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Human Interest·By Angeline Tan
Daughter reveals her fight against Canada’s assisted-dying machine
Alicia Duncan never imagined she would be fighting to stop her own mother’s death.
Yet in October 2021, she and her sister, Christie, found themselves scrambling against a Canadian healthcare system that had approved Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) for their mother, Donna, even as undeniable signs of psychiatric distress emerged.
Alicia Duncan and her sister, Christie, were powerless to stop the Canadian MAiD machine that rushed their suicidal mother toward medically-assisted death.
Duncan's book, "The Other Side of the Straitjacket," recounts her mother's story, which is a cautionary tale for those who believe assisted dying can ever be made safe through application of procedural safeguards.
It is a horror story showing how little oversight and examination are required for a person to be approved for death, and how stopping the euthanasia process of a loved one once it has begun — regardless of objections, concerns, or medical evidence presented — is largely impossible.
Duncan believes, "No one should become eligible for death because appropriate care is unaffordable, unavailable locally, or subject to an impossible wait. A treatment has not failed if the person was never able to receive it. The healthcare system failed.”
Donna, a retired psychiatric nurse, had no terminal illness but grappled with intense anxiety, paranoia, malnutrition, and the lasting aftermath of a concussion. Though she made clear to her daughters that she did not wish to die, she just could not “live like this anymore,” according to Duncan.
Ultimately, Canada’s healthcare system interpreted Donna’s anguish as a clinical verdict rather than a cry for support.
Just four hours after her release from an involuntary psychiatric detention triggered by a suicide attempt, Donna was euthanized, to her daughters' horror.
Donna’s experience, now recounted in Alicia’s memoir, “The Other Side of the Straitjacket,” stands as a chilling cautionary tale to those who assume assisted dying can be rendered safe solely by adding procedural safeguards.
Her case discloses how swiftly a care-oriented system can morph into one of expediency—presenting death as the answer to pain that might otherwise have been tackled through treatment.
Donna’s deterioration started following a car crash and concussion in February 2020.
By autumn 2021, she was consuming only about 800 calories daily, leaving her physically weakened and mentally unsteady. Her family’s long-standing doctor declined to evaluate her for MAiD, convinced she was not nearing a terminal condition.
Still, Donna persisted, and within days she obtained approval from two MAiD assessors—one of them a nurse practitioner who saw her just once before signing the authorization
Duncan and her sister discovered the planned procedure on October 24, with the procedure scheduled for October 26. They swiftly reached out to the hospital, the assessing clinicians, and law enforcement, pleading for the process to be paused so a thorough psychiatric assessment could take place.
“We told them she was in crisis and asked them to stop the process long enough for her to receive a proper psychiatric assessment,” Duncan told Live Action News.
Following legal advice, the sisters secured an emergency court injunction.
A judge agreed there was enough evidence to question Donna’s capacity, temporarily delayed her MAiD procedure, and ordered a psychiatric assessment.
Upon learning her death had been postponed, Donna tried to take her own life.
She was then admitted to the same psychiatric ward she had once overseen and was placed under a 48-hour involuntary hold. However, when she was discharged on October 29, hospital staff were aware she planned to go home and follow through with MAiD.
About four hours later, she was euthanized.
Donna’s case laid bare the dangerous divide between what is technically “legal” and what is genuinely “ethically secure,” Duncan maintained.
Police launched an unprecedented investigation into her death in Canada, only to shut it down—not because all actions involved were lawful, but because evidence was regarded as inadequate.
Meanwhile, Fraser Health Authority refused to grant Donna’s MAiD assessment files to Duncan, in her role as executor, or to investigators, invoking privacy statutes that needed Donna’s consent—even though she had already died.
Such a situation gave rise to a self-reinforcing loop of non-accountability: the documents necessary for scrutiny were withheld, the inquiry was dropped for lack of proof, and that very dismissal was later cited as confirmation that no wrongdoing had taken place.
The chronology alone displayed how readily safeguards can be circumvented. Donna's daughters had just 48 hours to act.
“It reveals how quickly a scheduled death can become almost impossible to challenge,” Duncan told Live Action News, adding:
“They managed to secure a temporary injunction, but even that did not produce a coordinated clinical response to an escalating psychiatric crisis. We managed to secure a temporary injunction, but even that did not create a coordinated clinical response to what was clearly an escalating psychiatric crisis.
Most disturbing was that her suicide attempt and involuntary psychiatric detention did not end the MAiD process. She moved from a psychiatric hold to an assisted death within hours of leaving the hospital.
