A family in Canada has alleged that their 83-year-old grandmother was euthanised despite her stated Christian beliefs and lack of mental capacity to consent to the procedure.
Brigitte “GG” Stegemann was euthanised under Canada’s controversial MAID programme on 10 July. According to her family, she was unable to answer basic questions, such as how many siblings she had, but was still deemed mentally capable by doctors of consenting to assisted suicide.
In a lengthy Facebook post, her family spoke of “systemic failures, [a] lack of transparency, and profound procedural violations” in GG’s final days. They also described their grandmother’s treatment as “a severe breach of medical ethics, informed consent, and basic human dignity”.
GG’s granddaughter, also called Brigitte, held legal Power of Attorney and was the primary contact for all decisions relating to GG’s medical and personal care.
GG, who spent her last two years in a care facility, was diagnosed with untreatable Stage IV stomach cancer earlier this year.
According to GG’s family, around two months before she died a meeting was held to discuss the possibility of assisted suicide. During the meeting “GG clearly stated that she did not wish to pursue it. As a devout Christian, she explicitly expressed that MAID conflicted with her personal beliefs and faith.”
The family allege that shortly after this meeting medical staff continued holding discussions about the possibility of assisted suicide while the granddaughter was away on a 10-day holiday. During that period other family members visited GG and found her to be “extremely weak and largely unresponsive”.
However, by 6 July her demeanour had shifted dramatically, GG was “sitting upright in bed, talking, smiling and interacting”, leading the family to question why she “appeared so heavily sedated” on previous occasions.
During another meeting on the possibility of assisted suicide, GG’s family questioned who had instigated the meeting, and allege that “no clear answer was ever given” by what they described as increasingly defensive and hostile medical staff.
The family were informed that staff had met with GG twice during the granddaughter's 10-day absence.
Later, the staff allegedly set about determining whether GG was mentally capable of giving informed consent to assisted suicide.
GG’s family described this as “a deeply alarming farce”.
“Throughout the assessment, GG repeatedly provided objectively incorrect answers to basic, factual questions about her own life and immediate family," they said.
Her family say they had to correct “the vast majority” of her answers.
GG, they say, could not correctly state how many siblings she had and how many of those siblings were still living, despite having spoken to one the previous week. During the interrogation “she began to cry, stating, ‘I forgot about the grandkids,’ visibly confusing her living siblings with her great-grandkids”.
It is alleged that following a meeting between the doctor and GG, in which Brigitte and other family members say they were not permitted to join, GG was declared “capable of making her own decisions”.
GG’s termination was scheduled to take place a few days later and the family allege that when Brigitte talked with GG about the process she “appeared confused and visibly distressed”.
“She responded with words to the effect of, ‘I'm going to die Friday? They're going to kill me Friday?’ She wept for an extended period, repeatedly stating that she had made a mistake. Brigitte comforted her and reassured her that if she had changed her mind, she had the absolute right to tell the medical team on Friday that she did not want to proceed.”
On the day of the termination the family claim that when the doctor attempted to speak to GG, “she was silent, her hands tightly clasped together in a fixed prayer position."
According to the family's account, “When GG remained completely silent and gave no response, Brigitte felt a sudden wave of relief and a big smile came over her face, believing that the procedure would finally be halted because the strict requirement for final consent had not been met. Tragically, we were left alarmed and horrified when the clinical team completely ignored her silence and carried the procedure forward regardless.”
GG died moments later.
On their Facebook post, the family stated, “What happened to Brigitte ‘GG’ Stegemann was a systemic failure driven by clinical arrogance, a total lack of transparency, and a blatant disregard for the safeguards meant to protect vulnerable patients.
“One of our greatest ethical concerns is that GG had explicitly declined MAID, stating it violated her Christian faith. Once a vulnerable patient explicitly declines this path, the facility should never have targeted her for re-evaluation behind closed doors while her primary advocate was away - especially when the facility had no trouble contacting Brigitte daily for minor, routine care decisions.”
The family's statement concluded with a call “for greater clinical transparency, mandatory family inclusion for cognitively vulnerable patients, and strict legal accountability for facilities that operate outside the law”.
The clinic has been contacted for comment.
