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BC Supreme Court Stops MAID Death of Woman from Alberta
A Supreme Court Judge in British Columbia has given a rare, last-minute injunction prohibiting a woman from receiving medical assistance in dying (Maid) after physicians in her home province refused to approve the request.
The lady’s common-law partner received the injunction, which prohibits Vancouver physician Ellen Wiebe or any other medical professional from “causing the death” of an Alberta woman within the next 30 days.
The court judgment came as the country remains embroiled in a contentious debate over extending medical assistance to dying or Maid.
Earlier this week, Quebec became the first province to enable people to make the decision years in advance, in breach of federal legislation.
While official records show that the vast majority of people who use Maid have terminal diseases, critics are concerned that a tiny but growing proportion of cases reflect poverty and social inequity, which drives people to end their lives.
According to the Canadian Press, the injunction in the British Columbia case comes after the woman’s partner filed a notice of civil claim alleging Wiebe negligently approved the procedure for a patient who does not legally qualify and that administering Maid would constitute wrongful death and possibly a criminal offense.
According to court documents, the 53-year-old lady flew from Alberta to BC to obtain Maid after doctors in her native province refused to approve it. The woman had requested Maid, alleging akathisia, a movement disorder associated with altering doses of psychotropic or antipsychotic medication.
The woman had “distressing side effects” after reducing her dose of a bipolar illness medication.
Symptoms include “an inner sense of terror all day long, the inability to sleep at night, nightmares, the inability to lie down during the day due to a feeling of falling, the inability to sit or remain still suicidal thoughts”.
According to court records, the woman and her partner were assured that the disease was curable and that the symptoms would resolve within a few months. As a result, doctors denied her request for assisted death.
The woman found Wiebe and connected with her via Zoom. “At the end of the first meeting, Dr Wiebe approved [the woman] for Maid,” the allegations state. Wiebe, a clinical professor at the University of British Columbia, has emerged as a staunch supporter of Maid, claiming that current laws recognize “basic human rights.”
According to the British Columbia lawsuit, Wiebe failed to consult with the woman’s doctors or obtain the patient’s complete medical information. Instead, Wiebe is accused of email reviewing only a fraction of the woman’s medical records.
In Canada, the euthanasia framework comprises two “tracks” – one for terminal diseases and another when “natural death is not reasonably foreseeable”. Applicants with a medical condition involving mental illness will be ineligible until at least March 2027.
Federal law requires a second, independent doctor to accept a request for treatment when the petitioner has a chronic, irreversible physical condition. The complaint claims that it did not occur in the case of the Alberta woman.
British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Simon Coval stated in his decision that the woman looked to have a mental health illness rather than a medical one. He said he allowed the plea since the case was “clearly a situation of extreme irreparable harm” if she carried out her plan to die on October 27th.
Justice Coval recognized that the order “is a severe intrusion” on the woman’s personal and medical autonomy.
“I can only imagine the pain she has been experiencing and I recognize that this injunction will likely make that worse,” stated the lawyer.
However, he questioned if the Maid standards were correctly applied, given that her condition “may not only be remediable, but remediable relatively quickly”.
Source: The Canadian Press
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