My husband’s new mantra: “I am not always right – But I am never wrong!” (sounds like Prime Minister Howard to me though)
Choice comments: This article out of Canada just demonstrates that beyondblue is not unique in its concerns about suicide rates. Australian politicians need to understand that voluntary euthanasia will not go away for them as an issue. Eventually a brave leader will step up to the lectern and tell us the leaders are now following it citizens in progressive reform for implementing voluntary euthanasia into Australia (again!). Voluntary euthanasia is not the same as suicide due to depression. We need to take the emotional baggage out of its implementation and accept it for what it is…a viable alternative to living in intolerable pain due to physical impairment. We each deal with our pain differently which is why we call it “choice in end of life decisions”.
2007-05-16 From: Canada.com
Assisted suicide case full of holes: defence lawyer
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=1c71f9fa-0c9f-49b4-8e37-740532e68910&k=10458
Phil Couvrette,
CanWest News Service
A 29-year-old man has been charged with helping an uncle, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, commit suicide.
The death was in September 2006, but the charges were only laid on Tuesday, months after police launched an investigation into the man, Stephane Dufour.
His uncle, Chantal Maltais, 49, was confined to a wheelchair. Dufour is accused of helping him hang himself, but his attorney, Michel Boudreault, says the case against him is very weak.
“It’s in our favour that 12 people will be able to pour over the reasons for these charges,” he said of the jury that will decide Dufour’s fate. “The charges are full of holes.”
The jury will eventually have to launch into a debate on whether the law should be amended, he added.
Dufour could face up to 14 years in prison if convicted of assisting or encouraging someone to commit suicide.
Dufour is out on bail until he appears, on July 17, at the courthouse in Alma, Que., 200 kilometres north of Quebec City.
Boudreault said his client, who will plead not guilty, is living through a very difficult situation.
The trial is taking place nearly a year after Maltais’ death because some family members wondered how he could hang himself unassisted, which prompted the police investigation.
Boudreault said Maltais wanted to die on the anniversary of his mother’s death.
Reached at work, one of Maltais’ five brothers, Gaetan, said he was “very relieved” by the death “because he had suffered so much” late in life.
He said Dufour is supported by most of the family.
Gaetan’s wife, Lina, said they were shocked to learn about the trial.
Maltais had suffered from the disease since he was four, Lina said, and suffered “like a martyr” but was constantly helped by his nephew.
She said Maltais openly talked about putting an end to his life and family members eventually stopped trying to dissuade him.
In 2001, Evode Pelletier, from nearby Chicoutimi, was sentenced to 12 months in jail after helping his depressive partner end her life with the help of cyanide.
Last October Andre Bergeron, a Sherbrooke, Que. man admitted helping to kill his severely disabled wife, but a judge spared him prison time.
It isn’t unusual for the family to become convinced that someone is suffering too much to live, even to the point of helping them commit suicide, said Louis Lemay from Quebec’s Association for the Prevention of Suicide. He called Maltais’ death “a tragedy.”
While his degenerative disease couldn’t be cured, it’s very rare that nothing can be done to relieve physical suffering, he said.
“Did he have the appropriate (medical) treatment? Didn’t he in fact suffer from depression?” wondered Lemay. “Even doctors sometimes don’t have the right approach to relieve the pain.”
Suicide is becoming one of Quebec’s greatest health problems, his group insisted. It is the leading cause of death for men under 40 and Quebec’s overall suicide rate leads the country.
and another article about the same circumstances:
2007-05-16 From: Toronto Star, ON, CA
Quebec case rekindles assisted suicide debate
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/214694
May 16, 2007 05:59 PM
Les Perreaux
Canadian press
MONTREAL – The case of a Quebec man accused of helping his sick uncle hang himself is threatening to renew pressure on Ottawa to overhaul Canada’s law on assisted suicide.
Stephan Dufour, 29, was arrested this week on a charge of assisting the suicide of his uncle Chantal Maltais, who suffered from muscular dystrophy.
Investigators with Quebec provincial police say the 49-year-old Maltais hanged himself Sept. 8, 2006.
Police arrested Dufour after a lengthy investigation. He has been released on a promise to appear in court July 17 in Alma, Que.
“The nephew was taking care of the uncle, he did a lot of work taking care of him,” said Sgt. Pierre Lavoie of the Quebec provincial police in the Lac-St-Jean region 250 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.
“When our investigators questioned the nephew, a few elements came out that led us to believe a charge of assisted suicide could be brought against him,” Lavoie said Wednesday.
Dufour’s lawyer, Michel Boudreault, told reporters that Maltais suffered terribly for years and hounded Dufour to help him kill himself.
Maltais even picked his own date to die.
“It was the same date his mother died,” Boudreault told reporters in Alma.
“He wanted to die for many years, maybe 10 to 15 years. Chantal made his funeral arrangements. He said his body was a prison. He made several suicide attempts, without success.”
“The choice of his nephew was a logic choice for him. Out of naiveté, Stephan Dufour was the logical person to turn to,” the defence lawyer said.
Quebec has had several cases in the past 18 months that have ignited debate in the province over whether Canada should regulate assisted suicide.
From the Alma hanging to a death by drug cocktail and a botched attempt at asphyxiation, the Quebec cases highlight the grisly results when desperate people with little medical knowledge try to help loved ones end their lives.
“It’s terrible and makes no sense,” said Yvon Bureau, an author and activist who is pushing for a highly regulated system in Canada that would allow people to end their lives with less pain.
Such systems exist in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Bureau says 80 per cent of Canadians consistently support the idea but politicians fear an extremely vocal minority that will make them pay a steep political price.
“These are people who are pro-life, or believe in life at all costs,” Bureau said. “The five per cent of pro-life extremists can overwhelm them.”
Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde has pushed for assisted suicide legislation and she says many MPs share her opinion. But her private members bills on the subject have never been pushed ahead.
“This just doesn’t make sense, and the case of this poor young man is sad and illustrates it,” she said in an interview from Ottawa.
“It’s a delicate question and there are people who are against it. But I think more and more, particularly in Quebec, we recognize the need to change the law, with serious boundaries to prevent abuse.
“But right now there are abuses in Quebec and English Canada happening in silence. And we must end that too.”
Assisted suicide rose to the national agenda in the 1990s when Sue Rodriguez fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada for the right to kill herself.
Rodriguez, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, lost in a split decision but killed herself anyway with the help of an unidentified physician in 1994.
Bureau says he is not in favour of allowing people to kill suffering relatives. But he says people like Dufour wouldn’t be moved to desperation if Canada allowed people to end pain-wracked lives with the patient’s clear consent and a proper medical procedure.
“The assistance must be medical, practised in a strict, secure framework,” Bureau said.
“These other kinds of acts have to stay criminal. But they would happen much less frequently if people had other alternatives.”
Two recent high-profile assisted suicide cases in Quebec involved two women named Marielle Houle.
In January 2006, one Marielle Houle was sentenced to three years probation for helping her son, playwright Charles Fariala, kill himself. Houle followed his instructions to help the 36-year-old, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, end his life with a cocktail of drugs.
Andre Bergeron received three years probation in October 2006, after pleading guilty to aggravated assault causing the death of his wife, who also happened to be named Marielle Houle.
Houle suffered from Friedreich’s ataxia, a degenerative and incurable disease. Bergeron boosted Houle’s dose of morphine and tried to suffocate her with a plastic bag.
She died several days later in hospital.