Thoughts on MAiD

When people who don’t have a medical condition that is killing them go to someone for help, they’re typically not wanting to die. They want to stop feeling the way they do. They want to know options. They need someone to hear them. They need someone to see them. They need to know that they matter. For some people, too many things have shown them that they haven’t been heard. That they haven’t been seen. That they don’t matter. MAID can help a person die with the belief that they’re worthless. It finally validates them. It validates the one thing that doesn’t need to be validated.

If we don’t have a medical condition that is causing us to painfully die and we are being told about MAID, we are essentially being told about assisted suicide. So as a disabled person, if I felt like I wanted to die I would automatically be supported on that path?  Some of us are getting that idea implanted into our heads. If a person is talking to a professional about the way their life is going it’s often because they are looking for support in figuring out how to live. If a person who is suicidal expresses that they are suicidal what’s the solution? I’ve always been told that if I expressed being suicidal that other professionals would need to be told. Not that I’d be encouraged to go through with it. What safeguards are involved around MAID? As a person who has had to figure out creative ways to get needs met, I don’t see how I would be kept away from using MAID as a form of suicide. MAID can be used to encourage people who may be physically and mentally vulnerable to do what they don’t actually want to do. The MAID process may end up being the first and last time a person feels cared about and cared for.

             “I don’t have a safe place to live…” “There’s MAID.”

              “I’m being abused by systems…” “There’s MAID.”

              “I’m living in poverty…” “There’s MAID.”

Although these issues are societal and not medical, there are people in these situations that are hearing MAID is an option.

When people are called for jury duty it’s a process involving multiple questions in an effort to weed out biased thoughts and opinion to try to ensure the process is fair. Are the people who are suggesting MAID questioned for any biased thoughts and opinions. Death is generally irreversible.

In theory MAID is not bad. In practice it has too many variables that make it bad.

I’ve been told by professionals:

• that I couldn’t cross the street by myself
• that I couldn’t use public transit by myself
• that I couldn’t use the stove by myself
• that I couldn’t shower by myself

It’s not that I wasn’t capable of doing these things. I wasn’t going to be allowed to do these things.

Before you let me die with dignity can you let me experience life with dignity? If I’ve never known life with dignity as a person born with a disability telling me about dying with dignity tells me I don’t matter as a person.