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Hey everyone, Beatrice here.

Last week, lawmakers in the UK voted in the House of Commons to approve a bill for further review

called the terminally ill adults' end-of-life bill.

And if fully passed, this bill would legalize state-assisted suicide in England and

Wales for people with the terminal diagnosis and life expectancy of less than six months. The bill will now

be sent for debate and review in parliamentary committees before it can return to the House of Commons

for another vote. So it's not a law yet, and while it might take months for this

process to play out, this initial vote has nevertheless kicked off another massive international

conversation about policies known as medical assistance in dying or made, physician-assisted

suicide, or state-assisted suicide. It has been a while since this was part of mainstream discourse,

and many of the people who are defending the expansion or passage of these laws

are treating the issue as a simple moral supposition

and erasing the decades of history of disabled people's organizing against these laws

and the political context in which they arise.

So today we felt the best contribution we could make to this conversation was to bring back a discussion we had in March of

2023, nearly two years ago now, with the brilliant Canadian journalist Cassandra Kislanco,

who has been extensively reporting on the details of fights ever-expanding made policies in Canada.

We talk with Cassandra about what we've already witnessed in Canada since the recent expansion

of maid laws from people with terminal diagnoses to include chronic illnesses in the last few years.

And we talk about the way these policies interact with the specifics of austerity spending on

health care and the politics of tight budgetary controls on welfare supports.

...