The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is awaiting a decision that could fast-track the lawsuit of a dying woman pleading for help to end her life before she gets even sicker. A judge is expected to rule Wednesday on whether Gloria Taylor can fast-track a lawsuit to gain the right to doctor-assisted suicide. The Kelowna resident, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is part of one of two challenges in B.C. to the laws against assistant suicide. The last challenge was 18 years ago, when B.C. woman Sue Rodriguez narrowly lost her bid to end her suffering from the same disease.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association says it wants to challenge Canada's assisted-suicide laws alone. The BCCLA represents four plaintiffs seeking to change Canada's assisted-suicide laws, including a dying woman who won the right to have her trial expedited because her health is failing. Gloria Taylor suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. On Wednesday, a B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled Taylor's trial should be heard in November because of the woman's rapidly deteriorating condition. A similar lawsuit is simultaneously being brought forward by the Farewell Foundation. The group's co-founder Russell Ogden is lobbying to join the BCCLA's lawsuit if its own challenge is struck down. Ogden argues testimony from his application should be part of the civil liberties association's case because it's unfair to assess the quality of either challenge.
Parichehr Salasel believed that where there was life, there was hope. Two doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre disagreed, saying that it is in the best interests of her husband, Hassan Rasouli, who is in a permanent vegetative state, to be taken off life support and provided with palliative care until his death. The seven-month medical conflict over Mr. Rasouli’s fate ended on Wednesday when Ontario’s top court took Ms. Salasel’s side in a ruling that is expected to reignite for Canadians the emotional issue of how to handle end-of-life decisions and whether extraordinary medical interventions save lives or merely prolong dying.
The words of a man who died in agonizing pain and those of his wife, who wept helplessly at his bedside for days while his life slowly ebbed, were read into the court record during the emotional opening of a right-to-die case. With a dozen lawyers in attendance, a packed public gallery inside and a crowd of placard-waving protestors opposed to change on the Supreme Court of British Columbia steps outside, lawyer Joseph Arvay started dramatically by reading the affidavits of Peter Fenker, and his wife, Grace.
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.
Thirteen vials of donated sperm should be divided among two women whose same-sex relationship has fallen apart, says a British Columbia judge who concluded sperm should be treated the same as any other type of property in a spousal dispute. The case involves two women, identified in a court judgment only by their initials, whose eight-year relationship ended in 2006.
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.
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.
VANCOUVER – Forcing sick patients to suffer through painful, agonizing deaths without the ability to ask a doctor to help them end their lives is akin to “torture,” a lawyer told the British Columbia Court of Appeal on Wednesday as he argued for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Joseph Arvay, who represents several plaintiffs in a case that saw the law struck down last year, said the ban on assisted suicide leads some patients with terminal illnesses to end their lives early, because they know they won’t be able to seek a doctor’s help if they become debilitated later. He said the federal government is forcing those patients to make a cruel choice between suicide and suffering. “The choice for those people is, if they comply with the law, they will suffer, and for some of the people the suffering could be tantamount to torture,” Arvay told a three-judge appeal panel.
The wife and son of a comatose man with an incurable disease have demanded he be kept alive. Doctors at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre have decided to withhold ventilation in the event of an emergency.
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.”
The Supreme Court of Canada said today it will hear an appeal by the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) that could grant terminally ill Canadians the right to assisted suicide. The case seeks to allow seriously and incurably ill but mentally competent adults the right to receive medical assistance to hasten death under specific safeguards. Lawyer Grace Pastine, who will argue the case for the BCCLA, says the decision to hear the appeal is a victory for those who support the right to to die with dignity. "I'm feeling great now. This is an enormous relief, and I'm just so happy that now there will be an opportunity to argue this very important case in front of the Supreme Court of Canada," Pastine told CBC News on Thursday morning. Several witnesses in the case are very ill and the BCCLA applied to have it expedited. But the high court rejected that, and as is customary, it gave no reasons. That means the hearing to determine the future of assisted suicide in Canada will l
The SCC has agreed to hear the appeal in the Carter case, a case about physician assisted dying, from the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA). Both of the terminally ill patients involved in the Carter case, Gloria Taylor and Kay Carter, have now passed away but the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association will be arguing the case at the SCC. In June 2012, Madam Justice Lynn Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court found the current Criminal Code provision that prohibits assisted suicide to be unconstitutional. Justice Smith found that section 241(b) of the Criminal Code breaches the claimants’ rights under both sections 7 and 15 of the Charter. She further decided that those infringements are not justifiable under s. 1 of the Charter. In October 2013, the BCCA disagreed. The BCCA overturned the decision of Justice Smith on the basis that the constitutionality of section 241 with respect to section 7 and section 1 of the Charter was decided in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney
A Toronto man’s decision to end his life, simply because he felt it was time to die, has raised questions and concerns among family, friends and experts, some of whom say it could take the assisted suicide debate down a "slippery slope." John Alan Lee, a former professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, died in December. He had carefully planned his own death for months and discussed his decision with a CBC crew. "I can be satisfied," he told the CBC’s Duncan McCue when describing his life and the choice to end it. "I can say it’s been great. It’s enough."
In a historic vote in the National Assembly, Quebec has become the first province to legalize doctor-assisted death as part of comprehensive end-of-life legislation. Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care, received broad support on Thursday from nearly 80 per cent of MNAs. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard allowed his caucus to vote according to their conscience. The 22 MNAs who voted against were all Liberals, including 10 cabinet ministers.