Assisted: Death and Women

This is our third discussion with the experts who can tell us how Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying panned out. Tonight we speak with two doctors who know more about MAID than they ever would have dreamed. Chelsea and Fiona welcome:

Dr Ramona Coelho, a family physician in London, Ontario. She is also a member of the Ontario Chief Coroner’s MAID Death Review Committee, and so is one of the few people to see the data on the true outcomes of MAID.

Professor Leonie Herx, a palliative care doctor, clinical professor at the University of Calgary, and recent president of the Canadian Palliative Care Association.

Each has seen how MAID unfolded and how it affects the practice of medicine, attitudes to suffering and dying, and most importantly, their patients. They tell stories that lay out the human costs of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying.

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Leonie and Ramona discuss:

* That Canadians were told assisted dying would only be for exceptional cases

* How safeguards quickly become barriers

* How the MAID ‘providers’ interpreted the law so that even more people could die: including Ellen Wiebe’s use of actuarial tables to estimate life expectancy of her patients and justify their access to death.

* The lobbying efforts of Canada’s well funded Dying with Dignity organisation also covered in “The Lobby Group That Owns the Conversation around Assisted Deaths”

* That it’s not true to say that MAID has seen an increase in quality and resourcing of palliative care: in fact some palliative care budgets now deliver MAID

* Instead of suicide prevention, patients will be sent away with a MAID phone number

* That it may take months or years for their patients to get disability support, but a MAID assessment is available in 3 days

* Ramona’s work with the Ontario Chief Coroner MAID Death Review Board: reports here

* The shocking rise in widows seeking an assisted death

* How coercion and domestic abuse emerges over months of time with a patient: compared to the 90 minutes MAID assessors will spend over the phone with them

Today we continue to hear from experts on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada, which seems to have spiralled beyond anyone’s worst imaginings.

Tonight, we have three powerhouse legal academics: feminists who work to limit the terrible excesses of Canada’s MAID. Fiona and Chelsea were so pleased to speak with:

Professor Emerita Elizabeth Sheehy, latterly professor of criminal law at the University of Ottowa

Professor Isabel Grant, specialist in criminal law at the Peter Allard School of Law at the University of BC,

Professor Janine Benedet, who explores legal responses to men’s sexual violence against women at Peter A. Allard School of Law at University of BC.

These women are truly fabulous: clear talking, clear thinking, and absolutely on the side of women. They also do most of their work on MAID unfunded. Their recent discussion and paper says that MAID is “a modern form of eugenics”. In this wideranging discussion we learn:

* How MAID’s wild expansion was won through campaigning and courts: but ultimately the Canadian parliament decided to pursue each major expansion in the law.

* Those who deliver death have expanded the law even further in practice.

* The role of (male) mercy killers (of women) in the campaign for assisted death,

* What safeguards against coercion are

* That we won’t know about men who pressure family members into MAID unless someone speaks out.

* How death has become part of the menu of options proposed - pushed - to vulnerable people seeking healthcare. Even psychiatric care.

* The silence of the feminist organisations as MAID unfurled its horrors

* the weird funders of death including an airport authority

Up next: the family doctor who investigates MAID and the palliative care expert

We hear again and again that the UK’s assisted dying will never be like Canada - we’re nothing like Canada! The headlines on Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) are pretty alarming. But to some surprise, the MPs considering assisted dying at Westminster didn’t ask any experts from Canada to give evidence. We want to know what those experts would have said, so we’re kicking off a short series of discussions with Canadian families, legal experts, and medics, to understand what on earth went wrong in Canada’s MAID, and whether the UK can avoid ever becoming ‘like Canada’.

First, we are immensely grateful for time with Alicia Duncan. With her sister Christie, she has been flung into a campaigning role that frankly no one would choose for themselves. Their mother Donna Duncan, an educated, fiercely independent woman, was given MAID in 2021. But Donna didn’t have a terminal illness, in fact she’d been suffering mental health issues since a minor car crash left her with post concussion syndrome. Her daughters faced a fierce fight to try to prevent their mother’s death. Appallingly, they did not succeed, and Donna was given MAID only hours after release from psychiatric hold.

We think you’ll agree after this discussion that Alicia and her sister Christie are a credit to their mother.

We cover the unfurling of Canada’s MAID, why we don’t hear about abuses in MAID (except for a few brave family members), what happens when the state kills someone it shouldn’t have, and Alicia’s asks of MPs in the UK.

