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Another day, another column about Bill C-7 that advocates for better systemic treatment and resources for people with disabilities (good!) but with the flawed implication that the only way to protect some disabled persons is to block access to MAiD for others.
MAiD isn't eugenics. The task for the medical profession is to ensure informed consent. Failures on that front should result in enforcement of the law. But Bill C-7 is the result of the existing regime imposing unnecessary, unconstitutional harms by blocked access to MAiD.
The lack of resources and systemic issues facing people with disabilities or mental health issues isn't going to be solved by keeping an unconstitutional status quo in place, or by imposing pain and suffering on people who have the capacity to consent to MAiD.
I say all this as someone who struggled with severe panic disorder in the past, for many years (including multiple hospitalizations due to the physical symptoms emanating from panic attacks).
I was never suicidal. I don't like the thought of someone in my position seeking MAiD as the solution. But I know those who haven't experienced that sort of disability can't really understand it, just as I can't presume to understand other mental health issues.
Which is why I'm very, very cautious about presuming to speak for the disabled community as if it's some homogenous monolith, or to suggest that others shouldn't have the capacity to make decisions about their lives, or the end of their lives.
In my view, that's the crux of the "grievous and irremediable" suffering threshold. I don't think anyone is contemplating people who suffer solely from some panic attacks as eligible, and we should be vigilant about practitioners who push MAiD as a solution in certain contexts.
But you don't get to decide what people experience as intolerable, and the existing legislation isn't letting people make these assessments on a whim. To a great degree, I find some of the takes about C-7 deeply patronizing as a result.
