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B.C.'s MAID policy requires health authorities to avoid transferring patients, but makes an exception for facilities run by religious organizations.
Published on June 17, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 3 min read
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Handout photo of Samantha O'Neill, who died just days before her 35th birthday, in hospital with her dog Jack and a friend's dog Bella. Photo by Gay O'Neill/Courtesy
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Last year, the family of a woman who was denied the opportunity for medically assisted euthanasia in her hospital room filed a lawsuit against the state and health officials, claiming that the Catholic hospital's ban on euthanasia deprived their daughter of her constitutional rights.
According to a complaint filed in British Columbia Supreme Court, Gay O'Neill sued on behalf of Samantha O'Neill, who, at age 34, chose MAID while battling terminal cervical cancer but was denied the opportunity to die medically assisted in her hospital room.
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According to the lawsuit, in April 2024, she requested the surgery in her room at St. Paul Hospital, a faith-based hospital that bans MAID in hospitals and long-term care facilities, but was instead transported by ambulance to St. John's Hospice, a faith-based palliative care facility run by the Providence Healthcare Association.
According to the lawsuit, O'Neill was given a sedative before the trip, but during the trip “she writhed and groaned in pain and required further injections of painkillers.”
She was reportedly sedated as she was taken away in an ambulance and never regained consciousness, thus denying her the chance to say goodbye to her family and loved ones.
“The circumstances surrounding the removal and Ms. O'Neill's access to MAID caused and exacerbated Ms. O'Neill's severe physical and mental suffering and denied her a dignified death,” according to the lawsuit.
The state's MAID policy requires health officials to avoid transferring patients, but makes an exception for facilities run by religious organizations.
Samantha O'Neill (left) and her cousin Taryn Bodrug (right) hike in Strathcona Park in 2021, one year before O'Neill was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. Photo submitted
Samantha's mother, Gay, and father, Jim, who live in Ontario, called their daughter's deportation “cruel.”
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“They can't continue to hurt people,” Gay O'Neill said Monday. “They have violated her religious choice by forcing their Catholic faith on her.”
“We are heartbroken,” Jim said. “Fourteen months later, we still continue to relive that horrific day.”
After Samantha's experience, Providence Health entered into an agreement with the provincial Ministry of Health under which patients requesting MAID at St. Paul's Hospital will be discharged from Providence Health and transferred to Vancouver Coastal Health for care in dedicated clinical space, said Health Minister Adrian Dix at the time of the announcement.
The O'Neills say this doesn't solve the problem of having to physically move sick patients from their hospital rooms to nearby facilities, noting that the state has only committed to building this dedicated space at one of several medical facilities run by Providence Health.
The Canadian Society for Death with Dignity, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says the new facility hasn't been built yet, and even if it had been built while Samantha was in the hospital, it wouldn't have made a difference in her case because she would still have had to be moved on a gurney to another facility, a move that would have been distressing for her, said Daphne Gilbert, vice-president of the society and a law professor at the University of Ottawa.
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She also said that transferring patients requesting MAID to religious facilities would “stigmatize” them because they would be “told that their request is sinful.”
Gilbert said he doesn't think the rights of maids in patients' rooms is a matter of competing Charter rights between the two groups, because Charter rights cannot be asserted by institutions, only by individuals.
None of the allegations have been proven in court. The health minister, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Providence Medical Society did not respond to requests for comment by end of day Monday.
Editor's recommendation
Providence Health patients will soon have access to MAID next door at St. Paul Hospital
BC Health Minister asks Providence Health Ministry to change MAID policy
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