Canada’s Liberal Party, meeting at a policy convention in Montreal, Quebec, has overwhelmingly adopted a policy resolution favouring the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, the policy is not binding on the party leader, Justin Trudeau, so it is not certain that it will be included in his official platform in the next Canadian federal election. The policy resolution calls for a change in the law after public consultation. [National Post]
Category: Assisted suicide
Judge rules family cannot order caregivers to starve mother to death
In a 44 page judgement, Mr. Justice Greyell of the Supreme Court of British Columbia has ruled that family members cannot order caregivers at a nursing home to starve an 83 year old resident to death. Margot Bentley, age 83, is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Based on written instructions she left before being diagnosed with the disease, family members went to court to stop caregivers from spoonfeeding her when she opened her mouth to accept food. The judge noted that she is not dying, and that to comply with their wishes wold mean that Mrs. Bentley would die from starvation and dehydration and not an underlying disease.
Having considered the evidence, he rejected the claim that Mrs. Bentley is in a “vegetative state” as “neither useful nor accurate,” concluding, instead, that it was possible that she had sufficient mental function to decide whether or not to eat and drink and to communicate that decision in non-verbal ways. He held that spoon-feeding was not “health care” within the meaning of the law, but a form of personal care. While he agreed that, under the common law, a competent adult can refuse food and fluids and thus commit suicide, he ruled that there was no legal precedent for the finding that such a decision could be made on behalf of an incompetent person by a proxy decision maker. On the other hand he recognized statutory and public policy considerations that would tell against such a finding.
The case is of interest because it demonstrates how the kind of directives the family pursued in this case can generate conflicts of conscience among caregivers and health care workers.
Supreme Court of Canada accepts appeal of assisted suicide/euthanasia decision
The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear an appeal from the decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that approved physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. Carter v. Canada (Attorney General).
New Jersey assisted suicide bill offers limited protection of conscience
Assembly Bill 2270 (2014) Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act
Some protection of conscience provisions are found in an assisted suicide bill introduced in the New Jersey legislature. While at first glance the definition of “health care professional” appears to provide protection for nurses, licensed practical nurses and others, the protection is limited by the definition of “participating in this act” or “participation in this act” to physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and pharmacists.
Further, the definition of “participating in this act” or “participation in this act” excludes referral, so it would appear that the bill could be understood to require objectors to facilitate assisted suicide by referral.
Section 25 provides protection for health care facilities that will not allow assisted suicide on their premises for reasons of conscience or religion.
Supreme Court of Canada signals change in jurisprudence
In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada has struck down three laws restricting prostitution and suspended the effect of its ruling for one year to give the government an opportunity to draft replacement legislation. Some observers are of the view that the ruling increases the likelihood that assisted suicide or euthanasia will be legalized in Canada, either by judicial fiat or by legislation supporting such a change. In the prostitution judgement, the court granted lower courts much greater latitude to set aside earlier Supreme Court precedents if new legal issues are raised, or if there has been some other change that “fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate.”
The Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal from British Columbia in the case of Carter v. Canada, which turns on a precedent established by the Supreme Court in 1993 in the Rodriguez case. The circumstances are virtually identical (plaintiffs suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease seeking a right to assisted suicide/euthanasia). The Supreme Court judge in Carter distinguished the case from Rodriguez on some issues and ruled in favour of the plaintiff, but the British Columbia Court of Appeal overturned the ruling in a split decision, citing the Rodriguez precedent as binding. Since the Supreme Court accepted the trial judge’s finding in the prostitution case that new evidence required a precedent to be set aside, counsel for the plaintiffs in the Carter case is optimistic that it will take the same approach when ruling on euthanasia. [National Post]