Extending the Right to Die to Mature Minors in Canada

By Gali Katznelson

Until February 2016, medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada, which encompasses both euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, was prohibited under the criminal code as a form of homicide. This ruling was challenged in Carter v Canada in the Supreme Court and overturned on the grounds that the ruling opposed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In June 2016, MAID became legal in Canada under Bill C-14.

Under this law, a person may receive medical assistance in dying if they meet all of the following criteria:

  • They are eligible for health services funded by a government in Canada
  • They have a grievous and irremediable medical condition. This includes an irreversible state of decline that causes intolerable suffering that cannot be relieved, with a reasonably foreseeable natural death
  • They have made a voluntary request for medical assistance in dying that was not made as a result of external pressure
  • They give informed consent to receive medical assistance in dying after having been informed of other means that are available to relieve their suffering, including palliative care
  • They are at least 18 years of age and capable of making decisions with respect to their health

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2018 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics

2018 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics
June 1, 2018 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East ABC (2036)
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

“Congress acknowledged that society’s accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.” Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., School Bd. of Nassau, Fl. v. Arline, 480 U.S. 273 (1987).

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2018 annual conference, entitled: “Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics.” This year’s conference is organized in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability.

Conference Description

Historically and across societies people with disabilities have been stigmatized and excluded from social opportunities on a variety of culturally specific grounds. These justifications include assertions that people with disabilities are biologically defective, less than capable, costly, suffering, or fundamentally inappropriate for social inclusion. Rethinking the idea of disability so as to detach being disabled from inescapable disadvantage has been considered a key to twenty-first century reconstruction of how disablement is best understood.

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