A mother of a disabled boy is asking the Canadian government to extend euthanasia to children so a lethal injection might be given to her son.

Karie-Lyn Pelletier, from L’Islet, says she wants to be able to end the life of her four-year-old boy, Abel, if his condition further deteriorates.

The child suffers from Mednik syndrome, an incurable genetic disease which has left him deaf and with severe learning disabilities and intestinal problems.

Miss Pelletier says she wants euthanasia to be “the end that will deliver Abel from his sufferings and the fight he leads”.

She is supported by Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, a politician who worked on the Bill C-7 which in March removed many of the safeguards from the country’s five-year-old Medical Assistance in Dying regulations permitting euthanasia and assisted suicide.