Canadians back doctor- assisted death, poll says
84 per cent of those surveyed say they support assisted dying
The man in the emergency room was dying of terminal brain cancer, unable to feed, wash and use the toilet himself and in constant, excruciating pain.
His wife confided in Dr. Brett Belchetz that every day at home her husband turns to her and asks, “Will you help me end my suffering?”
“She wanted to know if there was anything I, as a physician, could do to help,” said Belchetz, a Toronto emergency physician who treated the man last week.
“What’s frustrating is that I have nothing to offer them,” he said. “When I signed on to be a doctor, I didn’t sign on to keep people alive no matter what. But I can’t do for these patients what they ask me to do.”
A new poll suggests Canadians overwhelmingly support changing the law to allow Belchetz to perform what would now be punishable by up to 14 years in prison — actively help a dying patient kill himself.
The Ipsos Reid survey of more than 2,500 Canadians found 84 per cent of Canadians support assisted dying if strong safeguards were in place.
Described as the largest survey of its kind in Canada, the poll, commissioned by Dying with Dignity Canada, was published Wednesday, one week before the Supreme Court of Canada begins hearings into whether Canadians should be granted the constitutional right to euthanasia.
The survey of 2,515 Canadians found 80 per cent of those who identified themselves as Christians — including 83 per cent of Catholics — believe doctors should be permitted to help terminally ill patients end their lives “if they are competent and suffering” and repeatedly ask for assistance to die.
Euthanasia is considered murder under Canada’s Criminal Code.
More than half of those surveyed — 57 per cent — said they have watched someone close to them suffer a terrible death.
Of those, 85 per cent supported assisted dying.
“This is an issue, when people face it close up, they realize palliative care is not enough. If we are truly to stop the suffering, we need to legalize assisted dying now,” Wanda Morris, the CEO of Dying with Dignity, said.
The poll found support for doctorhastened death across every demographic, including the disabled, though the sample size was small. Of 94 people with severe disabilities surveyed, 85 per cent were in support of medically assisted dying.
“Yet many of the people who publicly speak out against assisted dying are leaders from those communities,” Morris said. “People with disabilities are not asking for paternalism. What they want is autonomy .”
The Supreme Court of Canada hears oral arguments next week into whether laws banning euthanasia and doctorhastened death violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The landmark case involves two B. C. women, Kay Carter and Gloria Taylor.
In 2011, Carter’s children, along with the B. C. Civil Liberties Association, launched a lawsuit on their mother’s behalf. Kay Carter suffered from spinal stenosis, a paralyzing and degenerative condition. She died near Zurich, Switzerland, in January 2010, in a clinic called Dignitas, surrounded by family after drinking a lethal dose of sodium pentobarbital, a barbiturate. She was 89. Had she remained in Canada, Carter would have had to commit suicide on her own. “For her, it was not an option,” her daughter Lee Carter said. “She felt starving to death was really beyond the pale. ”
Gloria Taylor, who had ALS, won a court- sanctioned exemption from federal laws banning assisted suicide when a B. C. Supreme Court judge ruled the law infringes on the rights of disabled people.
A provincial Court of Appeal overturned that decision. In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the case. Taylor died of a severe infection in October 2012.