Death with Dignity: Canada Changes Rules on Assisted Suicide Policy

The Canadian Supreme Court's decision from last year declared that forbidding people from seeking their own death "deprives dying people of their dignity and autonomy." The Court consequently ordered the Canadian government to update the relevant law within a year. As of April 14th, the updated assisted suicide policy was presented by the Liberal Party of Canada. Despite controversy about this practice in the Canadian government, the law is expected to pass.

If passed, the document will remove a 14-year prison sentence for providing assistance in suicide for terminally ill. The law forbids suicide assistance for people who experience mental illness or psychiatric conditions. The idea of so-called "Advance Consent," defined as requesting to end one's life at a future point, is advocated by the "Dying with Dignity" movement, is also outlawed in the new policy.

The law forbids the practice of so-called "suicide tourism," that of traveling abroad in pursuit of a final remedy if such aid in one's home country is forbidden. Several countries across the globe, Mexico and Switzerland among them, do allow or do not effectively forbid suicide tourism. In the US, only four states provide for this kind of aid for terminally ill patients.

Polls show that both doctors and the US public supports this practice, given that the common word "suicide" would be legally substituted with the phrase: "dying with dignity."