(LifeSiteNews) – Only two years out from the legalization of assisted suicide in Canada, the Liberal government is already searching for ways to expand access to these so-called “services,” and to do so have asked the Council of Canadian Academies to create a report detailing a way forward.
Three key issues are being considered, including euthanasia for those suffering with mental illness, those who wish to produce an “advanced directive” asking a medical professional to kill them after they have potentially lost the mental capacity to request it themselves, and euthanasia for children—currently being referred to as “mature minors.”
Michael Cook laid out the state of the discussion over at BioEdge, noting that a number of Canadian pediatricians and bio-ethicists have laid out the case for supporting child euthanasia in the Journal of Medical Ethics, framing Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) as a fundamental part of palliative care and presenting the so-called right to be killed as a fundamental one:
it is wrong to force a person to live in circumstances of unendurable and irremediable suffering and … the wishes of capable patients should be respected within legal limits, especially in such an intimate matter as how they choose to die. Persons, in other words, have a right to life, not a duty to live … CONTINUE