Canadian evangelicals are decrying a new law that expands access to physician-assisted suicide to people who are sick or disabled but aren’t dying.
“Many of us are quite heartbroken over this,” said Derek Ross, the executive director of Christian Legal Fellowship. “We’re now dealing with a legal system that is making more and more exceptions to the once exception-less principle that you cannot consent to the harm of having your life ended by another person and that all lives are inherently and equally full of worth and value of dignity.”
Physician-assisted suicide—known popularly as “Medical Assistance in Dying” or MAID—has been legal in Canada since 2016. The law was limited to people who were experiencing what the Criminal Code called a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”: an illness, disease, or disability that causes enduring physical or psychological pain that cannot be relieved in any way the patient accepts. To be eligible, the patient also had to be dying.