A judge in Canada has ruled that a woman with autism can be granted her request to die by assisted suicide, overruling efforts by the woman’s father to halt the deadly procedure.
In a decision this week, Justice Colin Feasby of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta said the 27-year-old woman, identified in documents as “MV,” would be allowed to access the country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) even as her father argued that she was “vulnerable” and “not competent to make the decision to take her own life.” Feasby’s decision set aside an earlier injunction against the woman’s request for assisted suicide.
Canadian law stipulates that anyone seeking assisted suicide be suffering from “a serious illness, disease, or disability,” be experiencing “unbearable physical or mental suffering,” and be unable to reverse either the disease or the attendant suffering.
MV’s father argued that his daughter “is generally healthy” and that “her physical symptoms, to the extent that she has any, result from undiagnosed psychological conditions.”
Feasby himself noted that the woman “has not provided any evidence” to contest those assertions, “nor has she identified her medical condition or provided information concerning her symptoms and how they cause her to suffer.”