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The disabled woman battling euthanasia in Canada after nurses said she was 'selfish' for living
It was an odious encounter with a nurse in a remote Alberta hospital that persuaded Heather Hancock how Canada's euthanasia system was coming badly off the rails.
Hancock suffered from cerebral palsy since infancy and was used to bullying from her school days, but the treatment she got at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital was something else.
A nurse was helping her into the bathroom at night, during a lengthy bout of care for muscular spasms in 2019, when the carer crossed a line into the unthinkable.
'You should do the right thing and consider MAiD,' said the nurse, referring to the country's Medical Assistance in Dying program.
'You're being selfish. You're not living, you're merely existing.'
Heather Hancock, 56, says medical teams see her as a waste of healthcare dollars nowadays
A nurse at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital in Alberta told her she was 'selfish' for taking up hospital resources
Hancock, now 56, says she was 'gobsmacked' but stood her ground, telling the nurse that her life had value, even if she spent four fifths of it in a wheelchair.
'You have no right to push me to accept MAiD,' she recalls saying to her sneering carer.
She later complained about the nurse, who was taken off her care team, but did not make an official complaint.
Health Alberta said the nurse's comments were 'entirely unacceptable.'
For Hancock, it was the most egregious, but not the only time her supposed carers advised her to end her discomfort with a lethal injection.
On three separate occasions, medical staff nudged her toward MAiD, she says — all of them after Canada launched its euthanasia program in 2016.
That system has expanded rapidly.
Last year, doctors helped 15,280 suffering people end their lives prematurely, according to estimates obtained by DailyMail.com — a 15 percent jump on 2022.
Some 60,000 people have died from MAiD since the program was launched, and it accounts for 4.6 percent of all fatalities.
Doctor-assisted suicides helps recipients escape the misery of cancer, heart disease and other terminal illnesses, but for Hancock and others with disabilities, its availability has changed the way they are seen by carers.
'They just view me as a drain on the medical system and that my healthcare dollars could be spent on an able-bodied person,' she says.
Hancock was born in Alberta in 1968 and lived, studied, and worked as a hospital clerk for many years in British Colombia.
Her worsening muscular condition forced her to stop working more than a decade ago.
Americans should look at Canada before they open the 'Pandora's Box' of assisted dying, warns Heather Hancock
Euthanasia deaths jumped by more than 15 percent from 2022 to 2023, our projection shows
Heather Hancock pictured here with her father when she was 21 and able to stand unassisted
Heather Hancock, pictured here in 2017, has had to use a wheelchair more frequently throughout her life, and nowadays uses one 80 percent of the time
Spina bifida sufferer Tracy Polewczuk says nurses treat her like a 'sack of meat'
She nowadays claims disability benefits and lives in an assisted facility in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, writing and campaigning against assisted suicides in Canada and the US.
Canada's system is far more advanced than America's, where recipients in 10 states and Washington can request a cocktail of drugs that they ingest themselves, most often at home.
About a dozen US states have debated bills to legalize procedures this year.
Legislation in Delaware cleared both houses, leaving Gov John Carney with the ultimate decision about whether to sign it into law.
'Take a look at what's going on in this country,' Hancock said in a warning to Americans.
'It's a Pandora's Box. Once the lid is off, you cannot control it. All the restrictions disappear really quickly and your freedoms are undermined.'
Hancock is far from alone — disability rights groups in both countries say MAiD leaves the impaired even more vulnerable.
Another Canadian, Tracy Polewczuk, came forward this month about suffering similar problems in Quebec.
Polewczuk has spina bifida, a birth defect that can cause weak bones, and bemoans the worsening daily home care visits she gets in Pointe-Claire, Montreal.
'Pain sucks. We all agree. It's terrible. I'm in pain 24/7. It never stops. I can survive that,' she told CTV News.
'I cannot survive being treated like a sack of meat.'
On two separate occasions and without prompting, Polewczuk says she was told she was eligible for MAiD by members of her care team.
'It feels like we are being pushed towards the MAiD program instead of being given the help to live,' Polewczuk said.
Nearly two thirds of Canada's recipients of assisted suicides are sufferers of cancer
Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's liberal government, Canada has repeatedly made it easier to access euthanasia
More than 99.9 percent of Canada's assisted suicides are carried out by a doctor
'I want to survive. I want to thrive. I want my life back. I want the opposite of what they're trying to have us do.'
MAiD teams are available in all Canadian hospitals to present the elderly and infirm with the option of a doctor-assisted death.
But nurses are not supposed to be badgering disabled people about the terminal option — as was the case with Polewczuk and Hancock.
'We are sorry and disgusted to hear of Heather's experience,' Andrea Smith, a spokeswoman for Health Alberta, told DailyMail.com.
'In Alberta, there are no circumstances where an individual should ever be pressured into MAiD for any reason, let alone because an individual has a disability. What occurred here is entirely unacceptable.'
Canada's road to allowing euthanasia began in 2015, when its top court declared that outlawing assisted suicide deprived people of their dignity and autonomy. It gave national leaders a year to draft legislation.
The resulting 2016 law legalized both euthanasia and assisted suicide for people aged 18 and over, provided they met certain conditions.
They had to have a serious, advanced condition, disease, or disability that was causing suffering and their death was looming.
The law was later amended to allow people who are not terminally ill to choose death, significantly broadening the number of eligible people.
Critics say that change removed a key safeguard aimed at protecting people with potentially decades of life left.
Today, any adult with a serious illness, disease, or disability can seek help in dying.
Officials in February delayed plans to expand MAiD access to those with mental illnesses, kicking a decision back to 2027.
There are also efforts to make euthanasia available to 'mature minors.'
Euthanasia is legal in seven countries — Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain — plus several states in Australia.
Other jurisdictions, including a growing number of US states, allow doctor-assisted suicide — in which patients take the drug themselves, typically crushing up and drinking a lethal dose of pills prescribed by a physician.
In Canada, both options are referred to as MAiD, though more than 99.9 percent of such procedures are carried out by a doctor. The number of MAiD deaths in Canada has risen steadily by about a third each year.