The Atlantic is Killing Its Reputation
Expert Opinions Overlooked, Facts Ignored: A Closer Look at The Atlantic's MAiD Story
We are responding to the article Canada is Killing Itself by Elaina Plott Calabro, published in The Atlantic on August 11, 20251 . It is an objectionable piece about Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) that ignores key facts and seems intent on framing MAiD in an unflattering light. The title alone creates an atmosphere of sensationalism rather than balanced reporting, shaping the reader’s perspective before they’ve even begun. While there are moments of useful and fact-based information, they are so surrounded by misleading half-truths, emotionally charged language, and selective omissions, that it would be hard for a reader unfamiliar with MAiD to parse the good from the bad2. The accuracy, narrative, and tone are far below the standard of journalism readers have come to expect from The Atlantic.
From its opening lines, Ms. Plott appears to set a stage meant to provoke unease rather than understanding. She describes a MAiD conference not as the professional medical meeting it was, but as something closer to the “cereal convention” in The Sandman Netflix series, where serial killers gleefully share notes on their craft while hiding their true intentions from the public (hence the spelling "cereal"). The implication appears to be that MAiD clinicians discussing research and supporting one another is, somehow, sinister. Yet there is nothing unusual about health professionals meeting in this way. Conferences are where they address the very ethical and practical questions the article itself raises—safeguards, protocols, patient support. What the article casts as a questionable gathering is, in fact, evidence of a profession taking its responsibilities seriously.
What is most disappointing is how little the piece resembles the kind of balanced reporting readers should expect from the Atlantic. While the author gestures toward an exploration of providers’ experiences, the narrative seems built on a predetermined suspicion of MAiD. In the first two thirds of the article, the tone is not one of inquiry but of indictment—critical, skeptical, and at times openly hostile. There is little attempt to understand MAiD as it is actually practiced in Canada, and even less effort to acknowledge the broader social and legal context that shaped its evolution. What might have been a fair exploration of dilemmas and safeguards instead reads like a case assembled to argue against the practice itself.3
The negative framing continues when the author notes that MAiD “would have been considered homicide” a decade ago—a technically true but misleading claim. Laws evolve with society, but by her logic, same‑sex marriage, abortion, or even contraception could be framed as things that were once criminal or prohibited. Equating MAiD with homicide serves no purpose other than to unsettle the reader.
The rhetoric escalates when Ms. Plott calls MAiD an “open‑ended medical experiment,” conjuring the idea of chaos where there is actually careful regulation, oversight, and legal precedent. She then goes on to suggests it is “too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option,” a line that trivializes unbearable suffering and implies MAiD is akin to choosing a brand of shoes. Such framing is more than insensitive; it is disgracefully reductive.
Ms. Plott proceeds to write, “In Canada it is no longer a novel and remarkable event.” Yet no provider in this country would describe providing MAiD in that way4. She even concedes at the very end of her article that Lori Verigin “never wants to feel ‘comfortable’ providing assistance in dying. The day she did, she said, would be the day she knew to step back.” This contradiction underscores how the article minimizes the gravity with which MAiD providers approach their work.
This predetermined portrayal seems further confirmed by the experience of Dr. Stefanie Green, who was asked to provide clarity and context to the Atlantic fact-checkers during the preparation of the article. One of the most glaring problems Dr. Green flagged was the repeated and erroneous use of the word “expansion" when referencing the evolution of MAiD in Canada. As Dr. Green shared with us when describing her "frustrating" experience: “I spent a significant period of time with the fact checker explaining why [the expansion of MAiD] is simply a false statement.” This correction was ignored by Ms. Plott or the Atlantic's editors. Dr. Green went on to say:
"I personally spent over an hour with a fact-checker from The Atlantic and am fairly certain every point I made/was asked to comment on was completely ignored by the editorial team."
The legal history makes Dr. Green's correction clear. The Supreme Court’s Carter v. Canada decision5 established the legality of MAiD. Parliament then passed legislation more restrictive than the Carter case, which was later found unconstitutional in the Truchon v. Attorney General of Canada case6. The Truchon ruling restored the law closer to the Carter v. Canada decision—it was not an expansion of access but rather a correction. Yet the article still clings to the misleading “expansion” narrative, repeating it a dozen times while ignoring readily available facts7.
Dr. Green was not the only person who was ignored—multiple clinicians quoted shared that they provided corrections and clarifications that appear to have been disregarded in the final publication. When asked about her experience, Lori Verigin NP, disclosed that "I also spent a significant amount of time with the fact-checker and felt that much of what I shared was missed". Dr. Claude Rivard's experience was similar, stating "what we thought would be a well-researched article on MAiD in Canada became a biased report describing providers as homicidal psychopaths, driven by an ideology of the fastest growing euthanasia Nazi-like regime in the world8...in order to save money in the healthcare system."
