Canadian woman with autism diagnosis approved for ‘assisted dying’ 

5th April 2024

A young woman has successfully applied to the Canadian medical establishment to proceed with assisted suicide despite her having no physical illness. Her only diagnoses involve autism and ADHD.

Her ‘Medical Assistance In Dying’ (MAID) application was granted in December but her father has sued to stop it from proceeding.

Her only known diagnoses described in court earlier this month are autism and ADHD.

A judge rejected his suit on March 25th, but granted a stay of 30 days to allow him appeal to a higher court. The woman in the case is known as “M’V.”  and a judge in the case said her “right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V.”.

The case may break new ethical boundaries in Canada, but the notion of legally ending the life of a person solely because of an A.S.D. diagnosis is not completely novel.

State-sanctioned euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2001.

However, a recent British study of 929 cases in the country found that at least 39 people had been approved for medically assisted death explicitly because of intellectual disability or an A.S.D. condition.

Those cases included five people younger than 30 who cited autism as either the only reason or a major contributing factor for euthanasia.