Canadian Woman with Cerebral Palsy Bullied by Doctors for Refusing Euthanasia, Called ‘Selfish’
A prominent Christian author in Canada has gone public after being bullied by medical professionals for refusing to allow them to euthanize her because she suffers from cerebral palsy.
In 2019, an Alberta nurse reportedly tried to pressure Heather Hancock into signing up for euthanasia through the Canadian government’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program. However, when 56-year-old Hancock refused to allow doctors to end her life, the nurse blasted her for being “selfish.”
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hancock said that she was shamed and bullied for refusing MAiD at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital in Alberta.
According to Hancock, during a lengthy hospital stay in 2019 for a bout of muscle spasms, a nurse told her while helping her to the bathroom that Hancock “should do what is right and consider MAiD.”
She added that doctors warned her she was “being selfish” for refusing to be killed by them. They also reportedly told the successful author that she is “not living” but “merely existing.”
Hancock recalled feeling “gobsmacked” and told the nurse that her life had value even if she spent most of it in a wheelchair. “You have no right to push me to accept MAiD,” she says she told the nurse. “They just view me as a drain on the medical system and that my healthcare dollars could be spent on an able-bodied person,” Hancock told the Daily Mail.
In addition to the alleged 2019 incidents, Hancock says she has been routinely encouraged to end her life via euthanasia.
She revealed that she feels reluctant to seek advice from medical professionals due to the consistent efforts to railroad her into being killed.
Hancock says she has been encouraged to take MAiD on several separate occasions since Canada launched its euthanasia program in 2016. Doctors and nurses have repeatedly suggested that she’s a burden because she has cerebral palsy.
Hancock currently lives in an assisted living center in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Despite her disability, she remains an active writer. She has more recently become an activist against Canada’s growing euthanasia program.
Unfortunately, Hancock’s experience is not unique as many Canadians have reported being railroaded into MAiD.
A Canadian man recently spoke out saying he felt “completely traumatized” due to being pressured into signing up for euthanasia “multiple times.”
He said doctors had little interest in providing him with the proper care he needed while in the hospital.
Instead, the doctors were focusing on convincing the patient to kill himself.
First introduced in 2016, MAiD was initially only available to those who were terminally ill. However, in 2021, the Trudeau government expanded the deadly practice to be available to those who were not a risk of death, but who suffered from chronic illness.
While MAiD does not yet apply to the psychically ill, this is not due to a lack of trying on behalf of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
The government decided to delay the expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from such illnesses until 2027 following backlash from Canadians and prominent doctors. Several doctors pushed back and said they would refuse to euthanize psychically ill citizens.
The most recent reports show that MAiD is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.
When asked why MAiD was left off the list, the agency explained that it records the illnesses that led Canadians to choose to end their lives via euthanasia, not the actual cause of death, as the primary cause of death.
According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD lethal injections. This accounts for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year. The figure marks a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.
While the numbers for 2023 have yet to be released, all indications point to a situation even more grim than 2022.
yogaesoteric
July 24, 2024