My fellow BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY blogger, Mich Ciurria, often uses the term cry-baby to refer to the privileged nondisabled white men who populate philosophy in the US and complain about the (flailing) democratization of the profession there.

Yet Canada has its own share of cry-babies in philosophy, in academia more broadly, and elsewhere, as a survey of coverage in this week’s popular press and social media demonstrates. Alas, contemporary philosophers in Canada remain under the spell cast by their eugenic philosophical and bioethical forebears—dating back at least to the bioethical and philosophical justifications for Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer’s murder of his daughter Tracy in 1993—and thus seem resolved not to recognize them as such, that is, as cry-babies.

But cry-babies they are: Senator Pamela Wallin, feminst legal theorist Jocelyn Downie, and psychiatrist Mona Gupta, among other proponents of MAiD. Their goal? Universal, unconditional, and unqualified provision of euthanasia for disabled people (and only disabled people) whose deaths are in no way foreseeable, regardless of the substantial body of political analysis and empirical studies that details how rampant poverty and social exclusion of disabled people in Canada compel a growing number of them/us to allow themselves to be killed/sacrificed at the altar of (neo)liberal capitalism and its rhetoric.

Throughout the week, that is, one could thus read an assortment of news items in which these defenders of the continued “expansion” of MAiD upheld the sanctity of liberal dogma and decried the “bias,” “the unevenness,” and “the unfairness” of the single recommendation contained in The Special Parliamentary Committee Report on the continued “expansion” of MAiD, calling it “unconstitutional” and vowing to take their mission to the highest settler court of the land.

Myself, I found it both fascinating and fulfilling to witness Wallin, Downie, and their band of mercenaries (who have insulted, condescended to, ignored, and dismissed disabled people and their allies in Senate hearings, committee meetings, and legislative votes) act like frustrated toddlers whose bag of toys had been taken away from them. What did the report recommend?

“That the Government of Canada amend the Criminal Code to indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from eligibility for medical assistance in dying.”

In the months ahead, we will surely be bombarded by news items in the mainstream press that appeal to outdated ideas about autonomy and “dignity in dying”. In my forthcoming article in the special issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly that I’m guest editing on the theme of marginalized feminist perspectives on Foucault, I will introduce and recommend a dramatically contrasting new way in which to understand the notions of autonomy, death with dignity, and others in the context of MAiD especially.

In the meantime, I invite you to read the extremely detailed and learned article on MAiD that Isabel Grant (Law, UBC) and Trudo Lemmens (Law, U of Toronto) have contributed to the Philosophy and Theory of Disability Area of The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies that I curated/edited.

Both Trudo Lemmens and Isabel Grant are widely recognized as experts on the subject of MAiD and appeared before the Special Parliamentary Committee, as well as testified to other committees and hearings of the Canadian and other governments. Trudo is in particular an expert on the situation of MAiD in Belgium and the Netherlands. Isabel is an expert on MAiD, women, and gender discrimination.

You can find the article “Disability and Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD)” by Isabel and Trudo here: Disability and Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies | Oxford Academic.