Moot Point: The Right to Die

Do Not Kill Me
Kerry Croft (2L)

Many people in Holland, where Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) is legal, are carrying wallet cards with “Do not kill me” on them so they will not be assisted in dying if they get in a serious vehicle accident.

Legalizing PAS brings the risk of yet another legal “slippery slope”. Few would argue today in light of Morgentaler (1988)that the right of a person to be able to decide what happens with his or her own body is fundamental in Canada. It would seem to be a reasonable extension of that right to allow people to decide when and how they wish to die. As was the case of Sue Rodriguez (1993), who lost her bid for PAS at the Supreme Court, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is only one of countless horrible ways for life to end that could justify PAS.

There are many reasons other than diseases like ALS that may bring people to feel that life is no longer worth living and wish their own to be over. Unfortunately, the poor souls in Canada today who come to that very personal decision are left with very unpleasant options when choosing to exercise their personal right to die.

What of the athlete who, due to an injury can no longer play his chosen sport and can see no reason to live, or perhaps the otherwise healthy person who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer who doesn’t want to suffer any part of the painful decline to death? No doubt there are countless survivors of horrible injustices who would rather not live with their pain. I cannot imagine the challenges military or vehicle accident victims must face when they are horribly disfigured or crippled. Do some wish they had died instead? Perhaps once PAS has been accepted for long enough, walk-in suicide clinics will be an accepted option for those who do.

If PAS is legalized we are faced with the same types of decisions we have today: who gets to decide who is entitled to it, and when. It is easy to say that a team of specialists over time could make the right decision, but at some point they are bound to made decisions contrary to the choice of some person (or demographic), somewhere, suffering their own, personal subjective pain sufficient for them to want to die as painlessly as possible with the assistance of a physician. Until we have more answers that we now have, we need to keep PAS in Pandora’s Box.

But if PAS becomes legal in Canada, you may want to start typing up your own “Do not kill me” card. . . just in case.

From Rodriguez to Taylor, The Right to Choose the End
Andrew Tarver (2L)

Dr. Baker often told us his favourite course to teach was Sociology 488: A Functionalist Perspective on Death and Dying.  Taking the taboo out of the inevitable was a morbid fascination for my professor; no aspect was free from a social scientific dissection.  One of those topics — assisted suicide — dealt with the case of Sue Rodriguez.

Ms. Rodriguez suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal degenerative neurological disease more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s.  Onset is followed by a sharp decline in muscle control and eventually an inability to swallow or breathe without assistance.  A painful end is spent fully conscious, confined to a body that has failed in every way imaginable.

Ms. Rodriguez cherished her life and hoped to spend every moment of it with her young son before the pain became too much.  A 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court told her she had to make a choice: end her own life legally while it was still worth living, spend months helplessly spiralling towards her death with no recourse, or find a doctor willing to break the law.

Somewhere out there is an altruistic doctor who could face up to 14 years in prison for providing Ms. Rodriguez her dying wish.  Indeed, 18 similar prosecutions for assisted suicide took place between 1995 and 2010.

Just over 15 years later Gloria Taylor, also an ALS sufferer, is asking the courts to grant her the choice they did not provide Ms. Rodriguez: qualified, medical assistance to end her own life.  Attempted suicide was decriminalized in Canada in 1972, creating an odd disparity in the law that former Chief Justice Lamer recognized as a violation of equality rights under s. 15(1) of the Charter.  Those that can commit the act themselves are free to do so, but those who want or need assistance must place enormous liability on someone else.

Roughly six months after our final exam in Death and Dying, Dr. Baker started turning down food.  He’d been fighting cancer since his diagnosis sometime that semester, and knowing he’d lost the fight, he chose to die rather than suffer. Unwilling to place another at risk, Dr. Baker spent his final days starving to death while numb on morphine.

We owe those suffering from terminal illness one last opportunity to exercise the right to liberty – liberty to the inherently personal matter of when the suffering has become too great.