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Hannah W's avatar

"I guess that you would deny a humane end to people who my wife sees every day struggling in hospices and who choose MAID..."

You guess wrong.

But if you think financial priorities are not helping to drive MAID, consider that for years Canada has ranked near the bottom of universal health-care countries in health-care quality and accessibility, even though it's near the top in per-capita spending. For years they have been scrambling for a way to close that gap. The shortfall is not from long-term terminal care, it's systemic (not enough hospital capacity, long waiting times for specialists, that sort of thing).

Also more than 40% of disabled Canadians live below the poverty line, with no way out. The numbers of disabled people seeking MAiD (who would have continued living if not for the dilemma of poverty) are not being reported, but the anecdotal evidence means they exist.

"When people are living in such a situation where they’re structurally placed in poverty, is medical assistance in dying really a choice, or is it coercion? That’s the question we need to ask ourselves.” (Dr. Naheed Dosani, a palliative care physician in Toronto)

What WAS reported in 2022: around 5% were helped to die who didn't have any terminal disease or need for hospice care. Sounds small, but that was over 460 people, for a reason where even a few would be too many.

What's more, a full one third (some 5000 people) asked to die because they felt themselves to be a burden on others. That is not a medical issue, it's a nasty social construct which is typical for secular materialist cultures.

To dismiss hundreds of needless premature deaths as "cherry-picked tearjerker stories" is a very callous position, IMO unworthy of someone as perceptive as you seem to be.

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