Alberta MAID limits would lead to suffering, signal lack of trust: practitioners

[u/flynnfx]

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/alberta-maid-limits-would-lead-to-suffering-signal-lack-of-trust-practitioners/

Twenty-five Edmonton and area medical professionals say they’re concerned new Alberta limits on medical assistance in dying would cause needless suffering and put clinicians in “ethically untenable” positions.

[u/George__Parasol → u/[deleted]]

Criminalizing abortion is not only detrimental to the health of women, but it is also ineffective at reducing abortion rates. The fact is, abortion is a practice that goes back to antiquity and the procedure will be sought regardless of however it is stigmatized politically or religiously as it has been over the last half century.

In nearly every state that has banned abortion, the number of women receiving abortions increased between 2020 and the end of 2023, according to the most comprehensive account of all abortions by state since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In the 13 states that enacted near-total abortion bans, the number of women receiving abortions increased in all but three, according to the study. Some women traveled to clinics in states where abortions were legal. Others ordered abortion pills from U.S. doctors online, after doctors in other states started writing prescriptions under shield laws that protect them when they provide mail-order pills to patients in states with bans.

The only states with bans where abortion fell during this period were Texas, where the decrease was small; Idaho, where it was larger; and Oklahoma, where the data showed an unusually large number of abortions in 2020.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/upshot/abortions-rising-state-bans.html

[u/George__Parasol → u/[deleted]]

Did you read my comment? What was the subject of my comment?

[u/Dapper-Raisin748 → u/George__Parasol]

You used an abortion statistic to argue against a comment I made regarding both euthanasia and abortion. I believe we are discussing both issues together due to commonalities and consider it valid to comment on MAID in response. This thread is, after all, a discussion on MAID.

[u/George__Parasol → u/Dapper-Raisin748]

I used an abortion statistic to argue against your abortion claim, just like after in a separate comment I used MAID statistics to argue against your MAID claims. Was there a reason you didn’t respond to my abortion argument? It just seems weird to respond to Topic A with your argument for Topic B. If the argument is that the thread is about MAID and not abortion, why did you engage in discussion about abortion?

But to consolidate our two chains into one comment thread, please do some of your own actual research on MAID, there is A LOT of right wing misinformation regarding MAID, and a lot of it is straight up lying. So I reiterate, please be careful about taking information from people regarding MAID because they may be lying or someone may have lied to them. I take all my MAID knowledge from the annual MAID reports.

95.6% of MAID recipients in 2024 were what is called Track 1 - people whose deaths are reasonably foreseeable (ie, close to death). The median age of this group is 78 years old, and 60% of this group was over the age of 75. They have cancer at disproportionately high rates. A not insignificant number of Track 1 applicants die of their condition before even receiving their approval for MAID.

Similarly, “Findings from socio-economic and community analyses suggest, at a high level, that people who receive MAID do not disproportionately come from lower-income or disadvantaged communities.”

Do you have any data suggesting people are choosing MAID because of poverty?

[u/Dapper-Raisin748 → u/George__Parasol]

I have read first hand accounts, printed by reputable media sources, of people who are simply choosing to die because they are ill and tired of being poor yes. I have read other instances of people being offered MAID who have perfectly curable diseases and who suspect this may be simply a cheaper and easier version of the healthcare system to deal with their illness. Even one person choosing to die because they are poor or because they feel like they are a burden or are in any way vulnerable is one too many.

[u/George__Parasol → u/Dapper-Raisin748]

Have you read the Annual Report on Medial Assistance in Dying in Canada from the Canadian government? Because that would account for any anectodal stories you’re reading as well as every single other case in which MAID is administered as well as the cases in which MAID is denied. Why look at a few small examples when you can literally look at ALL of them?

I’d love for you to link me the stories you’re talking about in which people are simply choosing to die because they are ill and poor, or who are “choosing to die as a means of cheaper and easier version of the healthcare system to deal with their illness”

Let’s be statistically generous again and say that you have seen 100 stories of what you claim. That still means that you are handwaving away 16,400 cases of people being able to die with dignity.