Oregon’s physician assisted suicide law could be a blueprint for Canada’s

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Lawmakers, doctors and patients have a lot to think about now that the Supreme Court of Canada has stuck down laws banning doctor-assisted suicide.

They may want to look at Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal for over 15 years.

The Death with Dignity (DWD) law has several requirements.

You must:

• be 18 years or older
• have a terminal illness with a prognosis of 6 months or less
• be a resident of Oregon
• be capable of self-ingesting the medication
• have the mental capability to understand their diagnosis, treatment options and alternatives to the DWD Act, and the results of taking medication to hasten their death
• make the decision to pursue and take the medication voluntarily, without coercion.

One thing Oregon’s law doesn’t deal with is the idea that the patient must have a condition that causes “enduring suffering that is intolerable.” That phrase is included in the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling. That causes trouble for Oregon State University Religion and Culture professor Courtney Campbell. “In Oregon and Washington, the point has just been to say that patients have a right of self-determination. So long as they hit this objective threshold of expectancy of six months or less to live, then they qualify for the treatment.”

Campbell says there haven’t been many cases of the law being abused in Oregon, but there have been a few. “In our state we’ve had a couple of examples where you could consider it a kind of bullying in a way. Patients that have been treated tih a certain kind of cancer. In one case it was prostate cancer and in another case it was lung cancer. And they were being supported by the state health insurance for funding. At some point, their cancer progressed to a stage that the persons were told that they would no longer be supported by the state health plan, but the state would pay for them to opt for the Death with Dignity Act. I think that’s an egregious overstepping of responsibility here.”

He feels giving the option to people who don’t have a terminal illness could open the door to coercion and abuse. “Whether it’s persons who don’t have enough money or persons that feel they’re stigmatized because they’re elderly or suffering from some kind of terminal illness and don’t have family, they’re abandoned and so forth.”

Campbell says our government needs to take time and really think on which criteria patients here must meet in order to qualify for doctor-assisted suicide. Campbell says community consultation must be part of that.