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Canada's assisted suicide laws challenged in B.C. Supreme Court

Mon, 11/14/2011 - 20:21 |

Andrew Horwood

According to Canada's laws, it is illegal to counsel, aid or abet a person to commit suicide. The offence of having done so carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. The last time, Canada's laws regarding assisted suicide were challenged was in the infamous Sue Rodriguez case, when she took her request for a doctor-assisted suicide to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court ruled against her and Sue Rodgriguez found herself an anonymous doctor who was willing to assist her in defiance of the law.

Now a 63-year old B.C. woman with a fatal neurodegenerative disease will take her case to the B.C. Supreme Court today and ask them to overturn Canada's laws and grant her wish to a doctor-assisted suicide.

Gloria Taylor is suffering from ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease and wants to have the laws changed so she can die before she becomes incapacitated. Incidentally, Taylor is one of five plaintiffs in the case and their lawyers plan to argue that Canada's Criminal Code provisions are unconstitutional.

If doctor-assisted suicide becomes legal, it will certainly set a dangerous precedent where the criteria used to determine who "merits" a doctor-assisted death will follow more and more of a "slippery slope" and where a terminal illness is not necessarily the only admissible reason to end one's life.

Some U.S. states and four European countries have decriminalized euthanasia with disastrous consequences. As LifeSiteNews reported on October 24, the Royal Dutch Medical Association now interprets the 2002 Euthanasia Act as to include "mental and psychosocial ailments" such as "a loss of function, fatigue and loss of autonomy" as acceptable criteria for a euthanasia request.

A terminal illness thus is no longer requirement.

Click here for the article in LifeSiteNews

And click here gor the article on CBCNews about the challenge to Canada's assisted-suicide laws before the B.C. Supreme Court

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