Thank you.
We have to be really suspect of any federal law that is disproportionately going to result in dead women. Unless we're going to say that we're totally different from the experience in Europe or that somehow MAID for mental illness is fundamentally different from what we've already seen with track 2, we are going to end up with dead women—dead women with mental illnesses, who have a history of being marginalized and whose autonomy has been denied precisely by the medical profession.
I want to point out that there's other litigation going on in Ontario that also has individual plaintiffs who have had an enormous burden imposed on them by the existence of MAID. Both of those plaintiffs have mental illness. Both of those plaintiffs were offered MAID when what they were seeking was support to live. Both of those plaintiffs have a long history of marginalization by the medical profession.
The idea that offering death is somehow going to promote the autonomy of women with mental illness is frankly just so appalling that I don't know how to respond to it. Women with mental illness deserve access to a dignified life.
Thank you.