The Quebec College of Physicians has renewed its position that medical assistance in dying could be considered for newborns facing unrelievable extreme pain and conditions offering no prospect of survival, although euthanasia of infants remains illegal in Canada.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
The Quebec College of Physicians has reiterated its controversial position that medical assistance in dying could be considered for newborns suffering from severe, untreatable conditions and extreme pain, reopening a national debate over whether Canada’s euthanasia framework should ever extend to infants.
The organization told the Daily Mail Monday that it “reiterates that medical assistance in dying may be an appropriate treatment for babies suffering from extreme pain that cannot be relieved and who have severe malformations or serious polysymptomatic syndromes that destroy any prospect of survival.”
Direct euthanasia of newborns is not legal in Canada. Physicians and parents can, however, make end-of-life decisions involving the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment in some circumstances, including when continued treatment is judged medically futile or inconsistent with the infant’s interests.
Canada legalized medical assistance in dying for eligible adults in 2016 under legislation enacted during former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. The program has subsequently expanded, while a planned extension of eligibility to people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness has been delayed until 2027.
The Quebec College of Physicians’ position on newborns has drawn scrutiny before.
In 2022, Louis Roy, representing the college, told a parliamentary committee that MAID should be considered for some infants with severe medical conditions whose suffering could not be relieved and whose prognosis was extremely poor.
The issue returned to Parliament in November 2024 when Alberta Conservative MP Damien C. Kurek presented a petition calling for legal protection of infants following the earlier Quebec proposal. Critics characterized the idea as permitting infanticide, while supporters framed it as an end-of-life option for exceptionally rare cases involving profound suffering and no realistic prospect of survival.
The debate is complicated by Canada’s existing medical practices involving newborns with catastrophic conditions. Although physicians cannot legally administer MAID to infants, treatment may sometimes be withdrawn and palliative care provided when further intervention is considered futile.
Critics of expanding MAID argue that intentionally causing death represents a fundamentally different medical and ethical act from allowing a terminally ill newborn to die after burdensome treatment is withdrawn.
The controversy also intersects with a longstanding debate over infants born showing signs of life following attempted abortions.
A Quebec study cited by critics reported that roughly one in 10 second-trimester abortions included a live birth, with only a minority of those infants surviving beyond several hours. According to the figures cited in the report, approximately 24% of infants recorded as born alive were admitted to neonatal intensive care and 5% received palliative care.
Those statistics have been used by opponents of abortion and euthanasia to argue that Canada needs clearer protections for infants born alive. Interpretation of such data can be complicated, however, because records classified as live births can involve extremely premature infants who are below the threshold of viability or have conditions incompatible with prolonged survival.
Canada does not have a single federal statute establishing a specific gestational limit for abortion, although access and medical practice vary by province, facility and stage of pregnancy.
The issue attracted political attention more than a decade ago after Statistics Canada data were cited as showing hundreds of live births associated with abortion procedures. LifeSiteNews reported in 2013 that then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government declined calls for a federal investigation into data concerning 491 such cases.
The renewed comments from the Quebec College of Physicians do not represent a change in Canadian law, nor has Parliament legalized euthanasia for newborns.
They do, however, revive one of the most contentious questions surrounding Canada’s rapidly evolving assisted-dying system: whether eligibility should ever extend beyond competent individuals capable of requesting death for themselves.
For now, MAID remains unavailable to newborns, while end-of-life decisions involving severely ill infants continue to be governed through existing medical, ethical and legal standards surrounding treatment withdrawal and palliative care.
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