Like Canada's top justices, readers, print and digital, held court this week on whether the terminally ill and suffering should have the right to a physician-assisted death
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In the mid-1970s, I was the Vice-President Nursing when the first palliative care unit was established in a Canadian teaching hospital. I am now 81, in remission from cancer and watching the assisted-death discussion carefully. I want a new law in place when my general deterioration gives me the courage to act, with enough energy left to hold a leave-taking celebration.
Palliative care is an absolute base for supporting the patient through the time that he/she first engages in the application for a Death with Dignity directive. It's time to free the discussion about dying of all the claptrap about "natural death," "reverence for life," "slippery slopes," "suicide," "assisted suicide" and "euthanasia."
Quebec's Bill 52 goes a long way toward strengthening the place of choice in how I will die. It gives legal backing for "assisted suicide" in the face of intolerable suffering. But our choices at that point in the illness deal only with how I will experience my death. A directive, with my definition of "dignity," would allow the physician to adhere to my request for the when.
Living longer presents us as individuals with a need to think about what that life will be like, for us, for our families, and for society. We are committed to a reverence for life and a natural death. Perhaps we could become as committed to a reverence for a chosen life.
Lorine Besel, Montreal
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As a nurse who has seen death up close in a hospital setting, I believe Dying with Dignity's Ipsos Reid survey showing that 84 per cent of Canadians would support "assisted dying" if strong safeguards were in place asked the wrong question.
The question – "As long as there are strong safeguards in place, how much do you agree or disagree that a doctor should be able to help someone end their life if the person is a competent adult who is terminally ill, suffering unbearably and repeatedly asks for assistance to die?" – assumes that strong safeguards are relatively easy to put in place.
Another poll released earlier this year, also by Ipsos Reid, found that 81 per cent of the 1,000 Canadians surveyed said that they are worried about the quality of health care they can expect when they're older, and that six in 10 have little faith that hospitals and long-term care facilities have the resources even now to handle the needs of a rapidly greying population. How then can Dying with Dignity assume that a health-care system that appears to have lost the confidence of a great many Canadians will protect its most frail and vulnerable with "strong safeguards"?
Many Canadians are unprotected from suffering because they don't have palliative care, particularly in Quebec. Where are their safeguards? Who is protecting them?
Dying with Dignity's question should have been: "Considering the fact that not every Canadian who needs palliative care receives it, how much do you agree or disagree that a doctor should be able to help someone end their life if the person is not receiving palliative care and is a competent adult who is terminally ill, suffering unbearably and repeatedly asks for assistance to die?"
Nathan Friedland, Roxboro, Que.
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People who are opposed to doctor-assisted suicide forget that many people are alive only because of medical intervention.
We can prolong the lives of many, but often at great cost to that person.
Sorry folks, life is a terminal condition. People should be able to make the choice to end it on their own terms. Ethical doctors would welcome that. Saving a life at any cost is not in tune with "do no harm."
Mary Dale Caswell Bird, Kakabeka Falls, Ont.
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I count among my friends and acquaintances several people in their 90s. Their heath situations vary; while none is suffering implacable physical pain, the emotional stress is evident from their frequent comments about such conditions as loneliness, dependence on other people for day-to-day activities and so on. As a 98-year-old of my acquaintance puts it, "That's enough."
Clearly, the "slippery slope" brigade would be totally against helping such a person end his/her life, citing greedy relatives or some other such reason why the victim's life – and emotional suffering – should be prolonged.
It's time to recognize that suffering takes a multitude of forms, many of which could lead to a very rational desire to "end it all."
Dave Ashby, Toronto
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If someone wants to die, they cannot ask someone who has taken a vow to save lives to end theirs.
Shelley Wood, Oshawa
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Granting the right to an assisted death to someone terminally ill who wishes to die in no way impinges on the right of a disabled person to continue living as they currently do.
The two rights are not tangled up with each other. If a disabled person is pressured to accept suicide, that would clearly be a criminal act – and should be dealt with as such. This case is about the right to choose. That's all.
Geoff Rytell, Toronto
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I hope the Supreme Court sees that "to protect the vulnerable and to preserve the sanctity of life" is not an opposing, but a supporting position to an individual's "right to life, liberty and security" under the Charter of Rights and Freedom.
While many may choose to die a natural death and wait for it to occur, why must this position be forced on all? Why should others not have the right to end their life when they no longer want to suffer pain or the indignities of age?
Who are we protecting when an individual is in constant pain and agony, can no longer feed him/herself, is forced to sit in feces, and/or cannot carry on a meaningful conversation?
Who has judged this to be the quality of life that needs to be "preserved"? I would equate these conditions with torture.
Compassion is defined as a "strong desire to alleviate suffering." Yet when individuals request assistance to end their own suffering humanely, we deny their request. We are not protecting them. We are judging them, and denying them the liberty to end their own life when it has become unbearable by their own standards.
I hope the Supreme Court will return our right to choose – life and death – with dignity!
Judi Bachmann, Montreal
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This debate could go on forever, there are so many different situations where assisted suicide would be acceptable and many where it wouldn't.
Shao Xu, Thornhill, Ont.
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ON REFLECTION Letters to the editor
Yes, Mr. Chrétien
Re Canada's True Role In This Conflict (Oct. 17): The Conservative government has decided to dabble in war – a war, as former PM Jean Chrétien says, that is unsupported by the UN or NATO. Given that most of the population in the area doesn't want to be saved and/or is unwilling to defend themselves, it doesn't take prescience to calculate the outcome.
If our government were to put boots on the ground to provide safe passage and offer refuge to those who wish to escape this future failed state, then perhaps that would indeed be "noble."
Bruce Henry, Brampton, Ont.
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No, Mr. Chrétien
Justin Trudeau can learn from Jean Chrétien, who makes a much more cogent, compelling argument consistent with Liberal values. However, while Mr. Chrétien was quite right to keep us far from the Bush Iraq war, this is a necessary, very limited military commitment to help rid the world of the evil that is Islamic State, and should not preclude humanitarian aid, massive or otherwise.
There is no shortage of issues to attack Stephen Harper and his government between now and the election.
This is not one of them.
Frank Lambert, Thornhill, Ont.
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150 years of shame
It is grotesque for Canada to celebrate its birth while our worst historical legacies persist and sentence far too many to the fates of the Fontaine, Abraham and Starr families (A Dramatic Hearing For Killers Of Tina Fontaine's Father; Ottawa Spending $4-Million On Advertising In Leadup To 150th Birthday – Oct. 16). After 150 years, it is unconscionable that part of our population still faces life expectancies, living conditions, rates of disease, substance abuse, mental illness and violence comparable to the least developed corners of the world.
Elizabeth Stratton, Toronto
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Problem solved?
There's really no need for Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto to build anything new for its expanded research department (Princess Margaret Hospital Unveils Expansion – Oct. 16). All it has to do is move into the glistening – and mostly empty – MaRS building across the street (Is There Life After MaRS? Dubious – Oct. 16).
Now that Ontario owns the white elephant, I'm sure Princess Margaret can work out a favourable long-term lease with a grateful Premier Kathleen Wynne.
There, that was easy …
Larry Tayler, Belleville, Ont.