New Quebec Assisted Suicide Law Allows Killing Dementia Patients Without Consent
As of October 30, patients in Quebec, Canada, who meet certain criteria no longer need to confirm that they want to undergo physician-assisted suicide immediately before they die. The patient can now request and provide “consent” for the assisted-suicide in advance, if he or she has been diagnosed with an illness such as dementia.
The government of Quebec adopted the law in June 2023, and it went into effect earlier this week.
The government’s website specifies that patients who meet the right criteria can fill out an “advance request” for the assisted-suicide program called “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID. The “advance requests” can only be made by persons “who [have] been diagnosed with a serious and incurable illness leading to incapacity,” such as dementia, according to the website.
Canada’s Criminal Code currently holds that health officials may not perform an assisted suicide using an “advance request.” Despite this, Quebec adopted a law in 2023 to allow the requests, according to an October 28 article published by Montreal CTV News.
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CTV News reports that Quebec’s Crown prosecution office said it would not be “in the public interest to authorize the laying of criminal charges” against those involved in a MAID death based on an “advance request,” noting that the province’s criteria for the request have to be met.
Persons making an “advance request” must “[d]escribe in detail” illness-related symptoms that, along with meeting the full criteria, “will constitute the expression of their consent to receive medical aid in dying when they have become incapable of consenting to care,” the government of Quebec’s website states.
The request has to be made free of external coercion, and the person must understand what is involved in an assisted-suicide. The person must also know that therapeutic alternatives are available.
Included in the six criteria needed to be eligible for an advance MAID request is that the person must:
be in a medical state that gives a competent professional (physician or specialized nurse practitioner) cause to believe, based on the information at their disposal and according to their clinical judgment, that the person is experiencing enduring and unbearable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be relieved under conditions considered tolerable[.]
Catholic anti-MAID activist responds
Anti-euthanasia and assisted suicide activists are speaking out against the advance requests.
In an October 29 X post, Amanda Achtman, a Canadian Catholic activist, speaker, and journalist, warned that “so-called ‘advance requests’ will drastically increase the premature deaths of those with dementia.”
In an email statement to CatholicVote, Achtman explained that this increase is expected to occur “because this was the intended demographic of this particular euthanasia expansion.”
The Alzheimer Society of Canada has estimated that from 2020 to 2050, the number of Canadians who have developed dementia will have increased by 187%, according to Achtman.
The number of persons in Canada who die by MAID has also increased drastically within the past eight years. According to an August 2024 Cardus report, “MAID is now tied with cerebrovascular diseases as the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.”
In her statement to CatholicVote, Achtman indicated that rather than going along with a person’s request for euthanasia, one should instead strive to address the underlying reasons of the request, so as to help the person.
“Conceding and capitulating to what is, essentially, suicidal ideation is never a response adequate to the person,” she added.
It is also inherently ableist to deem some lives less valuable than others. Achtman highlighted: “We know that doctors consistently rate the quality of life of persons with disabilities as lower than those with disabilities evaluate their own lives. This shows the ableism inherent in designating some lives as less worthwhile than others.”
She decried the implications of “telling those with illnesses and disabilities that they are ‘eligible’ for ‘advance requests’” for assisted-suicide.
“It is dehumanizing, plain and simple,” she said. “All of these decisions have a social cost; they do not exclusively concern those opting to be euthanized but are actually affecting our entire social fabric by sending the message that, without the capacity to consent, your life is over, you do not really exist.”
Research indicates people are often more afraid of a dementia diagnosis than a cancer diagnosis, according to Achtman. She noted that the growing temptation toward euthanasia for those who have dementia happens “because we, as a society, struggle to see the value and sense of life in the midst of dependency and vulnerability.”
But there is value in these things, as Pope John Paul II highlighted in his Letter to the Elderly.
Achtman quoted a section of this letter that offers a reflection on the value of human interdependence, especially evidenced in aging.
“The signs of human frailty which are clearly connected with advanced age become a summons to the mutual dependence and indispensable solidarity which link the different generations, inasmuch as every person needs others and draws enrichment from the gifts and charisms of all,” St. Pope John Paul II wrote.
Achtman noted that the recent Vatican document “Dignitas Infinita” states that to assist in a suffering person’s suicide is a violation of the person’s dignity. As CatholicVote has previously highlighted, the Catholic Church holds that suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia are grave evils.
Achtman also quoted a passage from “Dignitas Infinita” that reads, “[s]uffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own.”
She emphasized that people have an obligation to defend, love, and stand up for those who are especially vulnerable.
“We think that it’s those with dementia who are forgetting things but how often is it really we who are forgetting them?” Achtman wrote, later concluding:
Nobody should be euthanized because they are complicated or difficult to care for; every person summons courage from us. Though it is a mystery why we suffer, as [Msgr.] Lorenzo Albacete puts it, “The redemption of suffering [consists in] the drama of suffering [being transformed] into a drama of love.”
LifeNews Note: McKenna Snow writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
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