A little Canadian news for a change.




It was probably going there anyway, but the thorny issue of assisted suicide is headed back to the Supreme Court of Canada after the B.C. Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld the prohibition against it.

There's a thin chance the high court may decline to revisit the issue, having ruled on it 20 years ago, but observers think enough has changed since then that the justices will be forced to take another look.

In a 2-1 decision, B.C.'s top court overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that found the ban violated Charter rights to equal treatment by preventing seriously ill people from killing themselves, which is not illegal for able-bodied Canadians.

In their ruling, two of the three B.C. Appeal Court justices declined to challenge the Supreme Court of Canada's 1993 ruling that ALS sufferer Sue Rodriguez of Victoria had no right to physician-assisted death. They accepted the top court's narrow definition of "life," in Section 7 of the Charter as essentially meaning the right to breathe rather than a measure of enjoyment of life.

The judges also noted that the high court's decision to uphold Section 241 of the Criminal Code in Rodriquez ruling fit the definition outlined in Section 1 of the Charter, which says the rights it guarantees can only be subject to reasonable limits "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."



More at: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/assisted-suicide-issue-headed-back-top-court-b-001458301.html



Personally I see nothing wrong with someone who has suffered and continues to suffer in pain or severe loss of quality of life and who desires to end that suffering. If a doctor is willing to state that there no chance of any improvement but only decline and is willing to assist then so be it. The individual suffering knows their limits better than any legislator. They feel it not a lawmaker.

I would have to say I agree with this, only the person going through it knows the pain and it shouldn't be some bureaucrat that decides.