Certainly. It's a nuanced discussion.
We treat people like they're Mr. Spock in the literature and in our discussions of capacity. They're not. They're messy. They're driven by emotions and despair and hopelessness. The very offering of MAID is a message at that point in time that we don't have anything else for them.
The undermining of the clinical relationship by the very offering of MAID is profound. Unless you're living it and experiencing it, I'm not sure how to communicate what it means to rob people of hope, especially when they're having to struggle over time.
Monsieur Thériault talked about whether I am going to make somebody suffer for 30 years. If they've lived for 30 years, they've been living a life. What has that life been for them? To say that they shouldn't have had those 30 years.... They made a choice to live.
Autonomy is my choice to do what I want with my body. I can kill myself. That can sound callous, but it's not. People thoughtfully plan their own deaths. I can tell you stories of how people plan their suicides. If you have some fantasy that everybody does this horrible, impulsive thing, it's uncommon. It's about 10% of people. To be clear, the impulsivity is not genuine impulsivity. They have rehearsed it in their heads for months. We have research showing that. That's autonomy: I can do what I want.
I'm objecting to the system being set up to induce, to seduce, to invite and to rob people of hope. That's not what we, as a country, should be doing to the vulnerable.