“Doctors may have inadequate protection and I expect in these early days, many physicians will be extremely reluctant to provide assistance to patients wanting medical assistance in dying”, Philpott told health care professionals in a speech in Ottawa.
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“That means that, effective tomorrow, you may be asked to do something that has never been expected of you before – to help people end their lives”. Instead, Lee Carter said, she felt “betrayed”.
The Supreme Court’s decision clearly refers to the role of only physicians in providing medical assistance in dying, the province said.
“As it’s now written, Bill C-14 does all this”.
But Philpott said those guidelines are not enough.
That’s when the Supreme Court, as a stop-gap measure until the June 6 deadline, agreed to allow Canadians who met the Carter criteria to apply for judicial approval for an assisted death.
But that effort might have been threatened Monday when legal scholar Peter Hogg – who literally wrote the book on constitutional law in Canada, a text frequently cited by the Supreme Court – said Bill C-14 is inconsistent with last year’s decision.
Hoskins urged the federal government to pass legislation on assisted dying as quickly as possible so a national framework could be established on the practice, and contacted Senators from Ontario Monday to encourage them to vote in favour of the bill.
A right-to-die bill was adopted previous year, the first legislation of its kind in Canada.
The court declared consenting, competent adults with a grievous and irremediable medical condition that causes enduring and intolerable suffering have a right to assisted dying. It could be months before a law is adopted and even then, legal challenges are likely. The federal government has expressed its opposition to the legislation but is named as a defendant in the court challenge because it is responsible for the Criminal Code. However, doctors can not administer the life-ending drugs and the patient must swallow them without help.
“The patient has to be made aware of resources or other individuals who can provide that information to them”, he said.
He said the proposed bill ignores what the Supreme Court fundamentally decided: “That people trapped in unimaginable suffering have the right to escape”. Vermont’s law, which took effect in May 2013, is closely modelled on the system in OR and uses the same safeguards.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons’ standards stipulate that someone need not have a terminal illness to seek medical assistance in dying, while the federal government’s legislation says the assistance is only for consenting adults “in an advanced stage of irreversible decline” with an incurable condition and for whom natural death is “reasonably foreseeable”.
A referendum saw the state enact right to die legislation in 2008.
John’s said Monday his unidentified client has secured a second doctor to sign off on the request and administer the medication that will allow the man to end his life.
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“It was horrendous to watch him go from being a very healthy, very enthusiastic, very involved person to being someone who couldn’t eat, couldn’t roll over, who couldn’t speak so people could understand him”, Sperry said. Of those, 525 actually took their own lives. “While the regulations are well done, they’re insufficient”.
