On June 6, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision making physician-hastened death legal will come into effect. A parliamentary committee asked to help the government plot how that would roll out in Canada has made some far-reaching recommendations, well beyond what was contemplated by the court in Carter v. Canada.
The moment we are born, our lives take flight; and the longer we are airborne, the greater the chance of encountering turbulence along the way. While every flight is destined to land, some landings are harder to contemplate than others.
A few days after the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the prohibition against medical aid in dying, I received a note from a wonderful colleague of mine saying that her closest friend’s 53 year old son had just died of spinal cancer.
The long overdue public, medical, legal and political debate on end-of-life care is now well underway in Canada. Medical journals and the general press are commenting regularly on the subject…
