Selfadvocatenet.com Our Voice,Our Strength

Duncan’s mother’s life came to an end, to Alicia’s shock, Oct. 29 at age 61. After experiencing a decline in health after a car accident in March 2020, Donna D...uncan, her daughter found out, had applied for and been approved to end her life through MAiD. She was scheduled to die in less than 48 hours. The Duncan family believes their mother had not followed through with any prescribed treatment. Since her death the family has been able to review her records and discovered that the diagnosis for which she received MAiD had never been confirmed by a specialist, a safeguard legislated in Bill C-7. The family is supporting a police investigation into Donna Duncan’s death, the first such investigation into a MAiD killing. We cannot understand how activist doctors can justify access to specialists taking months or years yet access to dying can take just days, said Duncan. This is a direct indication of a broken health-care system and killing patients who have the possibility of recovery is not the answer. Donna Duncan’s story was one of many related at a May 10 news conference in Ottawa intended to sound the alarm to the apparent negligence in ignoring these voices. Arguments were made for greater safeguards to protect the vulnerable and marginalized persons who could find medically-assisted death easier to access than social services, medical specialists or treatments that could help ease suffering. Gabrielle Peters, co-organizer of the Disability Filibuster, a grassroots group of Canadian disability and equality right activists, has heard the stories of many in their community who say MAiD legislation is adversely impacting their lives. One person disclosed that the expansion of MAiD has triggered suicidal ideation, which combined with their unsupported chronic condition and poverty is making it a sometimes hourly struggle to go on. The lack of adequate support throughout the pandemic for those with disabilities, Peters says, makes the ease of accessibility to MAiD an even greater injustice. The pandemic response and failure to include us and to actually create policy that ignores or conflicts with our needs, while crafting a specifically tailored just for us red carpet to lethal injection, can’t help be interpreted as a value statement on our lives if not outright coercion, said Peters in a statement. See more