Mors voluntaria: exploring the relationship between medical assistance in dying in Canada and suicide

Since 2016, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation has provided immunity from prosecution for medical professionals who assist patients in dying. The MAiD law is an exemption to a section of the Criminal Code of Canada that prohibits assisting in suicide. The legislation claims that there is a difference between medically assisted dying and suicide. However, this distinction is not self-evident as medical assistance in dying is a way for a person to kill oneself. Moreover, the two acts share many important similarities: both are self-initiated; both result in the death of the individual who self-initiates the act; both can be done with or without assistance; and both can have a wide range of underlying reasonings, intentions, and wishes motivating the decisions. Given the deadly and perverse moral implications of overlap between suicide and a MAiD provision, this thesis does not uncritically accept the distinction, but instead aims to thoroughly investigate it. The findings of the analysis show that although MAiD provisions are not necessarily suicides, MAiD is not always distinct from suicide. To support these findings, presented throughout the analysis are documented cases of MAiD in which the criteria that describe a suicide clearly apply and where prevention, not assistance in dying, ought to have been the governing societal value.