2 opposing perspectives and 6 true facts about Canada’s assisted dying policy.
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:36 Fact #1
3:10 Dr. Green Introduction
3:29 Background info
4:07 Fact #2
5:21 Dr. Maher introduction
5:42 Fact #3
7:20 Fact #4
8:31 Fact #5
10:04 Fact #6
11:20 Questions
13:44 Personal experiences
15:47 Debunk
17:10 Uncertainties
19:00 Closing statements
In 2016, a Supreme Court case in Canada removed the criminal penalties for doctors providing a patient with a medically assisted death. Since then, the country has been embroiled in a legal and ethical debate about where to draw the line on who qualifies for one.
In the US states where it's legal, that line is drawn at a terminal diagnosis with 6 months to live. On the other end of the spectrum, countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands allow anyone suffering from a serious condition to qualify, so long as they’ve exhausted treatments available to them.
After a series of court cases, Canada has landed somewhere closer to where the Benelux countries are: there is no terminal diagnosis requirement, and next year, people whose only serious condition is a mental illness will qualify for an assisted death.
While the Canadian public appears to show large support for the policy change, there are vocal minorities who believe that it is dangerous. Many in the disability rights community believe that making a disability an eligible condition for assisted death is discriminatory. Some psychiatrists and mental health practitioners are concerned about when you can decide a mental illness is eligible — and that it could hinder the work of suicide prevention.
This is the debate we present here. Dr. Stefanie Green is a practitioner of medically assisted dying (MAID) in British Columbia and is the co-founder and president of the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP). She also wrote a book about her work as a MAID practitioner, called This is Assisted Dying. She argues that Canada’s policies have been successful and have been extremely meaningful for her patients.
Dr. John Maher is a psychiatrist based in Ontario who leads an Assertive Community Treatment group and is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health. He argues that there aren’t enough safeguards in place in Canada and that offering the option of euthanasia to people with mental health will undermine the suicide prevention work he does.
In Vox Video’s take on a debate, we asked both participants to identify facts that their opponent would have to concede are true. They were given an opportunity to review each other’s facts in advance and, in a video call, agreed on a set of six. In the video, you’ll see those facts presented, with each participant given the opportunity to add a “footnote” to their opponent’s facts. We added four additional rounds to our format to give our participants more time to flesh out their viewpoints.
Here's a document that has all of the sources we used for each fact:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRuMU81aB8NSr9Aub5vH7Q_ytg657CWecth30_KGoZIQVdb3ANNqFrSOjd4esTAgYcC2kj8U6nlSXEx/pub
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