Neo-Eugenics in Canada: Relational Autonomy, Rights, and Torture in Track-2 Euthanasia
Neo-Eugenics in Canada: Relational Autonomy, Rights, and Torture in Track-2 Euthanasia

Summary/Abstract: The expansion of euthanasia, or Track 2 Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) to non-terminal physically disabled people introduced in 2021 in Canada is recognized by many marginalized disabled individuals and allies as a modern form of eugenics. In September 2024, a coalition of disability organizations and two individuals harmed by creeping euthanasia policy temporarily stayed for mental illness until 2027 launched a Charter challenge against Track 2 MAiD. This paper considers the concepts of relational autonomy and rights to better understand complex issues in euthanasia debates from feminist and disability perspectives. Countering medical discourses sentimentalizing euthanasia limitedly as a rational choice supporting individual autonomy marked by access to medical treatment, it argues relational autonomy taking into account social dimensions supports disabled people’s right to health and life. As an essential component of living in dignity, this includes freedom from cruel and unusual punishment amounting to torture recognized in sterilization abuses targeting disabled, Indigenous, Roma, and other socially vulnerable women globally. Informed by personal experience of feminized poverty, chronic illness, and eugenic sterilization, I maintain prescribing “drug cocktails” like surgical sterilization rebranded as a treatment for disabilities undermines disabled people with intersecting racial, class, religious, and sexual identities collective autonomy and existence. I offer insights on controversies over drugs promoted as ensuring a dignified death compounding gendered medical trauma and injustice supporting repealing Track 2 MAiD for non-terminally ill disabled people.

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