Are Our Euthanasia Laws Effective?

We quiz Stefanie Green, author of This Is Assisted Dying

- Courtney Shea

After more than 20 years delivering babies, you switched to performing assisted deaths. How come?

I've always been interested in the intersection of medicine, ethics and law. Working in maternity care, I was able to engage with those topics in terms of women's health and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, I was watching the evolution of assisted dying legislation in Canada. I started thinking, well, yes, the law might change, but who is going to do this very important work when it does?

You mention Canada's decriminalization legislation. When and why did that happen?

In Canada we had some landmark cases that challenged the blanket prohibition of assisted dying as a violation of charter rights, and the Supreme Court agreed in a unanimous ruling. Bill C-14 a was then introduced in 2016, creating a number of parameters regarding consent, capacity and the stipulation that to qualify for assisted dying, your natural death had to be reasonably foreseeable.

Which means what exactly?