Assisted dying: Canada grapples with plans to extend euthanasia to people suffering solely from mental illness (The Conversation podcast)

For decades, people who want to end their life with the help of a doctor, and who have the means to do so, have travelled to a handful of countries, commonly Switzerland, for euthanasia.

But gradually, more countries around the world have begun to permit some form of assisted dying. Politicians in a number of others, including Ireland, Scotland and France, are now seriously debating it.

In Canada, where medical assistance in dying (Maid) became legal in 2016, the government intends to extend eligibility to people whose sole reason for ending their life is mental illness. But that planned expansion, now twice delayed, is deeply controversial.
Interview: 

https://theconversation.com/assisted-dying-canada-grapples-with-plans-to-extend-euthanasia-to-people-suffering-solely-from-mental-illness-230129

Why people choose medically assisted death revealed through conversations with nurses - The Conversation US

Nurses who surround the process of medically assisted dying are an important source of insight into the real conversations our society needs to have about what it's really like.....
https://theconversation.com/why-people-choose-medically-assisted-death-revealed-through-conversations-with-nurses-122000

Firing Doctor, Christian Hospital Sets Off National Challenge to Aid-in-Dying Laws - The Daily Beast

In Colorado case, the right to aid a cancer patient's death runs up against faith-based hospital policies.....
https://www.thedailybeast.com/firing-doctor-christian-hospital-sets-off-national-challenge-to-aid-in-dying-laws

California assisted death law overturned in court | The Sacramento Bee

A judge in Riverside County on Tuesday overturned California's controversial assisted death law nearly two years after it took effect, ruling that the Legislature improperly passed the measure during a special session on health care funding.....

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article211195824.html

I’m a doctor. Here’s what it’s like helping terminally ill patients end their lives. -- Vox

Aid in dying has been legal in California for a year now. Many of my patients have been waiting for this. ....
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/9/21/16335534/aid-in-dying-california-legal-end-of-life

Catholic Group Uses Loophole to Block Assisted Dying in Winnipeg Hospital

In 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled — unanimously — that patients with severe medical problems could legally ask their doctors to help end their lives. The Court gave the government a year to implement new laws taking the decision into account, which they failed to do even after a four-month extension, but the law eventually passed in June.

Physician-assisted death is now legal in the country for anyone 18 or older, a Canadian citizen, mentally competent, suffering from a “serious and incurable disease, illness or disability,” and in an “‘advanced state of irreversible decline,’ with enduring and intolerable suffering.”

None of that, however, is okay with Catholics who believe euthanasia is a sin....
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/19/catholic-group-uses-loophole-to-block-assisted-dying-in-winnipeg-hospital/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter