This month, the Canadian Supreme Court trampled democratic deliberation by unanimously conjuring a constitutional right to “termination of life” for anyone who has an “irremediable medical condition” and wants to die. Note the scope of the judicial fiat is not limited to the terminally ill: The ruling grants competent adults a right to die if they have an “illness, disease, or disability that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual,” including “psychological” pain.
Even these broad words inadequately describe the truly radical social policy Canada’s Supreme Court has unleashed. For example, a treatable condition can qualify as “irremediable” if the patient chooses not to pursue available remedies. So an “irremediable” condition that permits life-termination may actually be wholly remediable, except that the patient would rather die than receive care.
Imagine the hypothetical Sally, with diabetes (or HIV, heart disease, neuropathy, early-stage cancer, you name it) that can be fully controlled by medication. She decides she wants to die (for whatever reason) and claims that available treatments are “not acceptable” to her. Presto chango, her theretofore treatable illness is suddenly an irremediable condition. Ditto Harley, who becomes clinically depressed after his business fails—a diagnosable “illness, disease, or disability”—and refuses psychiatric treatment in order to seek death.
But there’s more: The Supreme Court not only invalidated the federal law prohibiting assisted suicide for those with an irremediable medical condition, but also the law that states, “No person is entitled to consent to have death inflicted upon him, and such consent does not affect the criminal responsibility of any person by whom death may be inflicted on the person by whom consent is given.” Hence the court created a right in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to Dutch-style active euthanasia.
Doctors who morally object to killing patients might be forced to participate. The court gave Parliament 12 months to pass legislation consistent with its sweeping opinion, stating that “the rights of patients and physicians will need to be reconciled” by such legislation or left “in the hands of physicians’ colleges.”
That may leave doctors who embrace Hippocratic values twisting in the wind. Quebec, which legalized euthanasia last year, requires all doctors asked for death by a legally qualified patient to give the lethal jab or refer to a doctor who will. Professional medical societies in Canada also appear ready to quash physician conscience. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan, for example, recently published a draft ethics policy that would force doctors with a moral objection to providing “legally permissible and publicly-funded health services”—which now include euthanasia—to “make a timely referral to another health provider who is willing and able to . . . provide the service.” If no other doctor can be found to do the deed, the original physician will be required to comply, “even in circumstances where the provision of health services conflicts with physicians’ deeply held and considered moral or religious beliefs.” In other words, a willingness to kill patients who want to die may soon become necessary to practice medicine in Canada.
What does this mean for the United States? First, Dutch- and Belgian-style euthanasia—in which psychiatrists can euthanize the mentally ill and general practitioners lethally inject the elderly “tired of life” and people with disabilities—has invaded North American shores. Since many Americans see our northern cousins as more socially enlightened, the ruling could ease the advocacy burden of assisted suicide advocates who work like termites to undermine Hippocratic values here.
Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.