From this perspective, a Quebec doctor’s musings about expanding MAID to cover infants – who, it must be noted, have no ability to consent to their own death as is required for everyone else currently “eligible” for MAID – was yet more evidence of a country sliding down the slippery slope critics had warned about when MAID was first proposed.
A month after Roy’s polarizing appearance, CMQ President Mauril Gaudreault attempted to tamp down the controversy or, as he put it, “reset the clock.” Testifying before the special committee, he made note of the hubbub that followed Roy’s presentation. “Even the federal minister of disability inclusion, Carla Qualtrough, was upset when we explained the Collège’s position on zero to one-year-old babies to her,” he admitted. Still, it’s nothing to get worked up about, he argued. “The Collège never mentioned euthanasia for babies, nor the idea of administering medical aid in dying, without the consent of parents,” Gaudreault said reassuringly. “What it did say was that it was an avenue to be explored and that the suffering of parents also had to be taken into account.”
Gaudreault then added, quite chillingly: “Medical assistance in dying is a form of care. It’s a medical procedure that may be appropriate in certain circumstances. It is not a matter of politics, morality or religion, but rather a medical matter.” To paraphrase: Quebec doctors are not currently killing babies. But they might in the future – though, they promise, not in secret. And if they do, the decision will be merely a medical issue with no moral quandaries to worry about.
How Far Will Canada Go?
When the special parliamentary committee issued its final report in February 2023, MAID for infants wasn’t among the listed recommendations. Attention instead shifted to a proposal that the Criminal Code of Canada be amended to allow for advance directives and that eligibility be extended to mature minors, or what are termed “12-plus”. Talk of killing babies legally in Canada largely disappeared until The Atlantic article appeared this fall. Plott Calabro’s one-line observation on infant MAID was then taken up by the U.K.’s Daily Mail. The paper’s U.S. correspondent dutifully contacted the CMQ to see if the organization’s position had changed since 2022.
It had. A statement the CMQ provided to the British tabloid goes much further than Roy or Gaudreault initially hinted at three years ago. No longer an idea to be “explored”, Quebec’s doctors told the Daily Mail they now believe “medical assistance in dying may be an appropriate treatment for babies suffering from extreme pain that cannot be relieved and who have severe malformations or serious polysymptomatic syndromes that destroy any prospect of survival.” Further, “The CMQ believes that parents should have the opportunity to obtain this care for their infant under these well-defined circumstances.”
So how close is Canada really to a euthanasia protocol for babies?
Among pro-life activists, infant MAID is not a pressing issue, mainly because Roy’s trial balloon received such a negative response in 2022. “Given the backlash, I haven’t really heard people talking about MAID for babies,” says Amanda Achtman, an ethics educator and advocate with Canadian Physicians for Life, in an interview. From Achtman’s perspective, the real action lies in dealing with the special committee’s concrete proposals, namely, the expansion of MAID to teen-agers and allowing advance requests in provinces other than Quebec, where such things are already possible.
Journalist Terry O’Neill has spent the past five years submitting Access to Information requests to BC Health regarding MAID statistics and protocols and then reporting on what he finds. He agrees with Achtman about the most newsworthy developments in the area. But considering the source of the infant proposal, he warns, nothing is off the table. “Quebec is always the first one,” O’Neill observes in an interview. “They were the first ones out of the gate [with MAID], and then they were the first ones with advance directives. So, we ignore this at our peril.”
The province’s habit of overlooking national laws or standards, O’Neill warns, means that mere federal reluctance won’t prevent it from happening. “With advance directives, Quebec simply decided they were going to ignore the Criminal Code of Canada,” he points out. “‘We’re going to tell our prosecutors not to prosecute,’ is their approach.” Given the province’s sangfroid about Canadian law, O’Neill worries, “They could very easily say, ‘We’re going to tell our prosecutors not to prosecute infanticide if it seems to be reasonable,’ given whatever criteria they want to come up with, that this is a life not worth living.”
MAID for Canadian babies clearly remains a possibility.
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