The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down a contentious law that prohibited anyone from assisting someone when they want to commit suicide.
The court's ruling in a 9-0 decision last week limits physician-assisted suicides to "a competent adult person who clearly consents to the termination of life and 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."
Within those parameters, the court said the nature of the suffering includes either physical or psychological pain. The person's condition need not be terminal.
What this all may lead to is now being hotly debated in doctors' offices, coffee shops, nursing homes, and around dining room tables across the nation.
Will it lead to suicide centers such as they have in Switzerland? Will it encourage greedy relatives to pull the plug on the old folks? Or will it simply allow people suffering from painful, debilitating diseases and conditions to end their suffering in a humane manner?
The court is being criticized for not being more detailed in its ruling. For not, perhaps, giving examples of how it foresees the new ruling to be applied in Canada. But that was to be expected. No court ruling foresees and covers all of the potential outflows from its decisions. This ruling, we expect, will be tested by different cases, different lawyers and be interpreted differently from province to province. And, to be sure, the court's decision will take quite awhile to become a part of the current medical system.
But it is, however, despite its lack of detail, a vast and good step to a more humane society.
Critics have said that when people ask for their suffering to end, they are in fact asking for help. Certainly this is true. But, if there is no remedy for their suffering, that help, if they so choose, must include death. We understand for some people, usually bound by religious beliefs, no suicide is acceptable.
And, perhaps your family has been spared the heartbreak of seeing a loved one suffering and asking for it to end. Perhaps you've only seen tragic cases in the media of people seeking to end their life legally. Then you have been lucky to date. But if you find yourself as either the person suffering, or having to try to help a loved one deal with unthinkable suffering in the future - then surely you would hope that a humane death would be one of your legal options.
We certainly do.