Families should not have a veto over a capable adult's medical decisions. But when a family brings forward credible evidence of suicidality, impaired judgment, coercion, or untreated mental illness, there must be an independent mechanism capable of stopping the process.
In Canada, we discovered that the safeguards were largely controlled by the same people whose decisions we were questioning."
As of the time of reporting, Canada has postponed—but not scrapped—its proposal to extend MAiD eligibility to individuals whose only underlying condition is a mental illness, with rollout still slated for March 2027.
In view of this, Duncan believes that this planned expansion ought to be halted permanently. After all, medical professionals lack the ability to definitively judge whether a psychiatric condition is untreatable or to forecast that someone will never recover, she reasoned.
Although psychological distress can be profound and long-lasting, prognoses remain inherently uncertain—and feelings of despair may themselves be manifestations of the disorder under evaluation, she noted.
Recounting Donna’s case, Duncan said:
“She was approved despite serious psychiatric symptoms and a suicide attempt immediately before she died. If the existing regime could not safely distinguish those states in her case, expanding eligibility directly on the basis of mental illness would be extraordinarily dangerous.”
Duncan says she views her mother's death as a "system failure," adding:
"MAiD became the answer before the causes of her desperation had been properly addressed. She was not choosing between death and meaningful, accessible care. She was trying to escape a condition she believed would never improve.
Compassion is not always agreeing with a person at their lowest point. Sometimes it means staying with them through the crisis and refusing to treat their hopelessness as a final prognosis.”
Duncan added:
“My mother's case demonstrates that the current Canadian system already struggles to distinguish suicidality from a reasoned request for assisted death. She was approved despite serious psychiatric symptoms and a suicide attempt immediately before she died. If the existing regime could not safely distinguish those states in her case, expanding eligibility directly on the basis of mental illness would be extraordinarily dangerous."
Instead, what Donna needed was coordinated psychiatric and medical treatment: a comprehensive assessment, nutritional rehabilitation, specialist follow-up for post-concussion cognitive changes, and time to stabilize.
Growing numbers of international watchdogs cite Canada as a warning about the perils of assisted suicide, but Duncan noted parallel patterns in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, select regions of Australia, and an expanding roster of U.S. states.
Yet the most alarming shift extends beyond legislation—it’s cultural.
Dignity, once regarded as an intrinsic quality belonging to every person, is now often framed as a matter of judgment. When someone is self-sufficient and contributing, their existence is labeled dignified. When they rely on others, live with disability, or struggle with mental illness, their life begins to be regarded as lacking dignity.
When the dignity of human life becomes conditional, someone must determine which lives continue to qualify.
Already, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer has quantified the healthcare savings tied to MAiD, while the UK’s impact evaluations have measured the economic consequences of legalizing assisted dying. With strained medical systems, aging demographics, and the high price of delivering intricate care, MAiD slashes end-of-life expenditures, and governments acknowledge this fiscal advantage all too well.
“Canada’s original debate was largely framed around competent adults experiencing intolerable suffering near the end of life," Duncan noted. "Less than a decade later, eligibility had expanded to people whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable, and the law included a future expansion for mental illness alone. Once assisted dying is accepted as healthcare and access to it is framed as a right, every exclusion creates pressure for the next group to be included."
Among Duncan's deepest worries is the vast authority wielded by MAiD assessors in Canada.
The Criminal Code consistently defers to the judgment of the attending physician or nurse practitioner, placing life-and-death determinations in the hands of individuals whose personal interpretations, beliefs, and comfort with risk can vary widely.
Although the law mandates that assessors possess expertise related to the condition causing a person’s suffering, “expertise” does not equate to specialization.
A clinician may deem himself sufficiently informed about a disorder without holding the advanced training required to accurately diagnose it, evaluate its likely course, or judge whether additional interventions might offer relief.
Both Duncan and her sister have been traumatized by the whole ordeal.
“The trauma came not only from losing our mother but also from knowing we saw a crisis unfolding, tried to intervene, and were treated as an obstacle,” Duncan stated. “I understand how permanent despair can feel. I also know that timely treatment and support can change what a person believes is possible.”
Duncan's memoir focuses on her mother Donna, their household, and the moment they placed faith in the very systems meant to identify Donna’s acute distress but failed them. She told Live Action News:
“I hope her story becomes a lens through which readers look more closely at the institutions we are taught to trust and defer to. I want it to incite curiosity: Who holds the power? What happens when professionals get it wrong? Who is allowed to raise concerns? And what accountability exists after an irreversible decision has been made?
Most of all, I want readers to understand that this could happen to a family they know. It happened to ours."
