. . .
Before I get to the actual letter, which I sent to David Lametti (Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and a far superior improvement over his predecessor), Carolyn Bennett (Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Public Health, who seems to work much better alongside team-player Lametti than his narcissistic predecessor), and Jean-Yves Duclos (Minister of Public Health, another Quebecer who, like Lametti, deals in the realm of common sense, unlike Lametti's infamous predecessor), I want to preface this piece with a few disclaimers and recommended reads.
First off, if anyone reads this, don't bother wasting 9-1-1 resources like a common Freedumb Convoy fool, because I am not planning anything right now. (I don't even know how to ski.)
So here now, without further ado, is the grown-up Christmas list that I sent to the ministerial trio.
Dear Ministers Lametti, Duclos, and Bennett:
I am writing to you with regards to
ongoing developments in the legislation enacting a framework to expand medical
assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada. Though I am not a Canadian citizen
myself, I felt it was important to reach out to you with some concerns that I
have, about a potential delay in finalizing the protocols surrounding MAiD as
an option where mental illness is the sole or primary reason for an affected
patient’s request.
I recognize that the issue of
medically-assisted dying or clinical euthanasia is an emotionally fraught one,
with input and conversations coming from numerous quarters in the community:
medical practitioners; patient (self-)advocates (and their friends, family, and
other close associates); nonprofit organizations representing patients such as Death With Dignity; and diverse opinions
from members of the disabled community, their caregivers, and others designated
to speak on their behalf.
The reason I am contacting you is because
I, myself, am a person who could reasonably considered a “stakeholder” in the
disabled community, who is vehemently supportive of the expansion of MAiD for
mental illness, in that I suffer from a diagnosed condition myself. I am
disappointed and in fact heartbroken that the official date of expanding MAiD
to sufferers of mental ill health is likely to be put off. I am writing to
express my sincerest hope that the Government of Canada will not legislate a
date too far in the future, and that mental illness as the sole criteria for
MAiD will not be dropped altogether from the framework. I hope that you will
take the time to read my letter and take my experiences under consideration as
you move forward with modifications to this law.
As stated above, I am not a Canadian
citizen or permanent resident. I have in fact never been to Canada, though it
is on my “bucket list” to visit someday. I am, rather, a citizen by birth and
lifelong resident of the United States — a place that, I’m sure you are aware,
has been through quite a lot of social and political turmoil in recent years,
and which does not presently have a robust or equitable public health
framework. It does, however, have a thriving network of activists on various
issues, as Canada also does. Some, many even, of the individuals who have taken
part in protests for the broader cause of what they consider to be “social
justice,” can be overzealous and myopic in their approach, becoming reflexively
hostile to dissenting viewpoints. Despite our lack of an all-encompassing
public healthcare program, the United States also has one of the most highly
regarded systems of medical research in the world. Unfortunately, it appears to
have been the case that over time, objective inquiry into scientific research
for some of the most debilitating health conditions has been sabotaged in
certain ways by this activist community, with serious consequences for the
greater cause of improving public health.
And that increasingly combative intersect
at the juncture of medical science and community activism is where I find
myself seeking a third way of resolving what has been my own lived experience.
The struggles that I have endured for all
of my life as a person suffering from a neurological disorder properly
categorized as a birth defect has led me to research medical assistance in
dying. When I first heard that Canada was set to offer it as an option for
those grappling with non-terminal ailments, I was initially excited: though
countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands currently allow
what is often called “euthanasia tourism,” traveling overseas is not at all
conducive for many of us “across the pond,” including myself. I had hoped to be
able to pursue options over the border, only to find that “euthanasia tourism”
was exempted from the MAiD framework. I am therefore writing to request that
your government reconsider this.
As a comparative, Minister Karina Gould had indicated, just after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent regarding legal
abortion, American girls and women would have the option to travel to Canada if
necessary to safely and humanely end their pregnancies in a clinical setting. I
sincerely hope that you will consider that there are Americans who wish to end
their suffering in a safe and clinical setting, but that we cannot do so here.
MAiD is only legal in a few states and only for terminal conditions. It is not
legal anywhere in my country if one is suffering from a non-terminal physical
ailment, let alone a mental, psychological or neurological one.
It has become my perspective, informed by
lived experience, that quite a few suicides and would-be suicides were and are
abortions that never happened. I fully expect more than a few “children of Dobbs” to end up taking their own lives
at some point, because their mothers never had the opportunity to exercise
patient autonomy and avoid bringing children into the world in undesired
circumstances. That is a philosophical discussion that goes beyond the scope of
this letter, but it is also one that some of the most vocal activists against
both abortion and euthanasia appear unwilling to engage in.
And that is what brings me to the central
focus of this letter.
As stated in the opening paragraph, I am
well aware that MAiD is an emotionally fraught issue for not just clinicians
and patients, but members of activist communities, many of whom believe they
are fighting an existential crisis for which nothing less than total abolition
of the MAiD framework will suffice, and that the legalization of it in and of
itself amounts to a normalization of “genocide.” Some members of these
communities believe that the MAiD framework is being offered to people as a
substitute for strengthening social service funding (a responsibility that I am
aware rests largely upon the provinces). But many others have taken up a more
personal mantle of “disability as identity.” There is no amount of social
service funding that will convince these activists that MAiD in any form
offered to the non-terminally disabled, and especially the mentally ill or cognitively
disabled, is not a “hate crime perpetrated by an ableist mechanism of the carceral,
colonial, capitalist state.” (Yes, this is really how they talk.)
