Canada would be venturing into barely charted waters if it were to expand its assisted-dying law to cover young teenagers and patients with mental illness or severe dementia, according to three long-awaited reports exploring how other countries handle ethically challenging requests for the procedure.
The trio of independent reports, tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, were prepared at the request of the federal government after the Liberals passed their assisted-dying law in June, 2016…
The reports do not contain any specific recommendations on how – or even if – Canada should change the legislation that allows doctors to help qualifying patients end their lives.
The federal government asked the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA,) a non-profit evidence-gathering organization, to study and sum up all that is known about how Canada and a handful of other countries treat requests for three kinds of patients currently excluded from Canada’s law…