Category: Assisted suicide

Alberta health minister reviewing rules around assisted dying at faith-based facilities

Sarah Hoffman acknowledges public complaints following CBC News investigation

CBC News

Jennie Russell

Health Minister Sarah Hoffman says her ministry is reviewing options that would allow Alberta Health Services to provide medical assistance in dying at faith-based health facilities while respecting religious objections, although she cautions the province is “not there yet.”

In an interview, Hoffman said she has received public feedback urging her to reverse her 2016 exemption that allowed Catholic health provider Covenant Health, which is publicly funded, to opt out of providing access to the procedure. . . [Full text]

Alarming gap in assisted dying in Antigonish

The Chronicle Herald

Jocelyn Downie

Today (Dec. 17) marks two and a half years since the coming into force of Canada’s federal legislation on medical assistance in dying (MAiD).

In Nova Scotia, MAiD has now been requested in about 400 cases and provided in about 200. Unfortunately, there is one particularly notable gap in access to MAiD: St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, a publicly funded faith-based institution in Antigonish, refuses to allow MAiD within its walls. . . [Full text]

Hospital, care-home policies must change so more people can access medical assistance in dying

The Province

Alex Muir

. . . an individual who is suffering intolerably and whose death is reasonably foreseeable has a constitutional right to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) if certain other criteria are met. . .

. . . most people in Vancouver’s West End will end up at St. Paul’s, a hospital run by Catholic-based Providence Health, which doesn’t allow MAiD to be performed in any of its facilities. Anyone wanting to access MAiD once at St. Paul’s must be transferred to Vancouver General Hospital or another willing facility. . .

. . . end the practice of forced transfers by insisting that all taxpayer-funded facilities, including Providence facilities, provide MAiD on site. . .[Full text]

Move to call abortion and assisted suicide ‘human rights’ is ‘evil’, says Princeton professor

Christian Today

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has been accused of elevating individual freedom above moral considerations after recently including abortion and assisted suicide among the ‘human rights’ that should be protected by states.

The committee’s ‘General Comment’ on the right to life, issued at the end of October, argued for the decriminalisation of abortion and the removal of restrictions that could subject women or girls to ‘physical or mental pain’ if they are unable to terminate their pregnancy. . .

‘States parties should not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers that deny effective access by women and girls to safe and legal abortion, including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers,’ it said. . .

On assisted suicide, the committee stated that where this was legal, ‘robust’ legal safeguards should be in place to protect patients from abuse. . . [Full text]

Canadian doctors grapple with how to approach assisted dying for young patients

Toronto’s Sick Kids hospital drafting policy on requests for assisted dying from those over 18

CBC Radio

Duncan McCue

Three years after Canada’s top court decriminalized doctor-assisted suicide, the federal government is about to wade into an emerging controversy: How to respond to requests from children for medical assistance in dying, or MAID.

Canada’s largest children’s hospital has already gotten a taste of this thorny issue.

“We had discussed that there may be a time in the future that MAID would be available for patients under the age of 18, or a group called ‘mature minors,'” said Dr. Adam Rapoport, director of the Pediatric Advanced Care team at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

“We, as an organization, like to be ready for things that might be coming down the pike.” . . .[Full text]