Tread carefully on assisted suicide.

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected Canada’s ban on doctorassisted suicide on Friday, giving the federal government 12 months to craft legislation making it legal for physicians to help those who wish to take their own lives.

In doing so it reversed a blanket prohibition put in place by a previous ruling in 1994. The court said the change was justified by changes in “the matrix of legislative and social facts” since then.

The decision opens the way to momentous changes in the way Canada treats people facing what the court called “enduring and intolerable suffering.” It is not illegal for Canadians to take their own lives. But current law forbids anyone from helping another person commit suicide.

Advocates of assisted suicide argue the difference is discriminatory, and that forcing people with (again quoting the Court) a “grievous and irremediable” medical condition to suffer needless pain is a denial of their rights and dignity. Opponents warn it is a slippery slope that could devalue human life and put vulnerable people at risk.

The court’s ruling found that Canada’s blanket ban violated the Charter right to “life, liberty and security of the person” by forcing individuals in such circumstances to take their lives earlier than they would wish, while they were still able to do so legally, i.e. without assistance. It also encroached on their personal autonomy by denying them the right to make decisions on their “bodily integrity,” the court ruled.

The government now faces a daunting challenge. Assisted suicide is legal in a handful of jurisdictions around the world, but the parameters vary widely. Laws in Belgium and the Netherlands allow not just assisted suicide but euthanasia (where doctors administer lethal drugs instead of patients themselves), in non-terminal as well as terminal cases, and apply to children as young as 16 without parental consent. In 2012 the Netherlands introduced mobile euthanasia units that make house calls for patients whose doctors refuse to help end their lives.

Law in U.S. jurisdictions tends to be tighter. In Oregon, terminally ill adults can obtain lethal doses of medication under strict conditions. The patient must face death within six months, must make the request in writing, and must repeat it after a waiting period. Patients must be confirmed as free of outside influence and capable of making an informed, uncoerced decision, must have it approved by two doctors and two witnesses, and must administer the dosage themselves. Health care workers who object on moral grounds are not required to participate.

By contrast, Quebec’s legislation, passed last year, more closely resembles the liberal European model. Bill 52 stipulates that patients must be “at the end of life,” but stipulates no fixed timeline. They must suffer “a serious and incurable illness” and be “in a state of irreversible decline,” suffering pain “which cannot be relieved in a manner the patient deems tolerable.” The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition notes that Quebec’s loosely-worded law is not limited to people who are terminally ill, and does not require a waiting period or psychological examination, or preventive measures such as pain control. It would allow assisted suicide for conditions many people find bearable with proper treatment.

Which, indeed, would seem to suit the court. “Grievous and irremediable” is not the same as terminal, never mind “at the end of life,” while what is “intolerable” is explicitly left “to the individual” to decide. We believe such an open-ended liberalization to be unwise and dangerous. While polls suggest Canadians broadly approve of the right to request assisted suicide, we believe most would consider it acceptable only under the narrowest of conditions, far closer to Oregon’s law than Quebec’s.

In crafting the new law, the government must take care to include strict measures against abuse or expansion. A person facing months of agonizing, untreatable pain for a terminal condition with no hope of cure arguably has a right to seek help in bringing about the inevitable in a dignified manner. But assisted suicide must be a rare and dreaded last resort, to be contemplated only in the most dire of circumstances and only with great reluctance, not merely a way to end an unhappy or inconvenient life.

Canadians put immense value on life. Ottawa must ensure the law it crafts reflects the right to a dignified death without encroaching on that deep reverence for life.