We learned a few days ago that a funeral home is renting a room for a doctor to offer this “care” represented by medical assistance in dying (MAID).
This name is a euphemism to make legal what our laws would not have allowed if it had been called euthanasia or assisted suicide of a seriously ill person, it is good to remember that1. In the same armchair, one patient after another would arrive alive and leave dead.
I have nothing against the fact that everyone can choose their destiny and their end of life. I respect everyone’s choices in this matter. Death is one of the great stages of life and I don’t feel able to judge how people experience illness, the loss of autonomy and capacities and the approach of death. On the other hand, I feel a moral duty to help make our society supportive of the most vulnerable, including all sick and dying people.
The big question that we must ask ourselves as a society is this: are all the people who choose MAID making a truly free choice?
If the choice is influenced by the fact that the patient has to go through a change of environment or does not have access to good palliative care, he is not completely free, and not even free at all, in this period of great vulnerability.
For several years, I accompanied people in long-term and palliative care with a view to improving their well-being and reducing loneliness. They had a great need for warmth and humanity, dogs to pet, yes, but also someone to hold their hand. At the time, between 2012 and 2017, I completed a certificate in gerontology. It was well known that the supply of palliative care was insufficient. This is still the case, as demonstrated by the case of Andrée Simard2, 3. Dying residents of CHSLDs sometimes make the difficult choice of moving to have access to palliative care (it’s almost superhuman!) or to have MAID. And there again… this service is not offered everywhere4.
What if you want to die at home? Home care is insufficient, although variable depending on the region. The same for MA 5.
With all this data, when you learn that more people die while having recourse to medical aid in dying (MAD) in Quebec than in other territories where this medical intervention is permitted, do you ask yourself questions6, 7 ? Some of these countries have a long history of legalizing euthanasia (they use that word).
Me, I ask myself some questions. I think we are moving from a society in denial of illness and death to a society that trivializes euthanasia.
I’m also a veterinarian, a profession that practices animal euthanasia. Currently, my profession, on the side of companion animals, is in a movement of humanization of all care, and in particular euthanasia, for which we move animals less and less. Either they are entitled to a quiet time slot in their usual clinic, or they are euthanized at home. There are also many questions about the psychological impact of administering death8. I am going to state the obvious here: it is about animals, and all these questions are more and more present.
At the same time, we consider the euthanasia of a human person as a “care”, it is trivialized as if it were a care like any other. Fortunately, M.me Hivon, ex-MP and godmother of the law on MAID and Minister Bélanger spoke about the marketing of this medical act9.
Contrary to what some would have us believe, euthanizing a person is not a trivial act. Neither for caregivers nor for the patient’s entourage. Like the members of the Commission on End-of-Life Care 10, I would like people to wonder why the AMM is so popular in Quebec. As former president of my professional order, I expect the College of Physicians to position itself in the name of human dignity.
As a woman who has lived as a granddaughter and as a daughter, as a companion who has experienced palliative care, as a bioethicist, as a veterinarian focused on comparisons, I want to tell us to calm down a bit and reflect. Let us avoid passing in a short time from the denial of death to the denial of the needs of the dying. Let’s offer a real choice to people at the end of life. It is a question of humanity. The one we leave to future generations.