Court told of dying man’s last days in right to die case

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The argument for allowing doctor-assisted suicide began in BC Supreme Court today with a heart-wrenching story of a dying man’s last days.

Lawyer Joe Arvay represents Gloria Taylor, a 63-year-old Kelowna woman suffering from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She is challenging the assisted-suicide ban in Canada’s Criminal Code in a bid to allow herself to end her life with the help of a doctor.

She is the fifth plaintiff in the case that aims to amend Canada’s laws.

Lawyers for the Attorney General of Canada are arguing the law banning assisted suicide is just and that palliative care allows a terminally-ill person to die with dignity.

In his opening arguments, Joe Arvay read a statement from the late Peter Fenker, another ALS sufferer and a friend of Taylor’s.

“I cannot scratch my head,” wrote Fenker in an August affidavit.  “I feel like I have turned into a blob with useless limbs,” admitting he considered committing suicide when he was first diagnosed.  

Fenker said he used to be 165 pounds but dropped to 111 pounds.  

“I feel like a skeleton,” he wrote.

“I would like to end my life in a dignified way, with the help of a doctor,” said the retired logger, noting he wanted to die in a way that wasn’t painful for his family.

“The government should not be able to tell me what I can do with my body,” he said.

Arvay then read a sworn statement from Fenker’s wife, Grace, from early November.

“He was a skeleton with skin,” said Fenker, describing her husband’s final days in hospital and his difficulty sleeping, eating and moving.

“His toes started to turn purple, and the purple began to work its way up his foot,” she said. “The purple colour slowly worked its way up his legs to his knees, elbows and appeared on his fingertips.”

Fenker said on a Monday in October, Peter eventually took five more gurgling breaths, then stopped breathing.  

“Although I had been prepared for his death and knew the end was near, my grief was endless and I cried uncontrollably,” said Fenker.

“I will always feel bitter that his wish for a medically assisted death was never granted to him.”

Arvay says numerous witness statements will support Taylor’s argument for the right to end her life with help from a doctor.

Donnaree Nygard, the lawyer for the Attorney General of Canada, says the case is a tough one given the emotional stories, but she argues the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled on assisted suicide when it turned down a bid by ALS sufferer Sue Rodriguez to end her life with help in 1993.  

She says most countries and jurisdictions ban euthanasia and assisted suicide, and amending the law could put vulnerable people at risk, such as a person who feels like they are a burden to their family, or someone physically disabled.

“There is no right to commit suicide,” she says.

Outside court, Arvay dismissed worries that overturning the law banning assisted suicide would lead to elder abuse.

“Nonsense,” says Arvay.  “No, there’s evidence of it. This is all scare-mongering. This is just all scare-mongering: The evidence… that doctors who are otherwise committed to the Hippocratic Oath, as soon as we were to legalize physician-assisted dying, all the doctors are now going to be dying to kill their patients. That’s ridiculous,” he says.

“The court’s going to hear a lot of expert evidence. But at the end of the day this case is about real people,” Arvay says.

Outside BC Supreme Court, effigies of people hung in trees as several dozen people protested the effort to overturn the ban.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada worries an assisted-suicide law could increase elder abuse cases because people may not voluntarily wish to end their lives.

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