(LifeSiteNews) — Brianna MacDonald of British Columbia began smoking pot when she was only 10; at age 12, she was taking ecstasy. She told her mother Sarah and stepfather Charles that she took the drugs to kill the “dark demons” inside her and struggled with bipolar and early onset schizophrenia. She ended up in the hospital after an overdose in February, landing first at B.C. Children’s Hospital and then the psych ward at Surrey Memorial, where she screamed at staff and had to be restrained. By August, she was dead in a homeless encampment in Abbotsford, B.C., of cardiac arrest likely brought on by an overdose. She was only 13 years old.  

MacDonald’s family is saying that it didn’t have to end this way. Indeed, they had pleaded for help but had been given none. As the National Post reported: 

The family begged the hospital to keep her and provide treatment. Instead, Brianna was discharged. The family was told Brianna had the right to decide for herself, despite being just 12 years old. And even though Brianna had ‘over 20 documented suicide attempts,’ adds Charles. Since parents have legal responsibility for their children, they should have the legal right to ensure their children receive care, says Charles. ‘At the end of the day we’re still responsible for our children. What about us? We’re the ones responsible for her. Yet, we don’t get to advocate for her? It’s just so wrong.’

In fact, despite Brianna’s history, she was discharged from a care facility over her parents’ objections. She was also “able to obtain Fraser Health drug paraphernalia including needles, crack pipes, and pamphlets on how to use safely. Fraser Health is the largest regional health authority in B.C.” Brianna could not live with the family because she had become violent, but when she was placed in a youth centre, she promptly left. Shortly after the funeral, her family declared their intention of beginning a campaign.  

According to Fraser Health, “medical intervention and decisions involving the treatment of young addicts with mental health challenges are made by healthcare providers and guided by consent rules under the B.C. Infants Act.” Brianna’s family plans to call on the B.C. government to support “involuntary treatment for minor children when requested by parents.” If they had been able to involuntarily commit their young daughter, she might still be alive. Power, Charles stated, “needs to come back to the parents. If you are going through this struggle, don’t give up. Keep fighting. Hug your children and tell them you love them.”

According to the B.C. Infant’s Act, “children may consent to a medical treatment on their own as long as the health care provider is sure that the treatment is in the child’s best interest, and that the child understands the details of the treatment, including risks and benefits.” Combined with “mature minor consent,” this can complicate things: 

A child under the age of 19 is called a ‘minor.’ ‘Mature minor consent’ is the consent a child gives to receive or refuse health care after the child has been assessed by a health care provider as having the necessary understanding to give the consent. A child who is assessed by a health care provider as being capable to give consent is called a “mature minor”. A child who is a mature minor may make their own health care decisions independent of their parents’ or guardians’ wishes. In B.C. there is no set age when a child is considered capable to give consent. 

What is particularly disturbing about all of this, however, is that healthcare providers view phrases such as “best interest” and “necessary understanding” through a strictly ideological lens. A child cannot be given Tylenol by her school without parental permission, for example—but she can be driven to an abortion clinic to get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge or consent. A child cannot be given medication by school staff without parental involvement, but in most Canadian provinces, it is standard practice to actively withhold information from parents about a child “socially transitioning” at school, and children can be far down the road to permanent medicalization through “gender transition” before parents are even made aware. 

The most insidious example of how “mature minor consent” is used, however, is assisted suicide (or, in Canada’s Orwellian parlance, “MAID”). Dying with Dignity, one of the most dangerous organizations in Canada, has long been pushing for the legalization of euthanasia for children on this ground. Read this excerpt from their website carefully: 

The CCA has recently published its reports, which are long and very thoroughly researched. It is the report on MAID for minors that I wish to address in this piece. Please note, the CCA was told not to make recommendations and it has not done so. 

Included in the CCA’s report on minors is the following sentence, “In Canada, people under the age of 18 are not eligible for MAID, which raises the following question: Since an adult who suffers intolerably from a grievous and irremediable medical condition, and who is in a state of irreversible, advanced decline, can request and receive MAID, is there a reason to exclude a minor with the same grievous and irremediable medical condition from accessing MAID?” 

Ban for mature minors is ‘arbitrary and illogical’ 

In many jurisdictions across Canada, mature minors already have the right to make important decisions regarding their care. There are circumstances under which mature minors can consent to or refuse serious medical treatment. Is it fair to allow an 80-year-old with terminal cancer the choice of a peaceful death but deny a 17-year-old who has been given the same prognosis and who demonstrates as clear a capacity to make the decision as an adult does? 

The very concept of full legal age is imprecise and subject to many constraints and conditions and therefore the provision concerning minors’ access to MAID in Canada’s law is arbitrary and illogical. The CCA report acknowledges that there is no magic age at which a person can be deemed to be fully capable of managing his or affairs, and it makes it clear that all cases have to be judged on their merits. 

There are many reasons not to expand the law further, of course—not least because the eligibility standard for euthanasia has changed so swiftly that if they were to expand to include mature minors, the result would be that children with mental illness or any number of other non-lethal conditions would have the right, under law, to a lethal injection. Euthanasia practitioners would be permitted access to the parental home, by law, to kill a suffering child against the will of their parents—and there would be nothing the parents could do about this. Indeed, euthanasia activists have said this explicitly—the right of a child to die should override the parental right to protect their child from harm. 

Thus, I am in firm support of the parents of Brianna MacDonald. Parental rights in Canada are being eroded in ways that prevent them from helping and protecting their children. The consequences have been, and will continue to be, disastrous.