Canada’s parliamentarians
have been offered two distinct arguments to excuse doing nothing in the wake of
the Supreme Court’s instruction to decriminalize assisted suicide within 12
months. A number of law professors and ethicists suggest (1) it’s a health concern and thus it’s provincial and (2) as a liberal
society, with a liberal Charter, we can leave it to individual choice.
Canadians, along
with their Supreme Court, prefer to put the individual first. So, should
assisted suicide be delegated to those who are suffering and their doctors? Or
do we, through Parliament, have a collective obligation to set binding national
conditions on how the crime of assisted death is withdrawn?
We provide universal
health care nationwide to relieve suffering, require seat belts and vaccinations,
and harass smokers from coast to coast because we carry a bearable obligation
to support the well-being of fellow Canadians. We interfere collectively with
other people’s “security of person” when, after public consideration and
democratic consent, we decide it’s for their own good.
Accordingly, we only
permit our delegated professionals (MDs) to prescribe drugs when they believe the
drugs may do more good than harm.
Therefore, before a
doctor helps a patient end his/her life, shouldn’t that doctor, as our
delegated "brother’s keeper," also have to believe — and document — that the
patient would be better dead than alive?
Surely, traditional
liberals and social conservatives can start their deliberations by agreeing to
address this un-simple imperative.
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