Family of woman forced to relocate for medical aid in dying takes case to court
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Proceedings are underway Monday in BC Supreme Court in a case that will determine whether faith-based organizations can continue the ban on medical assistance in dying (MAID) within their facilities.
The case was brought by the family of Samantha O’Neill, a woman who had to endure a painful transfer from St. Paul’s Hospital to a hospice administered by Vancouver Coastal Health in order to receive MAID, her family says.
Along with a half-dozen pro-MAID activists carrying signs on the steps of the BC Supreme Court, Sam’s mother Gay O’Neill, accompanied by Sam’s father Jim, tearfully recalled their daughter’s final hours.
They told how Sam, who was 34 and suffering from stage 4 cervical cancer, was taken to St Paul’s Hospital by ambulance in March 2023 in extreme pain. He was taken there because it was the closest available emergency room, O’Neill said.
By early April, O’Neill said, her condition had become so bad that any movement caused her extreme pain, and she was requesting MAIDS.
To receive it, she had to be transferred to a hospice 25 minutes away, because St. Paul’s, a faith-based institution run by the Providence Health Care Society, does not allow MAID in its facilities.
The last time O’Neill saw her daughter conscious, she was sitting on the commode. The nurses told her she could quickly say her final goodbyes, as transport workers were waiting outside.
“I overcame my fear and immediately told Sam that being his mother was the happiest part of my life,” she said. “I told her I loved her, and she told me she loved me. I kissed her softly on the forehead. Then we were asked to leave the room so the nurses could dress her.”
O’Neill was then heavily sedated for ambulance transfer. Later that day she found a maid at a hospice in Vancouver.
“We are here because we don’t want anyone else to suffer unnecessarily from another unfair forced transfer,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill, along with co-plaintiff Dying with Dignity Canada and Vancouver palliative care physician Dr. Jyothi Jayaraman, argue that forcing MAID patients to transfer to receive services in faith-based facilities violates their constitutional rights.
In his opening statement before BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Skolerud, lawyer Robin Gage said the plaintiffs will challenge the constitutional validity of allowing publicly funded health-care institutions to ban MAID.
B.C.’s Supreme Court will hear a case asking whether publicly funded faith-based hospitals should be allowed to prevent patients from receiving medical aid in dying, known as MAID. The challenge, based on Charter rights, has been brought by the advocacy organization Dying with Dignity Canada and the parents of a woman who was forced to leave a Vancouver hospital to access MAID.
The plaintiffs will present evidence to show that the policy of not allowing MAID within Providence facilities causes significant physical and spiritual harm to vulnerable patients based on religious beliefs they cannot share, Gage said.
He said the court will hear from the families of others who have had to transfer facilities to receive MAID and also from the doctors who provide it.
Helen Long, CEO of Dying with Dignity Canada, said the plaintiffs’ goal is to overturn the policy so that patients can receive MAID in faith-based facilities by physicians who are able and willing to provide it. No employee of Providence will be required to administer the procedure against his or her discretion.
Alison Brown, a lawyer for the BC government, said there is now a place called Shoreline, near St. Paul, where MAID can be performed and which accommodates all MAID patients in St. Paul who do not want to go home. Two other Providence facilities have similar adjacent locations, he said.
There is no constitutional right to access medical care within a specific room, he said in his opening statement.
“At the heart of this case is the policy and whether it is constitutionally compliant or not.”
BC’s policy on MAID was developed to avoid pushing faith-based institutions across the red line into an irreconcilable conflict, Brown said.
Brown said the government will convene policy makers to explain how and why the province’s MAID rules were developed.
Other defendants named in the lawsuit are Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care Society, each of whom are represented by their own lawyers.
Long, of Dying with Dignity Canada, said she hopes the case will have an impact on faith-based facilities across the country.
The hearing is expected to last four weeks, Long said, plus another week in mid-April for closing arguments, “and then we would expect a decision in the late summer or early fall.”
