Two sisters have said they were only given 48 hours’ notice that their mother would have her life ended by euthanasia, although they say she was not terminally ill.
According to the Daily Mail, Donna Duncan told her daughters in October 2021 that she had been found eligible to have her life ended through Canada’s assisted suicide and euthanasia regime, known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), and was scheduled to have her life ended by euthanasia two days later.
Donna had reportedly qualified for assisted death on the grounds that her death was “reasonably foreseeable”.
However, her daughters, Alicia and Christie, have said that their mother was not terminally ill, but rather was experiencing a serious mental health crisis that had been triggered by a road traffic collision and made worse by the isolation she experienced during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Following the collision, Donna was diagnosed with a concussion, but subsequently experienced dramatic weight loss and a range of other unexplained symptoms. She said that digesting food felt like “swallowing shards of glass”, leading her to puree everything she ate. According to the Daily Mail, Donna was consuming around 800 calories per day, which the newspaper said was both a symptom of her depression and an attempt to demonstrate to the assisted suicide and euthanasia assessors that she was physically ill.
Donna also said that her skin was so sensitive that she wore her clothes inside-out and would only leave the house if she was wearing sunglasses and a visor.
Donna was also experiencing severe paranoia, leaving her too distressed to leave her house because she feared she would be killed. She had also been paying large sums of money to a psychic who told her that her food contained heavy metals.
Doctors carried out a psychiatric assessment of Donna less than a month before her death and diagnosed her with a psychosomatic disorder, concluding that her physical symptoms were the result of mental or emotional distress.
Just a few days before Donna’s life was ended, Alicia and Christie discovered their mother had attempted to take her own life.
She was admitted back into the psychiatric ward and was discharged without her daughters’ knowledge just two days later. Later that day, after being released, she died by lethal injection.
“There was nothing that we could legally do”
Donna’s daughter, Alicia, said it was “just blow after blow after blow”.
“It’s like you’re drowning and you’re trying to come up for air, and every time you get a breath, you’re just shoved back down”, she added. “There was nothing that we could legally do”.
Following her mother’s death, Alicia submitted written evidence to Parliament in Westminster ahead of the vote on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill in June 2025.
“Proponents of euthanasia frame it as compassionate, but Canada’s experience shows how vague language, inadequate oversight, and insufficient safeguards can result in systemic failures”, her evidence stated.
Alicia has stated that she believes people with disabilities to be most at risk from assisted suicide and euthanasia.
“We already know that when people with disabilities go to the hospital, they are already at a disadvantage for getting care”, she said. “There is so much pressure in society. People are no longer dignified. It’s almost like this qualitative scale that we have, and if you can’t financially contribute to a society, then you inherently have less dignity than someone who does”.
“If the safeguards aren’t strict, there will be fatalities for people that should not have died, who just needed help to live. They needed help to live, not help to die”, Alicia added.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “We are grateful to Alicia and Christie Duncan for sharing their mother’s story”.
“Canada’s assisted suicide and euthanasia regime is a tragedy, acting as an example of precisely why assisted suicide should never be made legal. There are countless examples of scandals and controversies whereby individuals have had their lives ended, sometimes even against their own will”.
“It is precisely for reasons such as this that MPs decisively voted to reject assisted suicide for England and Wales earlier this month. They were right to do so”.
