Meanwhile in Canada

Canadian family sues after Catholic hospital prolongs their daughter’s suffering

Samantha O’Neill died of cervical cancer last year at the age of 34.

Despite chemotherapy and radiation, her disease was terminal, and the pain quickly became overwhelming. She ended up going to the closest hospital for treatment and soon decided to make use of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) law, which has been legal since 2016. She wanted to end life on her own terms instead of letting the disease have the final say.

Unfortunately, the taxpayer-funded hospital she was at to treat her cancer, St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, was run by a Catholic organization called Providence Health Care. The Catholic Church, of course, opposes the practice of euthanasia and would rather see patients suffer from incurable diseases than allow them to seek peace. They also won’t allow outside physicians to come into the hospital to do that work—which suggests the hospital itself has the legal right to refuse to provide certain types of care. (In Canada, individual physicians have conscientious objection rights.)

So the hospital told O’Neill she would have to go somewhere else to get the treatment she wanted. But by that point, movement was all but impossible.

It made the final hours of her life even worse than they already were:

She was supposed to have death with dignity. She wasn’t allowed to have it because a Catholic hospital said she deserved to suffer.

friendlyatheist.com