A criminal investigation is underway in Canada after a controversial case of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in which the family of an 83-year-old Christian grandmother is questioning the ethics and legality of her death.
The woman was euthanized even though she opposed euthanasia because “it violated her Christian faith.” In addition, her family contends that she did not have the mental capacity to give proper consent.
The grandmother, Brigitte Stegemann, was diagnosed with stomach cancer in February. Her granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk, states that Stegemann repeatedly rejected the MAID program, even tearing out a medical port at one point while shouting that she did not want “the death shot.”
“She was bawling. Inconsolable,” Kranendonk tells the Daily Mail, arguing that she didn’t want to die through doctor-assisted termination.
The family says a nurse pushed for the procedure despite Stegemann’s clear objections, and treated family members as an “obstacle.”
Stegemann’s life was taken by the state on 10 July. Two days before the procedure, he had reportedly been “inconsolable” and stated she had made a mistake. On the day of her death, she was unresponsive when staff attempted to confirm her consent, yet the procedure was reportedly carried out just 10 minutes later.
Right To Life UK reports the family tried to convince medical staff that their grandmother was “not mentally capable of making such a significant decision independently” due to her illness.
* Canadian Doc Offered to Euthanize Woman with Back Pain, Before Diagnosing Her – Now She’s All Better
They say she wasn’t remembering things correctly and wasn’t in a position to choose death. For example, when a doctor asked how many siblings she had, she reportedly said she just had a single sibling when she actually had 13 of them.
The family further argued in a statement that Kranendonk had conveyed, “Our family did not support MAID in GG’s circumstances and expressed serious concerns that GG was not mentally capable of making such a significant decision independently. GG had lived for many years with what our family knew to be a lifelong, undiagnosed developmental or cognitive disability (which we suspected may have been on the autism spectrum), which deeply affected her processing, understanding, and decision-making.”
Kranendonk also told the Daily Mail that the procedure that killed her grandmother was the opposite of peaceful, saying it turned out to be a nightmare scenario.
The family accuses the nurse of repeatedly failing to find the correct vein to insert the IV, and having “poked her about three or four times” with the needle, switching from the right to the left arm.
“There was a significant, alarming amount of blood covering GG, the bedding, and the surrounding area—the most blood Brigitte had ever seen resulting from a standard IV insertion in all her years of managing her grandmother’s care,” the family said.
***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you receive the latest news from a Christian perspective.***
The family has filed a formal complaint with the Chief Medical Coroner of Ontario, requesting an investigation into her mental capacity, the bypassing of her power of attorney, and the absence of clear consent.
Local police have confirmed that the case is now under criminal investigation.
The family also shared an extensive account saying, “We hope her story serves as a warning and an urgent call for greater clinical transparency, mandatory family inclusion for cognitively vulnerable patients, and strict legal accountability for facilities that operate outside the law.”
Full statement below:
