Lawyers for a B.C. woman with Lou Gehrig's disease went to court Monday to challenge Canada's assisted-suicide laws -- nearly 20 years after a similar attempt by another woman who suffered from the same incurable illness.
Gloria Taylor, 63, is fighting for the right to die because her ALS is already beginning to destroy her ability to move. She was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in December 2009 and now uses a scooter to get around, but she knows the condition will eventually paralyze and kill her.
Although she has already lived longer than doctors predicted she would, Taylor says her condition deteriorates every day and she wants the ability to decide when she has had enough.
Lawyer Joe Arvay, who is representing Taylor and four others, argued on Monday that law against the right to die are unconstitutional. The latest court battle comes 18 years after the Supreme Court ruled against Sue Rodriguez in her fight to legalize assisted suicide.
But Arvay said that much has changed since the Rodriguez decision, with new evidence and research supporting the right to die. He also expressed confidence that the ban would be overturned and that the court would side with his clients.
"It is cruel and inhumane to force me to suffer a long, prolonged death," Taylor told reporters earlier this year when she joined the lawsuit. "It is my life, my body, and it should be my choice."
Taylor has joined four other plaintiffs to argue against laws that make it a criminal offence to help seriously ill people end their lives with the help of a doctor.
It is currently illegal in Canada to counsel, aid or abet a person to commit suicide. The offence carries a maximum punishment of 14 years in prison.
Taylor and the other plaintiffs say it's time that Canada amended the country's laws so that seriously ill and mentally competent people can make the choice to end their lives. Taylor will appear in court Dec. 1 to argue her case as well.
Taylor is one of five plaintiffs in the case. The others include Lee Carter and her husband Hollis Johnson, who took Carter's mother to Switzerland two years ago so she could die with the help of a doctor. The other plaintiffs are family physician Dr. William Shoichet and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
But opponents said that changing the laws would make elderly and disabled people vulnerable to abuse by family and friends who might pressure them to end their lives.
Outside the courtroom, activists opposed to doctor-assisted suicide scattered stuffed dummies to illustrate what they say will be unjust deaths if the law changes.
John Coppard, who has brain cancer, said that despite his illness, life remains precious to him and he continues to hope.
"If a law like this passes, people like me, people who've been through some rough period on their journey, will take their own lives, when they could have decades to live," he said.
Likewise, Dr. Will Johnston, the B.C. spokesman for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada, said that an assisted-suicide law could increase elder abuse cases.
"We have no idea how many of the deaths in Oregon are truly voluntary. People change their mind all the time," he said.
"We have jurisdictions like Holland where an official government report has documented literally thousands of deaths where there is no evidence that guidelines were followed or that there was any formal request for assisted suicide."
The right-to-die debate came to the forefront in Canada in 1993 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against Victoria resident Rodriguez's battle to change the law.
The Taylor and Rodriguez appear similar: Both women are from B.C.; both had ALS; and both want to end their lives. Sheila Tucker, one of Taylor's lawyers in this case, says the difference is that a lot has changed since 1993.
She notes that Belgium and Switzerland as well as the states of Oregon and Washington have since adopted laws that protect people from being influenced or pushed into planning their own deaths.
She says those jurisdictions have proven that assisted suicide laws can work.
"An absolute prohibition is no longer constitutionally feasible now that there's evidence of workable systems," Tucker recently told The Canadian Press.
But Dr. Johnston says while it's legal in Oregon for pharmacies to dispense lethal drugs for doctor-assisted suicides, there's no requirement of a witness or supervision when the drugs are administered, and no statistics to gauge how the law is working.
