Canada’s assisted suicide warning: Physicians’ conscience rights at stake

Historically, assisted suicide (aiding a person to take his or her own life) was prohibited by the common law in Canada, as in all common law jurisdictions. Indeed, at common law suicide resulted in forfeiture of all goods and chattels of the suicide victim to the state.  A person who assisted a person to commit suicide also committed a felony.

Prohibitions against attempting suicide and assisting suicide were codified in Canada in 1892.  The attempting suicide law was challenged as infringing upon the protection for individual liberty in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the criminal prohibition against assisted suicide was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General) in 1993.