Canadian Supreme Court Rules Ban On Assisted Suicide Unconstitutional

BarbaraHudson writes with word that Canada's Supreme Court has issued a strong statement in defense of Canadians' right to choose assisted suicide: [A] judgment, which is unsigned to reflect the unanimous institutional weight of the court, says the current ban on assisted suicide infringes on all three of the life, liberty and security of person provisions in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It does not limit physician-assisted death to those suffering a terminal illness. The court agreed with the trial judge "that a permissive regime with properly designed and administered safeguards was capable of protecting vulnerable people from abuse and error. While there are risks, to be sure, a carefully designed and managed system is capable of adequately addressing them." Parliament has one year to enact new legislation modifying the Criminal Code to conform to the judgment.

Comments

Re:Yay Canada!

[BarbaraHudson]

It's got to be better than forcing people to continue to live an unbearable life. If you were to do that to a dog, you'd be charged with cruelty, but ending a human's suffering in a dignified fashion? "Oh noes!!" The people who are against assisted suicide need to stop trying to impose their religious or other beliefs on others, same as same-sex marriage. When their time comes, they're free to tough it out til the bitter end, but I suspect that some of them will change their minds.

The Black Pill

[rmdingler]

With the erosion of religion and its accompanying objections to ending one's own life in most Western Nations (not including the U.S. unfortunately), I would expect to see more options for patients now facing only palliative care.

When I have no more good days left, and every waking moment is agony or drug-induced, drooling stupor, I would like the option to give these borrowed molecules back to the universe when I am ready...not after my suffering has been prolonged by pointless medical procedure(s).

Re:The Black Pill

[thegarbz]

What is assistance? Asking advice on the most painless, quick and reliable way of doing something?

If you're a wheel chair bound quadriplegic what is the option for suicide?
If you're a 100 year old senile man who can't remember if he's wearing pants what are your options for suicide?

If you're able bodied enough to actually do the work, how do you do it reliably? Carbon monoxide poisoning works well providing you have a garage and no noisy neighbours but every chance is you may wake up in hospital after some Good Samaritan saved you. Do you jump of a bridge and risk not having an instant death and instead dye in agony? Or maybe swallow every pill you find and end up with an agonizing death as your organs slowly fail? Heck there are people who have bitten the bullet and survived with half their brain missing.

Suicide and professionally assisted suicide are not the same thing. If you're lucky enough to have the option of one, it doesn't negate the need for the other.

Re:The Black Pill

[AchilleTalon]

So, end your days when you are still capable to decide. Opening the door to let someone decide for you because you have lost this capability and you believe today these individuals should be terminated is not the way to do it. You believe you have a right to decide. Yes, of course as long as you are capable to decide. Beside that, no one has the right to kill someone else, be he a doctor (m.d.).

Giving a de facto authorisation to doctors to terminate life when someone is incapable to decide is opening the door wide to abuse by the doctors and by the government itself. In case you are not aware, the healthcare in Canada is paid by the government acting as an insurer, when times are hard, the temptation is high to end the life of many who are costing to the treasury even if they paid tax their whole life to have access to this healthcare when growing old.

Re:The problem

[Vintermann]

Such as system does not aim to answer the question if a life is worth living

If it tells some people that they are irrational in demanding to die (e.g saying they are depressed), and others that they are rational in demanding to die, then it implicitly does.

Re:The problem

[AchilleTalon]

Every suicidal people is already considered mentally ill. How can you then consider someone in this situation is capable to decide for his own life?

Re:Yay Canada!

[Anonymous Coward]

And paradoxically, the option of assisted suicide is also provides a backstop to suffering that empowers patients to hang on, or attempt painful therapies that they might not otherwise have the will to try.

Knowledge that it's always an option if the suffering becomes too much to bear is of enormous psychological benefit.

Re:The problem

[miquels]

"Repeated studies have shown that in the Netherlands"
[citation needed]

Re:Yay Canada!

[Nemyst]

How someone can twist the ability for a suffering human to request, of their own volition and under extensive medical supervision, assisted suicide, and turn it into a slippery slope fallacy of death camps and selective culling of the population is beyond me. There is just no connection outside of your ever so slightly deranged brain there.

Re: Yay Canada!

[517714]

No, the first sentence is not fine. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of rights vs law. The court ruled that people have always had the right, rights trump laws so any laws abridging the right are void and must be eliminated. Viewing this as changing laws is wrong because it would put this into the realm of debate over public policy, and rights are not subject to debate without constitutional amendment.