Canada's Supreme Court grants constitutional right to assisted suicide

In a sweeping ruling Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada declared physician-assisted suicide for incurably ill patients a fundamental right under the nation’s constitution. The justices unanimously overturned a ban on physician-assisted suicide, saying it violated an individual’s right to “life, liberty and security of the person.”

Although Canadian law allows terminally ill patients to refuse artificial nutrition and life-support equipment, a ban on assisted suicide had made it a criminal offense, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, to counsel or aid a patient’s suicide.

Instead, the high court in Ottawa, Ontario, said patients have a constitutional right to end their lives with the help of a doctor, assuming the person has “a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease, or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.”

The decision is a reversal from an earlier Supreme Court ruling in 1993. On Friday, the court gave Parliament a year to rewrite Canada’s law allowing doctors to help suffering, incurably ill adults end their lives if they so desire. Until the law is rewritten, the assisted-suicide ban will remain in effect.

The justices said doctors were capable of determining whether patients were mentally competent to give consent to suicide. They found no evidence that elderly or disabled patients would be pressured into dying.

“We’re very disappointed, and we’re very frustrated,” said Amy Hasbrouck, who was at the Supreme Court during Friday’s ruling. She serves as the director of Toujours Vivant—Not Dead Yet, an advocacy group run by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.

Under the ruling, Hasbrouck said, Canada now has policies to prevent suicide among some people and policies to assist suicide among others. “The difference between those people is simply that one group has a disabling condition and the other does not. That is a discriminatory contradiction,” she said.

“Life is too precious to allow a doctor to kill,” said Charles McVety, president of the Institute for Canadian Values. “It is sad to think that people suffering will now have to contend with the pressure of making a decision on ending their life, instead of fighting to continue.”

The ruling is a victory for activists who have long pushed for Canada to permit suicide with the help of a doctor. Two British Columbia women, both deceased, helped spark the case.

Gloria Taylor suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative neurological illness, and waged a legal battle for permission to commit suicide with the help of a doctor. She won her case in a lower court in 2012, but the decision was later overturned. She died of an infection later that year.

The other woman, Kay Carter, traveled to Switzerland to commit suicide in 2010 using a dose of sodium pentobarbital at the age of 89. She suffered from a degenerative spinal cord condition. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland.

Carter’s daughter, Lee Carter, told reporters after Friday’s decision, “We just felt that it was a fundamental right for Canadians that they should have this choice.”

In the United States, assisted suicide is already legal in Washington state, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, and Montana. Activists are pressuring other states to legalize the practice. In California, a bill under consideration in the legislature would allow doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients who wish to die.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.