Flin Flon area residents are weighing in on the national debate over doctor-assisted suicide.
The Supreme Court of Canada recently struck down the federal ban on the practice in cases where patients are in severe, terminal suffering.
Parliament now has one year to craft a new law on physician-assisted suicide, forcing MPs – and all Canadians – to confront the emotionally charged issue.
“Other jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, have grappled with this situation for decades,” said Tom Heine, a long-time Flin Flon resident and former MLA candidate. “Contrary to fear-mongers who blather on about perceived shortcomings, misuses and failures in other jurisdictions, acceptable policies to safeguard human life have been put in place in other jurisdictions to protect people who are suffering. Our federal lawmakers would do well to look at what other countries have done.”
On a personal level, Heine said it’s difficult to envision being in a physical or mental state where life is intolerable.
He hopes that whatever new laws govern doctor-assisted suicide are grounded in compassion.
“The decision to end one’s life is something that is intensely personal and extremely complex,” Heine said. “All that the law should do is provide the safeguards that will prevent outsiders from abusing the right to control your own life. Slippery slope arguments only serve to muddy and obfuscate the realities of allowing individuals to make such a monumental decision for themselves.”
Jim Galbraith, pastor at Flin Flon’s First Baptist Church, said while polls show most Canadians agree with the concept of physician-assisted suicide, he does not.
“I am more concerned with how this ‘right’ may eventually become an expectation that is imposed on those who, through disability, disease or injury, are considered by decision-makers to be a burden on society,” said Galbraith.
Galbraith hopes Canadians heed the words of the Council for Canadians with Disabilities, which is troubled by the court ruling.
It is crucial that society “seek to protect the vulnerable rather than further empower the powerful,” he said.
But another pastor, Alex Mcgilvery of Northminster Memorial United Church, sees a place for physician-assisted suicide in certain cases.
“The reality is that we’ve granted people rights to control every other part of their lives except for this one,” he said. “It is reasonable, then, that we move to give people control over the end of their life without the shaming that accompanies suicide. The argument comes down to the value of life when it is a life of irredeemable suffering. We aren’t talking about people who are a little depressed and want to be done with it. This is about people who will never recover and will be in increasing pain until [they succumb]. That period of time can destroy families as they watch their beloved scream or thrash in pain while whatever made them human has vanished.”
Mcgilvery said the next law on physician-assisted suicide must ensure reliable diagnoses of disease.
A disease that is “serious and incurable” is not sufficient, he said, mentioning that AIDS meets that criteria but is manageable.
“It needs to be incurable, untreatable or unmanageable to maintain a good quality of life and a condition in which the patient’s condition will continue to degrade,” Mcgilvery said.
Mcgilvery said timing is also crucial.
“Someone who’s just been diagnosed with ALS may feel like ending their life at that point, but they may have several good years left to them,” he said. “The idea is to allow people to exit when they’ve got to a point at which their quality of life has degraded to a point that we are no longer extending their life through treatment, but stretching the length of their dying.”
