“My position is grounded in two core ethical values: autonomy and equality,” said Jocelyn Downie, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy and professor of law and medicine at Dalhousie University.
Using logical argumentation, Downie made the case that assisted suicide should be decriminalized because individuals already have the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment and to request that such treatment be withdrawn, there is widespread support among the Canadian public for decriminalization, there is no credible evidence to suggest that decriminalizing assisted suicide will lead to higher rates of suicide, vulnerable people can be protected under properly crafted legislation and attempted suicide is not a crime.
“If I’m able-bodied, I can commit suicide. If I’m physically disabled, I cannot … on equality grounds, this compels us to decriminalize assisted suicide.”
Downie, author of Dying Justice: A Case for Decriminalizing Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Canada, spoke to about 100 people assembled at Nouvelle Scène in Lowertown for “Whose Life is it Anyway? Assisted suicide in Canada,” a talk hosted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as part of their Café Scientifique discussion series, which aims to engage the public on issues of Canadian health research.
Downie said she had already written a bill that would decriminalize assisted suicide in Canada in order to begin a concrete discussion on the topic, but she said she had no strategy on getting it into parliament.
Her proposed bill would require that an individual seeking assisted suicide to be deemed competent by experts, that they make a formal declaration of their decision to seek assisted suicide and that they agree to provide information about themselves to a commission which would monitor cases and report back to parliament.
Several audience members, some identifying themselves as members of the pro-life lobby, criticized the format of the event, saying only one side of the debate was represented by an expert.
Discussion moderator Colleen Flood, scientific director of CIHR, said the format was designed to focus on a single Canadian researcher and allow them sufficient time to present their research, and that the counterpoint of the argument would come from the question-and-answer portion.
Several audience members, including Conservative MPs Rod Bruinooge and Pierre Lemieux, criticized Downie’s position.
Bruinooge argued that, if the government were to sanction suicide, it could hinder efforts to dissuade depressed teens from killing themselves. Bruinooge made specific mention of aboriginal youth, who have a much higher rate of suicide than the non-aboriginal population.
Downie said that argument could not be sustained because Canadian law already permitted attempted suicide and recognized that suicide could be a rational choice.
In an interview after the discussion, Downie said a good death was defined by the individual.
“It’s what the individual determines to be a good death,” she said, adding that some people see a good death as one in which you endure pain and others prefer no pain at all.
If we fail to confront these difficult questions about death and dying and we fail to demand Canadian legislators to address this issue, “We will all collectively fail in our efforts to truly care for the dying,” she said