Duncan's advice to families who receive sudden notice that a loved one is scheduled for MAiD would be to "begin with open communication" in an effort to understand the person's fears and feelings in the situation. She stated:
“In an end-of-life context, some people have been led to fear that their death will inevitably be painful, frightening or undignified unless they choose an assisted death. Families can help by learning about appropriate palliative-care options and making sure their loved one understands what care may be available.
It is also important to tell them clearly that they are not a burden. Feeling like a burden is a recurring factor reported in Canadian MAiD cases, and it can profoundly shape what appears to be an autonomous decision.”
Duncan is passionate about end-of-life care reform, for she thinks that people need honest information about palliative care, pain and symptom management, the dying process, and the support available to families.
She insists they should not be frightened into believing that an assisted death is the only way to avoid pain, indignity, or becoming a burden.
“No one should become eligible for death because appropriate care is unaffordable, unavailable locally, or subject to an impossible wait,” Duncan reinforced. “A treatment has not failed if the person was never able to receive it. The healthcare system failed.”
Duncan also called for government accountability, telling Live Action News:
“Canada needs to report much more than annual totals. Reporting should include underlying diagnoses, eligibility track, prognosis, assessment timelines, assessor specialties, and whether the person had recent emergency visits, suicide attempts, psychiatric detention, cognitive impairment, or substance-use concerns.
We should know what treatments and supports were recommended, which were actually available, whether they were attempted, and how long the person had been waiting. Governments should also report whether requests were influenced by housing insecurity, poverty, loneliness, caregiver burden, or lack of disability support... Public confidence should be earned through evidence, not demanded through secrecy."
Duncan contends that the story of her mother Donna is not an anomaly. Rather, it is the tip of the iceberg for many others who have been or would be affected by assisted dying laws.
For those who believe every human life possesses inherent dignity—from conception to natural death—Alicia Duncan’s story is an urgent call to act before more families find themselves on the other side of the straitjacket, watching helplessly as the system chooses death over care.
Author's Note: “The Other Side of the Straitjacket: A Daughter’s Story of Mental Illness and Assisted Dying” is available through bookstores and online retailers across North America and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.aliciaduncan.com.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Liberty Counsel
·
Human Interest
Lisa Bast
·
Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·
Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
·
Issues
Bridget Sielicki
·
Politics
Nancy Flanders
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·
Activism
Angeline Tan
·
Activism
Angeline Tan
·
Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·
Activism
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest·By Angeline Tan
Daughter reveals her fight against Canada’s assisted-dying machine
Alicia Duncan never imagined she would be fighting to stop her own mother’s death.
Yet in October 2021, she and her sister, Christie, found themselves scrambling against a Canadian healthcare system that had approved Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) for their mother, Donna, even as undeniable signs of psychiatric distress emerged.
Alicia Duncan and her sister, Christie, were powerless to stop the Canadian MAiD machine that rushed their suicidal mother toward medically-assisted death.
Duncan's book, "The Other Side of the Straitjacket," recounts her mother's story, which is a cautionary tale for those who believe assisted dying can ever be made safe through application of procedural safeguards.
It is a horror story showing how little oversight and examination are required for a person to be approved for death, and how stopping the euthanasia process of a loved one once it has begun — regardless of objections, concerns, or medical evidence presented — is largely impossible.
Duncan believes, "No one should become eligible for death because appropriate care is unaffordable, unavailable locally, or subject to an impossible wait. A treatment has not failed if the person was never able to receive it. The healthcare system failed.”
Donna, a retired psychiatric nurse, had no terminal illness but grappled with intense anxiety, paranoia, malnutrition, and the lasting aftermath of a concussion. Though she made clear to her daughters that she did not wish to die, she just could not “live like this anymore,” according to Duncan.
Ultimately, Canada’s healthcare system interpreted Donna’s anguish as a clinical verdict rather than a cry for support.
Just four hours after her release from an involuntary psychiatric detention triggered by a suicide attempt, Donna was euthanized, to her daughters' horror.
Donna’s experience, now recounted in Alicia’s memoir, “The Other Side of the Straitjacket,” stands as a chilling cautionary tale to those who assume assisted dying can be rendered safe solely by adding procedural safeguards.
Her case discloses how swiftly a care-oriented system can morph into one of expediency—presenting death as the answer to pain that might otherwise have been tackled through treatment.
Donna’s deterioration started following a car crash and concussion in February 2020.
By autumn 2021, she was consuming only about 800 calories daily, leaving her physically weakened and mentally unsteady. Her family’s long-standing doctor declined to evaluate her for MAiD, convinced she was not nearing a terminal condition.