It is these same activists, wielding the
often-incomprehensible language of what they deem “social justice,” who have
managed to sabotage medical and scientific research into the causes and origins
of the most debilitating conditions that prompt patients to seek MAiD in the
first place. Politically, they claim to represent an element of left-liberal
ideology purporting to support diversity and tolerance. But their rhetoric and
actions mimic that of some of the most motivated and vitriolic anti-abortion
zealots of the religious-conservative right. (Their hostility to psychiatry and
willingness to go to extreme lengths to hijack the field is arguably comparable
to the Church of Scientology.)
I therefore urge you not to pay heed to
them just because they self-identify as nominal progressives. They are
authoritarians, first and foremost. And they have been significant players in
why people like me, who do not agree with their goals, continue to suffer,
while medical science throws up its hands.
One point of concern in the expansion of
MAiD frameworks to include those suffering from mental health disorders is the
question of “irremediability.” There has for decades been much debate over the
best treatments for those suffering from things like major depressive disorder,
anxiety, eating disorders, and so on. Research has come a long way in
discovering new medications and therapeutic trainings that enable
long-suffering patients to live a better quality of life. But nevertheless, the
brain and the mind remains a puzzle that the world’s best researchers are still
figuring out, and not everyone responds to medication or counseling. Some
conditions in the D.S.M. don’t even have medication at all; namely, the
neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Down’s or cerebral palsy, that are
inborn, and condemn the person to misery throughout the entirety of his or her
life.
I suffer from one of those “broken brain”
disorders myself: autism spectrum disorder. All medical bodies are in agreement
that A.S.D. is inborn, it is heritable, and it has no cure. At present there is an aggressive campaign seeking to thwart any attempt at finding one. It
is comprised of many of the same people seeking to thwart the expansion of
MAiD.
These “neurodiversity” activists, whose
intent is to have brain-based disorders rebranded euphemistically as
“differences” to be accepted or celebrated like left-handedness or red hair,
are fond of the rallying cry: “nothing about us, without us.” Ostensibly they
mean that no decisions affecting the community are to be made without input
from members of that community. But the autism/mental illness “community” is no
more of a monolith than people with left-hand dominance or red hair, and yet
they insist they speak for all?
I was diagnosed at the tender age of
eight in 1994, a time when an “explosion” of cases was making headlines all over
the world. Parents and schoolteachers struggled to understand what was causing
a phenomenon of “lost children,” many of whom were unable to verbally express
their strife, and others who had a grasp on basic faculties but were unable to
thrive in school or other social settings (and later on, the workforce, upon
becoming adults). Some of them grew up to forcefully reject the scientific
consensus that autism was a devastating birth defect, and to militantly
pressure the medical community into altering its own perspective. But this is
not a “personality quirk”; my entire existence has been rife with ostracism,
stunted achievement, and a general sense of failure.
I am plenty articulate (more so in
writing than conversation), but it took me ten years to earn what is otherwise known
as a four-year bachelor’s degree. I have never been able to find gainful
employment, as I develop an involuntary nervous stammer during interviews, a
staccato that I can hear myself sputtering, and which leaves the recruiter with
a sense that I am incompetent. I have come to the conclusion that I am
unemployable. Numerous reports have shown that varying, but high, percentages
of adult autism sufferers are in the same mire.
Outlier individuals with this disorder who have become not just self-sufficient
but successful, such as environmentalist Greta Thunberg, Scottish singer Susan
Boyle, and the ever-controversial CEO of Twitter and Tesla Motors, Elon Musk,
himself a Canadian with roots in Saskatchewan, do not disprove the rule. Mr.
Musk has billions of dollars in his bank account. I would be lucky to have a
penny to my name.
When my parents, who are in their
seventies, are dead, I will likely become homeless. The “just expand social
assistance” argument carries no weight in my situation. Regardless of the fact
that it is highly unlikely the United States will have a public healthcare
system like Canada’s or any other country, the values that I hold dear and
which have been instilled in me from day one inform my perspective that “there
is no such thing as a free lunch.” I have watched people struggle to make end’s
meet, including in my own family. I would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt
“taking” from them and being unable to give back.
A handout is not a life with dignity.
Besides, it does not affect the prognosis of my condition: a housing program
could provide everyone with a palatial estate instead of derelict apartments,
and a universal basic income program could give everyone a million dollars. It
would not make a paraplegic walk, silence the voices in a schizophrenic’s
tormented mind, or make a person suffering from autism “not autistic” anymore,
in whatever capacity (speaking ability, social/relational ability,
employability, etc.). Besides, a job is more than money. It is a source of
self-sufficient dignity. There is no greater source of shame and sorrow than
being unable to earn one’s keep.
These activists, therefore, do not speak
for me. This disorder has destroyed my life. I have practically become a
recluse. I am just thirty-six, but I hope to not live to be forty. Honestly, I
would be better off if autism was a
terminal illness, because what doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you
stronger. In fact, I consider it “a fate worse than death.”
I therefore implore you to ignore these
activists, in the same manner as Campaign Life Coalition ought not have input
into an abortion bill, and to know where it is that they are coming from. If a
delay in MAiD expansion must be had, then I urge you to not put off the
expansion for much longer (one recent article in The Globe & Mail reported a group of psychiatrists asking for
2024). I also hope that you will sincerely give consideration to my request to
rethink exempting foreigners from the MAiD program in Canada.
I realize that my input carries much less
weight than that of a homegrown Canadian. But mental illness knows no
nationality, no borders — no arbitrary distinctions at all, and so it is my
sincerest wish this holiday season that you will read my letter and give pause
to my concerns. I also would like the Prime Minister to be made aware that I
have the utmost respect and admiration for the longtime campaigning and
advocacy for mental health awareness and compassion that his mother, Margaret
Trudeau, has engaged in for many years, an inspiring legacy that he continues
along with Mrs. Grégoire-Trudeau.
Honorable Ministers, I thank you kindly
for your attention to this matter. May you and your families have a wonderful Christmas
holiday, and a hopeful and positive New Year.