Ms. Plott gets basic facts wrong as well, claiming "the law says nothing" about what “constitutes incurability”. In fact, the Supreme Court’s Carter v Canada decision9 clarified that irremediability (defined as impossible to cure, repair or remedy) does not require patients to undergo treatments they find unacceptable. The A.B. v Canada decision10 further reaffirmed and extended that reasoning. In addition, legal safeguards require that anyone requesting MAiD be informed of available treatments and care that could alleviate their suffering, and that they give those options serious consideration. The law is clear, making her point both inaccurate and embarrassingly incomplete.
One of the most important facts Ms. Plott neglects is the origin of MAiD in Canada. The Supreme Court’s Carter decision was not the result of lobbying by government or physicians—it was Canadian citizens who challenged the Criminal Code and won. That ruling forced legislators to amend the law, just as citizens later did in the Truchon case, where the courts again found the original law unconstitutional. In both instances, it was individuals asserting their constitutional rights, not the state “granting permission.” This makes Ms. Plott’s claim in the subtitle of the article that “The country gave its citizens the right to die” patently untrue: the courts recognized that Canadians already had that right.11
Equally misleading is her suggestion that doctors were unprepared when MAiD became legal in 2016. Quebec had been developing its end-of-life law since 2010, with three years of preparation and two years of implementation, culminating in a year of formation before MAiD was first offered in December 2015—six months ahead of the rest of Canada. In fact, many of the procedures, eligibility criteria, and even some of the text used to amend the Criminal Code were based on the groundwork done in Quebec12.
"I am looking to speak with doctors about how their perspectives on the regime has (or hasn't) changed over the past nine years.” - Ms. Plott in an email to Dr. Rivard
Fact-checking is not the only concern here. It also seems that Ms. Plott may have misrepresented the very purpose of her article when recruiting clinicians to participate. Multiple clinicians have expressed to us that they believed they were contributing to a balanced, thoughtful piece, only to see their perspectives reframed within a narrative that bore little resemblance to Ms. Plott’s initial proposal. Dr. Rivard shared the emails he received from Ms. Plott where she stated "I am looking to speak with doctors about how their perspectives on the regime has (or hasn't) changed over the past nine years. I am especially interested in the experiences of physicians in Quebec, how they're grappling with the legalization of advance requests, and I’d love to talk to you…". After giving Ms. Plott "the complete history of the development of MAiD care in Quebec, the three years of preparation we had as clinicians and the links to all the reports of our end of life Commission [and] the Truchon-Gladu case", Dr. Rivard received a follow up email from Ms. Plott stating "I can't tell you how much [you’ve] helped shape my understanding of not just the clinical but the incredible emotional nuance of the story".
We'll leave it to you to judge if that sounds anything like the final article Ms. Plott and the Atlantic published. But given the chasm between Ms. Plott's stated intent and the final product, it’s difficult for us to avoid the conclusion that she may have misrepresented her intentions to some degree. The Atlantic is, of course, free to make editorial decisions, but the disparity here is striking.
Especially troubling is the instrumentalization of people living with disability, poverty, and the failures of our medical system. Yes, inequities in healthcare and social supports exist, and no one in the medical community knows this more than MAiD providers themselves. They have long demanded better resources for their patients, and they understand that the only way to prevent suffering rooted in those inequities is to fix the inequities directly. Inadequate care and lack of supports are not solved by removing access to MAiD; they are solved by addressing those deficiencies head‑on. To suggest MAiD is offered because of those failures is both inaccurate and insulting. Federal law explicitly prohibits approving MAiD on the basis of poverty, housing, or isolation. These realities may deepen suffering, but they are never sufficient on their own to make someone eligible.13
Ms. Plott repeatedly points to systemic failures as if repealing Track Two MAiD would fix them. It would not—those issues require fixing the systems themselves. In fact, 41 percent of Track Two recipients in 2023 did not report having a disability.14 Even if one argued (paternalistically) to exclude people with disabilities, repealing Track Two would deny eligibility to many others as well, without addressing the underlying cause of the suffering.15 And contrary to claims that MAiD targets marginalized citizens, the federal government’s Fifth Annual Report on MAiD16 shows the opposite: those most often accessing MAiD are among the least marginalized, while those facing higher levels of marginalization access MAiD at much lower rates. The evidence does not support the claim that Canada’s most vulnerable are being pushed into MAiD—yet none of this is reflected in the article.
Ms. Plott goes on to assert that "in two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness" and that "Parliament has also recommended granting access to [mature] minors. These complex issues are reduced to throwaway lines, stripped of context or nuance, potentially leaving the reader with fear and suspicion rather than understanding. While both statements are technically true, the reality is far more complicated.
