate for Bill C-218 last month, MP Andrew Lawton, a suicide survivor, gave a speech laying out the case for banning euthanasia for mental illness. He cited the work of psychiatrist Dr. John Maher, a man I wish Nolen had spoken to.
“Dr. John Maher testified before Parliament that seven percent of those who attempt suicide die by suicide,” Lawton said. “That means that 93 percent of people who, at one or multiple points, want to end their life eventually get over that. The success rate of MAiD is 100 percent. By design, this is a policy that will give up on people… These are real people. There are faces to this. If Bill C-218 does not pass, people will die. We have a right and a duty to stand up for those who need it. I will be proudly supporting this bill, and I thank my colleague so much for introducing it.”
