According to March 27, local time, a Canadian judge caused great controversy after agreeing to euthanize a 27-year-old woman because the woman's father expressed great opposition.
In her ruling, Judge Colin Feasby acknowledged that the doctor-assisted death would cause "deep grief" to the father, but said the young woman's right to end her life overwhelmed his feelings.
Out of concern for privacy, the Canadian media withheld the names of the parties involved when reporting on the incident, and the daughter was called MV and the father was WV.
"MV's dignity and right to self-determination outweigh the important issues raised by WV and the harm he suffered as a result of the loss of his daughter," Judge Fisby wrote in a 34-page written judgment. ”
However, the judge's verdict will be suspended for 30 days, which means that the father still has a chance to appeal.
It is reported that the 27-year-old MV suffers from autism, and she has felt mental torture for many years, so she wants to apply for "euthanasia", and was approved in December last year. But the father, who lives with her, thinks that his daughter is "healthy" physically, but a little "vulnerable" due to mental problems.
Austin Paladeau, a lawyer for the MV, said the case boiled down to the autonomy of the daughter and that the father's affection for his daughter "does not mean that he has the right to let her live against her wishes."
But Judge Fisby, for his part, wrote in his testimony: "He [the father] said that she was generally healthy and believed that her physical symptoms, if any, were due to an undiagnosed psychological condition." "The only known diagnoses described by MV at previous hearings were autism and ADHD. "For many parents, the loss of a child is a life-changing event from which they can never really recover," Faisby also indirectly explained the reason for his moratorium.
The father's lawyer requested a judicial review to investigate how the daughter was approved for "euthanasia".
There are comments to support that the father-daughter battle is the latest controversy over one of the world's most lenient assisted death plans.
Canada's path to allowing euthanasia began in 2015, when its Supreme Court declared that "outlawing assisted suicide is a denial of people's dignity and autonomy," giving national leaders a year to draft legislation. The resulting 2016 law legalizes euthanasia and assisted suicide for people aged 18 and over, as long as they meet certain conditions: they must have a serious terminal illness, disease, or disability that causes suffering, and death is imminent. The law was later amended to allow people who were not terminally ill to choose to die, greatly expanding the number of eligible people.
According to the data, since 2016, the number of people receiving "euthanasia" in Canada has been increasing year by year, and so far about 44,958 people have received "assisted death".
Critics argue that the Canadian government, under the liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has repeatedly made "euthanasia" easier. It has also caused a lot of controversy, and the current father-daughter dispute is a microcosm of it, and some relevant people pointed out that "Canada's euthanasia law is not to protect vulnerable groups." ”