The Globe and Mail
Suicide is not the answer, generally speaking. But we are not speaking generally when we talk about drafting a law legalizing and regulating physician-assisted suicide – a law the Supreme Court of Canada has told Parliament to enact by June 6.
The new law will ease and enable suicide, normalizing what in most circumstances is a harmful, undesirable act by fitting it into a compassionate health-care system through the exculpatory power of legislation. As such – as a necessary exception to all the rules and norms that constitute our traditional sense of collective good, which focuses on extending life rather than ending it – the coming law on physician-assisted dying needs to be extremely specific and tightly defined. . . [Full text]