In the wake of Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s announcement that the Carney government plans to ban euthanasia for people struggling solely with mental illness, the suicide activists are out in force. Euthanasia practitioner Jean Marmoreo promptly penned a truly vile column for the Globe and Mailtitled, “Refusing MAID for mental disorders will come at a terrible cost.”
That vile cost? People suffering from mental illness being given suicide prevention rather than suicide assistance.
Marmoreo, co-author of The Last Doctor: Lessons in Living from the Front Lines of Medical Assistance in Dying, opens her column with her credentials: “I have sat at more deathbeds than most politicians will ever picture in their lifetimes.” For over ten years, she has helped facilitate those deathbeds. According to Marmoreo, refusing to expand eligibility for lethal injections to the mentally ill is “politically driven cowardice.”
Let’s be clear: despite the cynical games that the Liberals are currently playing with vulnerable Canadian lives, banning euthanasia for mental illness will save thousands of lives. Approximately one in five Canadians struggle with a mental health problem or illness; about 50 percent of Canadians by age 40. Care for mental illness is excruciatingly difficult to access; the Canadian Mental Health Association estimates a funding gap of over a billion dollars.
Marmoreo, however, insists that “Canadians can’t afford to have our legislators choose this path when it comes to people with mental illness,” even though “(w)e all carry a little mental illness from time to time.” She insists – contrary to the testimony of many mental health experts who testified to the recent Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying – that the same standards currently being applied to other conditions would be applied to mental illness.
Of course, that is one of the concerns. Two U of T psychiatrists—including one who has euthanized patients—recently took to the op-ed page of the New York Times to warn that Canada has gone too far, and that people who should not be approved for euthanasia are being approved.
Then, Marmoreo writes this:
Ottawa is also telling a patient with treatment-resistant depression or complex PTSD that their agony is less credible than another person’s cancer. All this simply because their illness resides in the brain. Anyone who believes that the pain of mental illness is less terrible than the pain of cancer hasn’t experienced the helplessness of sitting with a family in the face of their child or loved one’s severe depression.
Psychiatry is understandably uncomfortable with the idea of predicting irremediability. And perhaps a cure for treatment-resistant depression will arrive tomorrow. As doctors, we always practice with hope, and these complex cases test us.
That is dreck. The suffering experienced by the mentally can be just as agonizing as cancer. The difference is that psychiatrists like Dr. John Maher—who specializes in the “hopeless” cases—say that mental illness is not irremediable. That there are more options. Marmoreo is presenting a false choice. Nobody is comparing suffering. Everybody understands the difference between a 25-year-old with depression and someone in the final stages of terminal cancer.
While admitting that the “illness lies in the brain,” Marmoreo also claims that lethal injections for the mentally ill are about choice and, of course, “bodily autonomy.” What does consent mean when someone’s mind is sick? Millions of Canadians know someone who experienced suicidal ideation and is now thriving. Millions of Canadians know people who lived lives of unbearable suffering and are now incredibly grateful to be alive. Millions of Canadians know people who would be dead under the regime she is advocating.
Marmoreo then pulls out the most cynical trick in her euthanasia handbag: the “terrible costs” she is referring to are “patients who deteriorated and ended their lives alone,” who might have been carefully suicided by a doctor. To sum up: if we don’t help them kill themselves, some will kill themselves! At no point does Marmoreo address the many Canadians who experienced suicidal ideation or attempt suicide but survive.
In 2024, for example, there were an estimated 100,000 suicide attempts in Canada. Excluding euthanasia, there were 4,394 suicide deaths. It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize what kind of death toll we will face when we formally affirm cognitive distortions and suicidal ideation in the mentally ill, and decide that brain-sick people can opt for a state-funded suicide. Many people do not commit suicide out of fear, or care for their loved ones. Medicalizing will change all that.
As someone who knows and loves many people who suffer and suffered from mental illness, I cannot adequately express my contempt for Marmoreo’s vile advocacy. She says she has sat at countless deathbeds over the past ten years. She is now angry that there will not be more. Those of us who have done everything in our power to persuade loved ones to stay and not to go recognize her for what she is: one of the most dangerous people in Canada.
