While some decry Canada’s MAID (Medically Assistance In Dying) program as the biggest existential threat to disabled people since Nazi Germany, others point to budgetary savings that the program is offering.
The program continues to expand at an accelerated rate. People who were not dying were eligible for the treatment starting 2021, and those suffering from mental health conditions are eligible for the program starting April 2024. The Parliament is investigating whether children (“mature minors”) deserve the right to MAID as well. Initial reports suggest that it may be our moral imperative to offer them the gift of choice. (p.54-p61)[https://www.parl.ca/Content/Committee/441/AMAD/Reports/RP12234766/amadrp02/amadrp02-e.pdf]
4.1% of all deaths in Canada were attributed to the program in 2022 and the expansion only continues.
Being allowed to die when you choose is fine and good but good goddamn it should not exist in a neoliberal system that’ll end up socially murdering all the non-productives and the neurodivergent.
There’s a lot of things that in a non-dystopia would be good and correct that they are available… however that is precisely what we have, happy to twist and distort absolutely everything until regardless of the intention it is some form of cruelty. Then atop it all we’ve the final insult to our intelligence that somehow we’re the “unreasonable” ones or that we’re meant to find the inane position of meeting the advocates for dystopia halfway reasonable.