Terminally ill woman joins constitutional challenge on physician-assisted suicide

A 63-year-old Westbank woman suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease wants to join the B.C. Civil Liberties constitutional challenge to give Canadians access to physician-assisted suicide.

Gloria Taylor filed her application Tuesday asking the B.C. Supreme Court to add her name to the lawsuit so she can resume the crusade launched by the late Sue Rodriguez, of Victoria.

Taylor said her condition has steadily deteriorated since she was diagnosed with the fatal neurodegenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and given a year to live.

After hearing that news just before Christmas 2009, she said she sat in the parking lot feeling too numb to cry, thinking: “This happens to someone else.”

Although she now is in a wheelchair, endures chronic pain and requires a respirator at night, Taylor said she is thankful for the extra time she has had but wants the ability to say when she checks out.

Her 11-year-old granddaughter and her 83-year-old mum are behind her and she said she didn’t want to end up like an aunt who spent nine years dying in a hospital bed: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

There is no known cure or effective treatment for the disease that most infamously in 1939 struck the great New York Yankee first baseman known as “The Iron Horse” for his durability. He died June 2, 1941.

Rodriguez contracted it, too.

ALS sufferers slowly lose muscle control and most, 80 per cent, die of respiratory failure between two and five years of diagnosis.

"I am asking the mercy of the court to allow me the option to work with my doctor to ease my pain and help me end my life peacefully and with dignity," Taylor said.

"My body is caving in. I should be able to make the choice about how much suffering to endure based on my own beliefs and values."

The civil liberties association is spearheading one of two challenges to the Criminal Code provisions that prohibit assisted suicide.

A husband and wife who went to Switzerland to help an aged parent end her life – Lee Carter and Hollis Johnson – and Victoria Dr. William Shoichet are also part of its suit to overturn Criminal Code provisions that carry a maximum sentence of up to 14 years in prison for assisted suicide.

A non-profit group known as the Farewell Foundation has launched a similar challenge but would like to see even non-medical staff permitted to assist the process.

"A number of countries around the world as well as a number of states in the U.S. now allow for medically assisted aid in dying," said Joe Arvay, the lawyer handling the civil liberties association case.

“We think that experience is important.”

Almost two decades ago the Supreme Court of Canada rejected a near-identical heart-wrenching plea from Rodriguez.

The lawyers this time say societal values have changed and the experience elsewhere provides answers to concerns raised by the majority in the controversial 5-4 Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1993.

The two-month-old suit, however, is not expected to get before the B.C. Supreme Court until November even if it is fast-tracked.

After any decision by that trial court, the case would go through the B.C. Court of Appeal before qualifying for a potential hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada two or three years from now.

"We do not underestimate the challenge of persuading the courts the Supreme Court was wrong in Rodriguez and should reverse itself," Arvay said.

"We think adding Gloria as a plaintiff will add some urgency."

Grace Pastine, litigation director for the civil liberties group, said it was time for the high bench to revisit the right to die.

“The fears about medically assisted suicide are unfounded,” she added.

In spite of the high court’s verdict, 43-year-old Rodriguez committed suicide in 1994 with the help of an anonymous doctor.

Pastine said there had been a sea-change in global opinion since her ordeal and that several countries and states such as Oregon and Washington now have right-to-die laws.

More importantly, the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed since 1993 and the justice who wrote the most resounding dissent defending the right to die, now is Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.