Physician-assisted suicide programs in the US and Canada are discriminating against patients with serious medical conditions according to a panel discussion at the Religion News Association.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Physician-assisted suicide programs in the United States and Canada are discriminating against patients with serious medical conditions even when their cases are not terminal, in many cases pushing to end their lives for financial reasons rather than medical.
Catholic News Agency reported that a panel of disability-rights advocates recently examined the landscape of the issue during the Religion News Association’s 2025 annual conference. During the panel, Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF) executive director Matt Vallière accused state euthanasia programs of discriminating against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, noting that when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”
Inclusion Canada CEO Krista Carr, meanwhile, discussed her organization’s lawsuit against the expansion of Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) program to “people with an incurable disease or disability who are not dying, so they’re not at end of life and their death is not reasonably foreseeable.”
More astonishingly, she added, this “funded right” to lethal injection is slated to be expanded to mental illness in 2027.
“By setting out a timeline of three years, it’s an indication that the systems need to move towards readiness in two years. There’s the opportunity to do another review, and to assess the readiness of the system through a parliamentary process,” Health Minister Mark Holland said in February of the move, which Dying with Dignity Canada presents as a matter of “equality” for “those whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness.”
“It’s being called a choice,” but “it’s not a choice,” Carr said. Rather, these programs are pushing the “choice” on patients in “a desperate situation where they can’t get the support they need.”
As LifeSiteNews recently covered, the “most recent reports show that (medical assistance in dying) is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.”
In America, nine states plus the District of Columbia currently allow assisted suicide.
Support is available to talk those struggling with suicidal thoughts out of ending their lives. The American Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and the Canadian Suicide Crisis Helpline can both be reached by calling or texting 988.
