(Jacobin) – In Canada, physician-assisted suicide is available even to people who aren’t suffering from terminal illnesses. In the context of austerity, this often means people are offered death rather than the material support that could alleviate their suffering.

At one time, it would have been possible to argue that the rate of MAiD provision, however high, reflects little more than the demand to have control over the end of one’s life when one is suffering from a condition that will soon end one’s life in any case. But two things make this hard to maintain. One is a recent legal change expanding who is eligible for MAiD, and the other is Canada’s persistent neoliberal trajectory, struggling economy, and concurrent cost-of-living and housing crises. The connection between these two factors is especially disturbing. (Read More)