O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Canadians have the right to doctor-assisted suicide, Supreme Court rules

The complete ruling (PDF, 555 KB) is available at
http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/14637/1/document.do

Now Sue Rodriguez's question, "Whose body is this?", can be answered: "It's mine."

But only if you are a Canadian citizen in Canada

Not so. It would apply to all who have the legal right to be in Canada (such as citizens, permanent residents, refugees) and fall under health care rules here, as and when the rules and Criminal Code are rewritten.

It would apply in every province and territory of Canada — unlike in the USA, where those seeking a "good death" under similar circumstances would have to relocate to Oregon in order to take advantage of that state's sanction for euthanasia.

I believe also Montana, Washington, New Jersey and Vermont. Not as good as "every" but getting there.

and then there are those in some state legislatures who are trying to pass laws that would send a woman to prison for having a miscarriage.

Does that include tourists or just those who have a legal right to permanently reside in Canada?

That will depend on the way the rules get (re)written.
I would guess that if one could access the healthcare system, then the possibility (and is restrictions) would apply.

But it's way too early to speculate. After all, the current government adamantly did/does not want to enter the debate and now has been forced to. Given that a federal election is coming up in the autumn, it's moot as to whether such will happen before or after. But given that 84% of Canadians are in favor of doctor-assisted suicide, if there's potential push-back, it's not likely to happen until after such election.

Many thanks, kind sir. I'll try to be patient.

An interesting side note —

The Globe and Mail has been running a reader poll with the question: "Do you approve of the Supreme Court ruling on doctor-assisted suicide?"
A couple days ago with ca 17,500 votes the breakdown was: Yes 70%, No 25%, Unsure 5%.
Today with twice as many votes (over 34,300) the breakdown is: Yes 45%, No 52%, Unsure 3%.
To say that such a reversal is highly suspect would be a real understatement.
I suspect that the antis rallied their troops and flooded the site over that short period of time — to what end is uncertain, since it's merely an informal straw poll in a newspaper.

So I was reading that way too fast and read terrorist instead of tourist, and got some weird (and slightly stereotypical) images in my head of a different sort of "doctor-assisted suicide"....

Better get that astigmatism corrected when you next have your eyeglass prescription changed.

One glaring gap in the ruling is the apparent exclusion of permitting such end-of-life decisions via an Advanced Health Care Directive (or whatever it might be called in other jurisdictions), the point of which was to get as close to calling one's end-of-life shots as possible under the applicable legal strictures.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether such will be included in the ultimate rewriting of the Criminal Code and/or individual provinces' health care acts and wording of the ethical provisions of provincial colleges of physicians and surgeons.

We may be heading down the rabbit hole of Alice's world, given the vicissitudes of morality and politics and jurisprudence.

In her many years as a hospital chaplain my wife observed that unless the patient has been placed in hospice care, hospitals and doctors are very reluctant to honor advanced health care and do not resuscitate directives for fear that other family members, sometimes distant family members, might bring suit. While the hospital or doctor might eventually win such a suit (a crap shoot in a jury trial) they still end up spending lots of time and money defending themselves. Win or lose the cost of their required liability insurance inevitably increases dramatically — even in cases where the insurers settled against the insured parties wishes.

And that's why an "iron-clad" health care directive with complete consent of the designated attorneys is paramount, as is one's discussion of one's end-of-life desires with all concerned.
My advice: Do it. Do it now.

Doesn't that leave the hospital equally vulnerable to lawsuits from the other side?

Although it is the hospital and/or doctor that makes the decision it is the insurance company that drives the decision. The insurance company in turn makes their decision based on how much are they likely to lose. Juries are more likely to grant big rewards when a death occurs because of an action that directly results in death. In point of fact very few of these suits actually get to a trial because the insurance company will settle rather than risk a bigger loss at the hands of a jury. They simply play the odds and the odds are heavily against the doctors and hospitals.

That suggests that insurance companies write, practically literally, hospital rule books.

How much deeper into a doctor's practice does that get? (My recent experience has been that unless they're pushed to the wall, doctors won't even answer questions. [Does that suggest that they're simply careful... or actually vulnerable?])

Some day I've got to whack Bruce Davis, the owner of 1-800-LAWYYERS, on the side of the head with a paving stone for spearheading almost unimaginable damage to America's medical and legal systems (not to say that it wouldn't have been someone else had it not been him).

You broke the code! Doctors are vulnerable for what they say and often have little they can say with certainty because there are so many non-medical constraints on how they practice medicine.

The liability and malpractice insurers dictate the informal and formal policies in the hospital and force the practice of defensive medicine. The third party payers (health insurance providers) control what diagnostic and treatment procedures as well as treatment regimens by what they will pay for and how much they will pay for it.

I think the time has come for every American to have dual Canadian citizenship so 3rd party dictated doctor screw-ups here can be remedied there. (But only maybe)

Unfortunately, in our legal system, "iron-clad" doesn't completely protect you. Double-jeopardy is, afaik, the only law that protects you from someone initiating litigation. (and I believe that is criminal only, not civil?) Beyond that, any plaintiff can, for practically any reason, file a lawsuit against you. They may be very unlikely to win, but they can still file against you, there's nothing stopping them. And in doing so, cause you inconvenience, bad publicity, and some unrecoverable expenses. The best you can hope for is for the judge to throw out the case as rapidly as possible.

All of that is true but at least in some states laws have been passed preventing malicious filing of lawsuits. Texas passed such a law several years ago following the suicide of a man who had been subject to such legal harassment for years. If I recall correctly the harasser ended up being convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison after his victim's suicide.

See also SLAPP

….which confirms that, in many jurisdictions, the law offers the greatest advantages to the rich. They can avoid justice by using their money to drag a lawsuit out until a complainant can no longer pursue it. They can also inflict serious monetary damage by launching and persisting with a lawsuit that may have little basis in fact, but which still requires another to assume the expenses of mounting a defense.

But….I meander off topic.

A Retro Report* from today's New York Times: Stigma Around Physician-Assisted Dying Lingers

(* Retro Report: Essays and documentary videos that re-examine the leading stories of decades past.)