Euthanasia in Canada
Assisted suicide has been a hotly debated topic for as long as I can remember, and the discussion has been brought closer to home this month, as assisted suicide is now legal in Canada. For me, the question of assisted suicide is not a question of whether assisted suicide should be legal or not, but a question of personal choice. Studies have found that less than one per cent of people living in countries where assisted suicide is legal actually choose to end their lives with prescribed drugs. If the numbers are anywhere near the same in Canada, more people in will die per year from smoking (one in every five deaths) than assisted suicide. I do not think it is a discussion of death, but rather a discussion of choice. I believe people should have the right to choose, even if I don’t agree with their choice.
For me, dying with dignity comes from realizing that another person’s suffering is intensely personal, and, therefore, not for an outsider to have much of an opinion or use for it. A person has the right to die because it is their body and their life. Sue Rodriguez was a proponent of assisted suicide in Canada in the early 1990s, and she said, “If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?” Sue suffered from ALS, and thought that the ban on assisted suicide violated the constitution by curbing her rights of personal liberty and autonomy guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court thought that the obligation to preserve life and protect vulnerable lives was more important. Sue lost her case, but sparked discussion on the topic. She ended her own life with the help of an anonymous physician in 1994.
In 2014, in the United States, Brittany Maynard fought a similar battle to Sue Rodriguez, bringing huge amounts of attention to the subject again. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was given six months to live. The suggested treatments would have had terrible side effects and the palliative care options presented issues for Brittany. She could have developed a morphine resistance, suffered personality changes, as well as loss of her motor skills and memory. Brittany was young and the rest of her body was healthy, so she most likely would have suffered in a hospice for several months, and she did not want her family to witness that.
She said, “I would not tell anyone else that he or she should choose death with dignity. My question is: who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the right to make that choice for me?”
Brittany chose to end her life on her terms, surrounded by her friends and family. Her mother spoke out after, saying, “My 29 year-old daughter’s choice to die gently rather than suffer physical and mental degradation and intense pain does not deserve to be labeled as reprehensible by strangers a continent away who do not know her or the particulars of her situation.”
Brittany Maynard was an advocate for choice, who found immense comfort in having the right to die with dignity, supported by her loved ones.
Charles Darwin said that sympathy was the strongest part of human nature. In instances of others’ suffering, I do not see any incredible beauty, or anything to be gained. I only feel overwhelming sympathy, and an understanding that I cannot understand what others are going through. I don’t want to support my argument with any unrelated premises, assumptions, the supposed meaning of life, or quotes from fictional characters. I want to suggest the importance of choice, compassion, and sympathy in extremely nuanced situations, because, in the end, that decision is theirs, and theirs alone.