For example: the possibility of allowing mature minors to access MAiD is entirely hypothetical17, with no plan to move this forward or allow them access to MAiD. The mature minor doctrine18 is rooted in established legal precedent that acknowledges some minors’ capacity to make serious—even life-ending—medical decisions. For that reason, discussing this conflict is an important legal and ethical conversation to have, even if only as a hypothetical. Moreover, expert recommendations have been clear that any possible access for minors should be strictly limited to those with a reasonably foreseeable natural death, likely with a short prognosis, and that the parents must be included in the process. By omitting all of these details, Ms. Plott’s narrative turns a nuanced legal, ethical, and medical conversation into a simplistic scare line—one that misinforms rather than informs. One begins to wonder if this was the intent of this article all along.
Ms. Plott quotes Dr. Madeline Li extensively when critiquing the MAiD eligibility process. Unfortunately, these paragraphs seem intent on reinforcing MAiD as an uncontrolled process, which it is not. She cites Dr. Li’s suggestion that a “completed life” or being “tired of life” is adequate to be found eligible for MAiD in Canada. This is false. Simply being old or exhausted with life has never been, and is not currently, a legal basis for MAiD. Framing it this way misrepresents patients’ suffering, trivializes their requests, and caricatures both the law and patient realities. Printing such a demonstrably false claim is irresponsible.
It is also telling that the only ethicist quoted is Étienne Montero, who in addition to being a civil-law professor, also holds a doctorate in theology and seems to have close ties to the Catholic Church.19 His perspective need not be dismissed, but relying solely on this ideologically driven view without balancing it against voices from clinical ethicists or secular experts is misleading.20 Highlighting a single extreme position while omitting others with more direct relevance to medical ethics leaves the article feeling less like a balanced exploration and more like a predetermined argument.
If all this weren’t enough, Ms. Plott falls back on a common anti‑MAiD trope—that it exists to save money. She cites a report estimating $150 million in savings. Even if accurate, against Canada’s $372‑billion healthcare budget21 this is just 0.04 percent. Within a paragraph that discusses liberal government support of MAiD, “relaxing existing safeguards and extending MAiD”, this financial claim serves only to stir suspicion about government motives. The idea that MAiD was legalized to save such a tiny fraction of costs is absurd.
The misuse of facts and reliance on outlier stories drags on for nearly 10,000 of the article’s 11,000 words. Absent are the realities most Canadians describe when they talk about MAiD: peace, dignity, and relief. Missing, too, are the countless families who share how it allowed loved ones to die on their own terms, and any acknowledgment that MAiD was established through a unanimous Supreme Court ruling, parliamentary debate, and strong public support. Only at the very end does Ms. Plott finally turn to a provider’s perspective—someone who wrestles deeply with the ethical weight of their work, and whose account captures both the profound meaning and emotional toll of this care. By sidelining this perspective until the conclusion and ignoring these other realities, the article reduces a complex issue to a one-dimensional picture seemingly designed to provoke fear.
The Atlantic had an opportunity to publish a thoughtful examination of how Canada has navigated one of the most complex ethical questions in modern medicine. It could have acknowledged tensions, highlighted safeguards, and explored the ongoing debates Canadians continue to have. Instead, it published a story that sensationalizes the exceptions, erases the context, and distorts the truth of MAiD. Canadians deserve better than caricatures of their laws, their clinicians, and their choices at the end of life. And readers of the Atlantic deserve better journalism than this.
One of the clearest signs of bias in writing about MAiD is word choice. Publications that oppose assisted dying often default to terms like euthanasia rather than using the language adopted in law and practice—medical assistance in dying or assisted dying—which carry less loaded emotional weight. When that vocabulary is paired with rhetoric invoking “killing,” “Nazis,” or similarly inflammatory language choices, it is usually a reliable indicator of the author’s stance.
If there is any doubt about how this piece comes across, consider that Live Action—a right-wing, anti-MAiD, anti-abortion organization—published an article just yesterday titled “Mainstream Media Continues to Expose Horrors of Canada’s ‘Assisted Dying’.” Their celebratory tone makes it clear: they view The Atlantic’s piece as a win for their agenda, holding it up as proof that even mainstream outlets are willing to echo their alarmist framing. That alone should give readers pause about the slant of the original article. Whether by design or by carelessness, the language in The Atlantic’s piece functioned as a dog whistle to the anti-MAiD movement. The familiar tropes — “euthanasia,” cost-savings, and sensationalized stories of poverty and disability — were instantly recognizable to right-wing, often religious, zealots, who seized on it immediately.
According to AllSides, a media‑bias rating site, Live Action News (the news arm of Live Action) is rated as “Lean Right”, noting that—even though Live Action claims to be non‑partisan—its anti‑abortion stance reflects conservative values, aligning it with right‑leaning perspectives.
