Canada's Veterans Affairs offered a Paralympian veteran assisted suicide when she asked for a wheelchair lift.
Now a British Columbia family says their father went from a fall at home to a lethal injection in 12 days.
His daughters still cannot get the records that explain what happened in between.
Shawn Bauman Went From a Fall at Home to Euthanasia in 12 Days
Shawn Bauman was 55, lived on Vancouver Island, and had already beaten cancer and survived heart surgery.
He drank heavily and was not in great health, but his ex-wife, Lori Bauman, says nothing suggested he was dying.
Lori gave her account to Canadian journalist and Army veteran Kelsi Sheren, who published it in September 2026.
On May 9, Shawn fell and hurt his ribs, and the emergency room sent him home with a diagnosis of bruising.
He came back the same day, trembling and sweating, and a scan found a fracture in his upper back.
A neurosurgeon ruled out surgery, and Shawn was sent home with a long list of painkillers and sedatives.
The next day, on his couch, he lost all movement and feeling in both legs and lay there two hours until his roommate came home.
New scans found what the first ones missed – a large pool of blood pressing on his spinal cord.
An Island emergency doctor called Vancouver General Hospital, and its spine team agreed to take him for emergency surgery.
Then, the family says, everything went dark.
No one on his medical team ever spoke to them, and when his daughter reached him, he said he was too drugged up to talk.
As far as the family knows, the surgery never happened.
On the evening of May 20, his daughter got a call from her father saying his euthanasia was scheduled for the next morning.
On May 21, 2025, Shawn Bauman was dead.
The 90-Day MAID Safeguard His Family Counted On
When a friend first mentioned euthanasia, Lori told her daughter not to worry.
She had read the law.
Shawn was not terminally ill, which should have meant Canada's Track 2 and at least 90 days of assessments.
Track 1, for people whose natural death is "reasonably foreseeable," has no waiting period at all.
Justin Trudeau's Liberal government deleted the old 10-day reflection period in March 2021.
Twelve days is impossible on Track 2 unless the clock was cut short over a feared loss of capacity.
Either way, Sheren notes, somebody had to decide that a man accepted for emergency spine surgery 11 days earlier had a foreseeable death.
The family has never seen a single page explaining who made that call.
Vancouver General Refused His Daughter His Medical Records, the Family Says
On the morning he died, Shawn joined a conference call with his family and kept things upbeat.
He was proud of agreeing to donate his eyes and to have his brain monitored during the procedure.
He called it his "last little contribution to society."
Sheren points out that recording a living man's brain while he is being killed is research on a human subject.
In Canada, that would require ethics board approval and informed consent from a man who had told his daughter he was too drugged to hold a conversation.
Sheren has asked for that file.
His daughter asked Vancouver General for her father's medical records.
The hospital acknowledged she may be an appropriate person to ask – then refused her, the family says, because she wanted them for "personal reasons."
Her personal reason is that her father is dead and she wants to know why.
A coroner opened an investigation, and 15 months later the family says they still have no report.
Sheren says Island Health, Vancouver Coastal Health and the BC Coroners Service did not answer her questions by her deadline.
Euthanasia in Canada Now Accounts for One in Every 20 Deaths
In 2024, 16,499 Canadians died by euthanasia – 5.1% of all deaths in the country, according to Health Canada data analyzed by the think tank Cardus.
About half of those patients reported feeling like a burden on others.
Christine Gauthier, the veteran who asked for a wheelchair lift, told Parliament she received a letter saying, "if you're so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID."
There is one sign of sanity in Ottawa.
On June 17, 2026, Parliament's Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying recommended that Canada "indefinitely exclude" people whose only condition is mental illness.
Without that change, those Canadians become eligible on March 17, 2027.
Derek Ross of the Christian Legal Fellowship, which pushed for the pause, called for support that puts "care over death, hope over defeat."
Kathy Hochul and JB Pritzker Brought Assisted Suicide to New York and Illinois
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed assisted suicide into law on December 12, 2025, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul followed on February 6, 2026.
Their laws are limited to the terminally ill and come with waiting periods, mental health evaluations and recorded requests.
Canada started with safeguards too, and Parliament erased one of them in five years.
Lori Bauman trusted a 90-day promise, and her daughters got a phone call.
Sheren is careful not to call Shawn's death murder, but she wants to know why the institutions holding every answer stay silent.
"A system that was doing nothing wrong would hand over the file," she wrote.
Sources:
- Kelsi Sheren, "A Canadian Man Fell in His Living Room. 12 Days Later MAID Killed Him," LifeNews.com, September 23, 2026.
- Cardus, "Latest Data Confirm MAiD Has Gone from Exceptional to Routine," December 2, 2025.
- Christian Legal Fellowship, "Parliamentary Committee Recommends Halt to MAID for Mental Illness in Canada," June 2026.
- Anders Hagstrom, "Canada Offered Assisted Suicide to a Paralympian Veteran Who Wanted a Wheelchair Lift Installed," Fox News, December 4, 2022.
- "Illinois Governor Signs Medical Aid in Dying Bill, Legalizing Physician-Assisted Death in State," NBC Chicago, December 12, 2025.
- Governor Kathy Hochul, "Governor Hochul Signs Medical Aid in Dying Act Into New York State Law," New York State, February 6, 2026.