Still, Donna persisted, and within days she obtained approval from two MAiD assessors—one of them a nurse practitioner who saw her just once before signing the authorization
Duncan and her sister discovered the planned procedure on October 24, with the procedure scheduled for October 26. They swiftly reached out to the hospital, the assessing clinicians, and law enforcement, pleading for the process to be paused so a thorough psychiatric assessment could take place.
“We told them she was in crisis and asked them to stop the process long enough for her to receive a proper psychiatric assessment,” Duncan told Live Action News.
Following legal advice, the sisters secured an emergency court injunction.
A judge agreed there was enough evidence to question Donna’s capacity, temporarily delayed her MAiD procedure, and ordered a psychiatric assessment.
Upon learning her death had been postponed, Donna tried to take her own life.
She was then admitted to the same psychiatric ward she had once overseen and was placed under a 48-hour involuntary hold. However, when she was discharged on October 29, hospital staff were aware she planned to go home and follow through with MAiD.
About four hours later, she was euthanized.
Donna’s case laid bare the dangerous divide between what is technically “legal” and what is genuinely “ethically secure,” Duncan maintained.
Police launched an unprecedented investigation into her death in Canada, only to shut it down—not because all actions involved were lawful, but because evidence was regarded as inadequate.
Meanwhile, Fraser Health Authority refused to grant Donna’s MAiD assessment files to Duncan, in her role as executor, or to investigators, invoking privacy statutes that needed Donna’s consent—even though she had already died.
Such a situation gave rise to a self-reinforcing loop of non-accountability: the documents necessary for scrutiny were withheld, the inquiry was dropped for lack of proof, and that very dismissal was later cited as confirmation that no wrongdoing had taken place.
The chronology alone displayed how readily safeguards can be circumvented. Donna's daughters had just 48 hours to act.
“It reveals how quickly a scheduled death can become almost impossible to challenge,” Duncan told Live Action News, adding:
“They managed to secure a temporary injunction, but even that did not produce a coordinated clinical response to an escalating psychiatric crisis. We managed to secure a temporary injunction, but even that did not create a coordinated clinical response to what was clearly an escalating psychiatric crisis.
Most disturbing was that her suicide attempt and involuntary psychiatric detention did not end the MAiD process. She moved from a psychiatric hold to an assisted death within hours of leaving the hospital.
Families should not have a veto over a capable adult's medical decisions. But when a family brings forward credible evidence of suicidality, impaired judgment, coercion, or untreated mental illness, there must be an independent mechanism capable of stopping the process.
In Canada, we discovered that the safeguards were largely controlled by the same people whose decisions we were questioning."
As of the time of reporting, Canada has postponed—but not scrapped—its proposal to extend MAiD eligibility to individuals whose only underlying condition is a mental illness, with rollout still slated for March 2027.
In view of this, Duncan believes that this planned expansion ought to be halted permanently. After all, medical professionals lack the ability to definitively judge whether a psychiatric condition is untreatable or to forecast that someone will never recover, she reasoned.
Although psychological distress can be profound and long-lasting, prognoses remain inherently uncertain—and feelings of despair may themselves be manifestations of the disorder under evaluation, she noted.
Recounting Donna’s case, Duncan said:
“She was approved despite serious psychiatric symptoms and a suicide attempt immediately before she died. If the existing regime could not safely distinguish those states in her case, expanding eligibility directly on the basis of mental illness would be extraordinarily dangerous.”
Duncan says she views her mother's death as a "system failure," adding:
"MAiD became the answer before the causes of her desperation had been properly addressed. She was not choosing between death and meaningful, accessible care. She was trying to escape a condition she believed would never improve.
Compassion is not always agreeing with a person at their lowest point. Sometimes it means staying with them through the crisis and refusing to treat their hopelessness as a final prognosis.”
Duncan added:
“My mother's case demonstrates that the current Canadian system already struggles to distinguish suicidality from a reasoned request for assisted death. She was approved despite serious psychiatric symptoms and a suicide attempt immediately before she died. If the existing regime could not safely distinguish those states in her case, expanding eligibility directly on the basis of mental illness would be extraordinarily dangerous."
Instead, what Donna needed was coordinated psychiatric and medical treatment: a comprehensive assessment, nutritional rehabilitation, specialist follow-up for post-concussion cognitive changes, and time to stabilize.
Growing numbers of international watchdogs cite Canada as a warning about the perils of assisted suicide, but Duncan noted parallel patterns in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, select regions of Australia, and an expanding roster of U.S. states.
Yet the most alarming shift extends beyond legislation—it’s cultural.
Dignity, once regarded as an intrinsic quality belonging to every person, is now often framed as a matter of judgment. When someone is self-sufficient and contributing, their existence is labeled dignified. When they rely on others, live with disability, or struggle with mental illness, their life begins to be regarded as lacking dignity.
When the dignity of human life becomes conditional, someone must determine which lives continue to qualify.
Already, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer has quantified the healthcare savings tied to MAiD, while the UK’s impact evaluations have measured the economic consequences of legalizing assisted dying. With strained medical systems, aging demographics, and the high price of delivering intricate care, MAiD slashes end-of-life expenditures, and governments acknowledge this fiscal advantage all too well.
“Canada’s original debate was largely framed around competent adults experiencing intolerable suffering near the end of life," Duncan noted. "Less than a decade later, eligibility had expanded to people whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable, and the law included a future expansion for mental illness alone. Once assisted dying is accepted as healthcare and access to it is framed as a right, every exclusion creates pressure for the next group to be included."
Among Duncan's deepest worries is the vast authority wielded by MAiD assessors in Canada.
The Criminal Code consistently defers to the judgment of the attending physician or nurse practitioner, placing life-and-death determinations in the hands of individuals whose personal interpretations, beliefs, and comfort with risk can vary widely.
Although the law mandates that assessors possess expertise related to the condition causing a person’s suffering, “expertise” does not equate to specialization.
A clinician may deem himself sufficiently informed about a disorder without holding the advanced training required to accurately diagnose it, evaluate its likely course, or judge whether additional interventions might offer relief.
Both Duncan and her sister have been traumatized by the whole ordeal.
“The trauma came not only from losing our mother but also from knowing we saw a crisis unfolding, tried to intervene, and were treated as an obstacle,” Duncan stated. “I understand how permanent despair can feel. I also know that timely treatment and support can change what a person believes is possible.”
Duncan's memoir focuses on her mother Donna, their household, and the moment they placed faith in the very systems meant to identify Donna’s acute distress but failed them. She told Live Action News:
“I hope her story becomes a lens through which readers look more closely at the institutions we are taught to trust and defer to. I want it to incite curiosity: Who holds the power? What happens when professionals get it wrong? Who is allowed to raise concerns? And what accountability exists after an irreversible decision has been made?
Most of all, I want readers to understand that this could happen to a family they know. It happened to ours."
Duncan's advice to families who receive sudden notice that a loved one is scheduled for MAiD would be to "begin with open communication" in an effort to understand the person's fears and feelings in the situation. She stated:
“In an end-of-life context, some people have been led to fear that their death will inevitably be painful, frightening or undignified unless they choose an assisted death. Families can help by learning about appropriate palliative-care options and making sure their loved one understands what care may be available.
It is also important to tell them clearly that they are not a burden. Feeling like a burden is a recurring factor reported in Canadian MAiD cases, and it can profoundly shape what appears to be an autonomous decision.”
Duncan is passionate about end-of-life care reform, for she thinks that people need honest information about palliative care, pain and symptom management, the dying process, and the support available to families.
She insists they should not be frightened into believing that an assisted death is the only way to avoid pain, indignity, or becoming a burden.
“No one should become eligible for death because appropriate care is unaffordable, unavailable locally, or subject to an impossible wait,” Duncan reinforced. “A treatment has not failed if the person was never able to receive it. The healthcare system failed.”
Duncan also called for government accountability, telling Live Action News:
“Canada needs to report much more than annual totals. Reporting should include underlying diagnoses, eligibility track, prognosis, assessment timelines, assessor specialties, and whether the person had recent emergency visits, suicide attempts, psychiatric detention, cognitive impairment, or substance-use concerns.
We should know what treatments and supports were recommended, which were actually available, whether they were attempted, and how long the person had been waiting. Governments should also report whether requests were influenced by housing insecurity, poverty, loneliness, caregiver burden, or lack of disability support... Public confidence should be earned through evidence, not demanded through secrecy."
Duncan contends that the story of her mother Donna is not an anomaly. Rather, it is the tip of the iceberg for many others who have been or would be affected by assisted dying laws.
For those who believe every human life possesses inherent dignity—from conception to natural death—Alicia Duncan’s story is an urgent call to act before more families find themselves on the other side of the straitjacket, watching helplessly as the system chooses death over care.
Author's Note: “The Other Side of the Straitjacket: A Daughter’s Story of Mental Illness and Assisted Dying” is available through bookstores and online retailers across North America and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.aliciaduncan.com.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Liberty Counsel
·Human Interest
Lisa Bast
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
·Issues
Bridget Sielicki
·Politics
Nancy Flanders
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·