If Ms. Plott’s purpose had truly been to understand the perspective and experience of MAiD providers, this would have been the very first point she uncovered.
A brief note on the claim that MAiD in Canada is in a constant “expansion.” This is a talking point we have heard repeatedly from opponents who use it to prop up the slippery-slope argument—that MAiD will inevitably spread to everyone society deems a burden, even involuntarily. Whether intentional or not, Ms. Plott repeats the same language and reasoning that anti‑MAiD activists rely on. These arguments are weak and misleading, and the fact that the article leans on them is troubling—especially given that this misconception was already corrected by one of the country’s leading experts, Dr. Stefanie Green.
In one of the most offensive passages, Ms. Plott writes: “Meanwhile the Quebec College of Physicians has raised the possibility of legalizing euthanasia for infants born with ‘severe malformations,’ a rare practice currently legal only in the first country to adopt it since Nazi Germany did so in 1939.” That’s all—no context, no explanation, just a casual comparison to Nazi Germany. Whenever critics run out of arguments, the Nazi analogy arrives. Here it is a rhetorical bomb meant to shock, not explain.
What Quebec is actually discussing are cases of infants born with conditions so severe their lives are measured in days or weeks, and those short lives are defined by pain and suffering. Parents are faced the agonizing choice to withdraw nutrition and fluids while doctors provide sedation. The question is whether, in such tragic cases, a faster, gentler death might be more humane. This is not about disabilities compatible with life, but about conditions that guarantee imminent death and intolerable suffering.
That is a legitimate ethical and medical debate. To compare it with Nazi eugenics is grotesque and reveals the bias driving this article. We think this proves this is not measured reporting on MAiD but an agenda-driven piece. That it passed editorial review at The Atlantic is as shocking as the statement itself.
It is worth clarifying that Canadians do not hold a legal “right to die” or a freestanding “right to MAiD.” What the law provides is the right to request MAiD and, if eligible, and if a willing physician agrees, that physician is protected under specific exemptions to the Criminal Code.
Our email correspondence with Dr. Rivard.
One of our most recent articles thoroughly dispels the myth that isolation is driving requests for MAiD in any meaningful way. You can find it here.
Statistics and Safeguards: Disrupting Death with James Downer
Such as Eric Mathison. You can read his work on his Value Judgements Substack.
Again, thank you for this excellent rebuttal. Absolutely a missed opportunity for the Atlantic to publish a balanced and informative article about MAiD.
I am the bereaved and loved one of one of the only 622 people who chose Track 2 MAiD in 2023.
My Dad, John Warren, was a long-time advocate for medical assistance in dying in Canada. He even sat as Vice President on the Board of Dying with Dignity during the Carter Case. He fought hard for all Canadians to have this legal and medical choice, and he celebrated when the laws changed. At the end of his life, he always spoke that this work, of all the work he did, was the work he was most proud of.
Our family understands MAiD from many levels. From living with Dad through his advocacy work, and eventually through his own choice. We understand it, and are thankful, that if approved, it can be an end-of-life option for Canadians.
We also believe it is an individual's choice. A choice that it is not necessarily the choice everyone should make. But let's educate ourselves about our choices - and be informed with facts, not misinformation and disinformation.
I've been relatively public with our story since my Dad's death in January 2023. I share my experience at death cafe's, a few podcasts here and there (thanks Disrupting Death!), presentations and such. Quite frankly anywhere that people are willing to have a proper conversation about it. I continue to learn things and am always open to new ideas and thoughts around this topic. It is all to new not to be.
I want Canadians to learn what Track 2 MAiD is like - from a daughter's perspective. Not necessarily from a legal standpoint, and perhaps not even just from the medical lens - although of course both are critically important.
I want Canadians to know what it feels like to intentionally walk towards death together with our loved ones - especially when by definition their death is not 'reasonably naturally foreseeable' and we are to wait at minimum, an additional 90 days.
90 days from today will be November 18th. The kids will have returned to school, the leaves will have fallen, the ghosts and goblins will have come to our door, and we are likely leaning into the holiday season. It's a long time.
I want people to know what it feels like to walk that path. I want those choosing MAiD, specifically Track 2 MAiD, and their families to feel supported, honoured, and embraced.
I do my best to volunteer to support other Canadians and their families who are making these difficult and heart-wrenching decisions of Track 2 MAiD. People who have struggled and battled decade-long illnesses. As one woman said to me who suffered a terrible genetic illness that took her two sisters and her Mom, "I know how this story ends. I just can't watch it again."
So I apologize for the rant, but I just want you to know from the small percentage of us supporting our Track 2 families, that your rebuttal makes all the difference. Thank you for supporting us and taking on the big guys.
Our loved ones lived fully and meaningful lives. My Dad, and many others I have had the privilege of meeting, lived deeply aligned with their values - both in life and in death. Thank you for giving them a voice.