Father asks court to stop daughters assisted suicide

Post Reply New Topic

But I'm against including common mental health conditions in that list including treatment proof depression example that you mentioned earlier.

He's hoping to treat her like a child who's incapable of deciding what's best for herself.

Her choice, not his.

NO country or state that allows Assisted Suicide allows anyone with mental illness to access it - they are automatically EXCLUDED. So your fear unwarranted and not applicable.

The courts shouldn't be stepping in this at all - nothing is happening that is outside the law. If enough people approach the courts to interfere, in someone else's medical and end of life decisions, the more chance you have to set potentially dangerous precedents.

I don't agree with that at all. This is a life that wouldn't be ending any time soon if not for the treatment. If we were talking about pulling the plug on somebody that requested it or who was terminally ill, you'd have a point, but from what I understood of it that's not the case.

If this is indeed currently legal, that is an excellent reason for there to be a court case to determine whether this really is in keeping with the law as written or if it's an unintended consequence which isn't permitted for other reasons.

Which seems appropriate here. This sort of thing is explicitly not what this sort of process is for. This is for things like chronic pain due to terminal illness, not lifelong neurological condition.

No, Canada's laws are not intended to limit MAID to those with terminal illness.

Are you disputing the idea that a lifelong neurological condition doesn't cause severe enough quality of life impacts to some portion of sufferers to make them conclude MAID is preferable to dealing with the innate symptoms of said neurological condition?

Given that those symptoms are lifelong and unable to be treated and the level of distress they might represent outside of any external factors (like income, social supports, etc) I feel that they absolutely reach the threshold where this discussion becomes reasonable and where people who wish to deny that right to people who are overall of sound mind really need to examine their own motivations.

What I'm saying is that the whole point of assisted suicide is for the terminally ill. The folks that are going to die in the near term anyways. It's fundamentally extremely dangerous to have an exception made for people who are likely to live a more or less normal life span to get assistance in doing so.

I don't personally accept the notion that this sort of lifelong suffering is truly untreatable. These are all things that potentially could be treated, but if folks just take the out, then how exactly are things supposed to progress and where exactly do you draw the line. Suffering is a significant portion of the human condition and if folks weren't involving other people, it would be a much harder call.

A publication ban protects the identities of the parties and the medical professionals. CBC News will identify the daughter as M.V. and the father as W.V.

While Justice Colin Feasby acknowledged the "profound grief" that W.V. would suffer with the death of his child, he ruled the loss of M.V.'s autonomy was more important.

"M.V.'s dignity and right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V.," wrote Feasby in his 34-page written decision issued Monday.

"Though I find that W.V. has raised serious issues, I conclude that M.V.'s autonomy and dignity interests outweigh competing considerations."

Decision stayed pending potential appeal

Feasby's decision sets aside an interim injunction the father was granted the day before M.V.'s assisted death was set to take place in the family's home.

But the judge also issued a 30-day stay of his decision so that W.V. can take the case to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which means the interim injunction will remain in place for the next month.

M.V. lives with her father and was approved for MAID in December.

She did not file any court documents explaining how she came to qualify for MAID.

Lawyer Austin Paladeau said the case boils down to his client's right to medical autonomy and argued W.V.'s love for his daughter "does not give him the right to keep her alive against her wishes."

'She is generally healthy'

But W.V. believes his daughter "is vulnerable and is not competent to make the decision to take her own life," according to Feasby's summary of the father's position.

"He says that she is generally healthy and believes that her physical symptoms, to the extent that she has any, result from undiagnosed psychological conditions."

Her only known diagnoses described in court earlier this month are autism and ADHD.

On March 11, when M.V.'s lawyers asked the judge to set aside the interim injunction, W.V.'s counsel asked for the injunction to continue and for a judicial review to be ordered that would examine how the daughter obtained MAID approval.

'Tie-breaker' doctor

Currently, two doctors or nurse practitioners have to approve a patient for MAID.

Feasby heard that two doctors were initially approached by M.V. One agreed to sign off on approving her for MAID, the other denied the application.

A third "tie-breaker" doctor, as described by lawyers for Alberta Health Services, was then offered to M.V.

Her father took issue with the third doctor who signed off on M.V.'s MAID approval "because he was not independent or objective."

At the March 11 hearing, Sarah Miller, counsel for the father, called the situation "a novel issue for Alberta" because the province operates a system where there is no appeal process and no means of reviewing a person's MAID approval.

'To live or die with dignity'

Miller asked the judge to order a judicial review of M.V.'s MAID approval.

While Feasby found the "court cannot review a MAID applicant's decision-making or the clinical judgment of the doctors and nurse practitioners," he did rule the actions of the MAID navigator — a person who works for AHS and helps co-ordinate a patient's eligibility assessment — can be examined.

Feasby ruled the courts can review whether the AHS MAID navigator followed its own policy.

"There can be no doubt that it is a serious issue," wrote Feasby. "The AHS MAID policy is part of the legal framework governing medical assistance in dying and, as such, is a matter of life and death."

But Feasby said he would not grant an injunction preventing M.V. from accessing her approved MAID pending a judicial review of the assessor's actions.

"The harm to M.V. if an injunction is granted goes to the core of her being," wrote Feasby.

"The choice to live or die with dignity is MV's alone to make."

A Calgary judge has issued a ruling that clears the way for a 27-year-old woman to receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) despite her father's attempts through the courts to prevent that from happening.



I'm glad to see the judge chose to respect the woman's rights over the emotional manipulation of her father.