A St. Anthony, N.L., mother who says she was told assisted suicide is an option for her 25-year-old daughter wants an apology from Labrador-Grenfell Health.
[...] the Panel was persuaded that the law in Canada [...] should be changed to allow some form of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. Putting the philosophical analysis together with the lessons learned from [a] review of the paths taken in other jurisdictions that have moved to more permissive regimes, the Panel considered the options for the design of a permissive regime and suggests the following legal mechanisms for achieving the reform and the core elements of the proposed reform.
Marcia Angell was an editor of the most prestigious medical journal in the world for two decades. She currently gives monthly lectures on ethics to faculty at Harvard Medical School. And she served on a panel that gave advice on medical issues to the White House. But Dr. Angell’s credentials were challenged, Wednesday, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia when a lawyer for the federal Department of Justice tried to prevent her affidavit from being entered in a case concerning physician-assisted suicide.
In a decision released Friday, Madam Justice Lynn Smith says the Criminal Code provisions “unjustifiably infringe the equality rights” of the plaintiffs in the case, including Gloria Taylor, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Joseph Arvay, who represented Ms. Taylor, said that his client cried with relief on hearing the decision. He said that he does not know what her plans are. Mr. Arvay said he imagined that the government would appeal the ruling, but hoped they would not. A spokesperson for the federal government said the minister needed time to read the extensive ruling, but that they would be reviewing the judgment.
The claim that the legislation infringes Ms. Taylor’s equality rights begins with the fact that the law does not prohibit suicide. However, persons who are physically disabled such that they cannot commit suicide without help are denied that option, because s. 241(b) prohibits assisted suicide. The provisions regarding assisted suicide have a more burdensome effect on persons with physical disabilities than on able-bodied persons, and thereby create, in effect, a distinction based on physical disability. The impact of the distinction is felt particularly acutely by persons such as Ms. Taylor, who are grievously and irremediably ill, physically disabled or soon to become so, mentally competent, and who wish to have some control over their circumstances at the end of their lives. The distinction is discriminatory, under the test explained by the Supreme Court of Canada in Withler, because it perpetuates disadvantage.
OTTAWA, July 13, 2012 – The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, made the following statement today concerning the British Columbia Supreme Court decision in Lee Carter and Hollis Johnson et al. v. Attorney General of Canada. "After careful consideration of the legal merits of the June 15, 2012 ruling from the British Columbia Supreme Court, the Government of Canada will appeal the decision to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, and will seek a stay of all aspects of the lower court decision. The Government is of the view that the Criminal Code provisions that prohibit medical professionals, or anyone else, from counselling or providing assistance in a suicide, are constitutionally valid.
Our angst is not limited to cases of assisted-suicide. It is rather that engaging in it alters the mission of medicine. It strikes at the very core of our beings as healers. It would leave an indelible imprint on dialogues with all patients. Our worry is anchored in the deep recognition of the vulnerability of sick persons and the power differential that exists in the doctor-patient relationship.
Ms. Taylor, the British Columbia woman who was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenged laws against physician-assisted deaths, died unexpectedly Thursday of an infection resulting from a perforated colon. Ms. Taylor died peacefully and painlessly, as she had hoped, Ms. Pastine said. She was 64. In June, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that physician-assisted deaths are protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and granted Ms. Taylor a personal exemption that would have allowed her the right to seek a physician-assisted death. The federal government appealed that decision, as well as the exemption that applied to Ms. Taylor. The B.C. Court of Appeal in August upheld that exemption. The lawsuit is now headed for the B.C. Court of Appeal and a hearing is scheduled for March, 2013. Four plaintiffs – three individuals and the BCCLA – remain part of the proceedings.
At its policy convention in Calgary this week, the Canadian Medical Association was poised to debate one of the most emotionally charged and ethically perilous issues in medicine: doctor-assisted death. But physicians got bogged down in semantics, in lengthy discussions about the appropriate language to use to describe hastening death at the end of life, and deferred real debate to a later, unspecified date and another unspecified time.
This week, lobbyists for euthanasia appeared to be winning people over to their way of thinking. The 71-year-old physicist Stephen Hawking gave an interview to the BBC in which he was asked whether he supported assisted suicide. “Those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those that help them should be free from prosecution ...” he replied. “But there must be safeguards that the persons concerned genuinely want to end their life and are not being pressurised into it, or having it done without their knowledge and consent.”