The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association filed a lawsuit challenging Canada’s ban on assisted suicide. The suit was filed in the province’s Supreme Court on April 26 on behalf of Lee and Hollis Johnson. The couple took Lee’s mother, 89-year-old Kay Carter, to Switzerland in January 2010 to have her killed by lethal injection, a crime that is punishable in Canada by up to 14 years imprisonment. According to the lawsuit, Section 241 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits counseling and assisting suicide, is unconstitutional because it denies dying people the right to be euthanized.
Mark Pickup, an Alberta disability rights activist, says that “I want our laws prohibiting assisted suicide to stay in effect and enforced, in case I despair and happen to meet someone like Kay’s daughter and son-in-law who agrees with killing me.”
The Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die also filed a claim against Canada’s assisted suicide law.