Alicia Duncan will have a book out later this year. You can read her evidence to the Westminster Parliament considering Assisted Death here, get her newsletter, find her on substack and twitter/X

Canada’s MAID, some of the headlines mentioned in this discussion:

Woman undergoing a masectomy offered assistance to die, twice

Man given assisted death due to his hearing loss

Minors should be eligible for assisted dying, parliamentary committee says

Next up on Assisted: Canada’s law and the professors who battle it

This is an incredible conversation. Every MP in Westminster needs to hear this - as Nikki says “I don’t know” the answer to all the questions “but importantly, I know I don’t know”. Westminster is considering assisted dying laws, put forward as a Private Member’s Bill.

Formerly at No10 to make sure laws passed work well, Nikki Da Costa tells us why she has joined the fight.

Nikki answers all our questions, like: is this the normal way to legislate for a major change like this? Will MPs get the time they need to consider how the law works in practice?. Does the bill cover all the issues raised by witnesses and written evidence? (tldr, no).

Nikki shares some shocking findings in the dump of written evidence, which MPs have only days to consider. Reveals the unbelievable powers given to future ministers. And has a plea for MPs who need to vote on this next.

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As mentioned last episode of the podcast, Chelsea Roff gave evidence at the Terminally Ill Adults (Assisted Dying) Bill committee this week. As Chelsea told them, the Committee MPs clearly do not want women with anorexia to be given assisted dying in the proposed bill.

But Chelsea Roff and Dr Catherine Cook Cottone’s research shows that they DO, already, in 3 US states which follow the US/Australia model for assisted dying that the Westminster draft bill is based on.

After Chelsea’s evidence, a series of experts were then invited to opine and said that it was not possible for those with anorexia to be able to access assisted death (somewhat baffling, as it is already happening in the US, and more widely in other places where the law has been expanded beyond ‘terminal illness’ requirements).

That’s why it’s worth appreciating Dr Naomi Richard’s honesty in admitting that people with anorexia have already died from assisted deaths in the US, but that it is only “1 or 2” and in her view that this is a distraction from the delivery of a “new mode of dying”.

Our tolerance for this number is very different: it’s zero, forever. But what will MPs on the bill committee decide? Is zero possible if doctors in the UK already say women are ‘terminal’ in their anorexia? If not zero, how many?

So, did MPs really hear what they needed to prevent women with anorexia being given assisted death in England and Wales. Did any minds change? Lets see what the coming weeks bring.

In Westminster this week MPs heard from a series of invited witnesses that - in their opinion - there was no risk of women with anorexia being given assisted death. But we know different. At least 60 people have been given assisted death where an eating disorder is their primary qualifying condition. That includes in 3 states in the US where assisted death is only for the ‘terminally ill’. Oh and all those who died were women.

The reason we know any of this is because of two women, working on a unfunded review to try to find the (hidden) stories. Chelsea Roff is joined by her co author Dr Catherine Cook Cottone to discuss their truly shocking findings with Fiona Mackenzie.

* Link to their groundbreaking research Assisted death in eating disorders: a systematic review of cases and clinical rationales

* The paper we discuss that proposed a new diagnosis of terminal anorexia, with the stories of three patients who had already died, is here

And boy do you need to see what’s been happening in parliament this week. More to follow - click subscribe to hear.

Assisted Death and Women is funded solely by your generosity - please consider subscribing

The UK is considering proposals for assisted death, with a Private Member’s Bill sponsored by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater now pushing through Westminster. But we think assisted dying presents specific problems for women, and this movement is not just ‘the next progressive big thing’.

Join The Other Half’s Fiona Mackenzie MBE and eating disorder recovery expert Chelsea Roff of Eat Breathe Thrive as we respond to the urgent need to discuss what state-delivered death might do to our society.

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Fiona and Chelsea are strangers, and both felt sympathetic to the arguments that assisted dying should be allowed for those who want it. The realities of assisted dying ‘gone wrong’ have challenged our views.

In upcoming episodes we speak to the Canadian’s battling monstrous outcomes in their out of control MAID system, understand how eating disorder patients have been terribly failed by their doctors, dive into the (astonishing) history of the assisted death movement, learn more from experts here in the UK on what assisted dying might do here, and hear how a wife murderer got himself sympathetically featured in our UK parliament’s debate on assisted dying for the terminally ill.

As Chelsea says “We hope you’ll come on this journey with us. My mind has changed on this issue, and it may change again. We have a duty as citizens to go into this with our eyes open”.