Breaking down barriers
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- Published on Tuesday, 17 December 2019 10:34
- Written by editor
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Dear friends,
Your support makes our work possible. Without it, we would not be able to protect and expand civil liberties and human rights in Canada, year after year.
We have many struggles ahead of us in 2020. With increased threats to civil liberties across the world, we feel the momentum to fight back and create change.
We need your help to hold those with power accountable. We cannot defend the rights of people, like our client Julia Lamb, without your support.
Will you make a donation today to continue our momentum for change in 2020?
Donate Now Julia, who lives with spinal muscular atrophy, wanted to ensure that she would have the choice to avoid a prolonged and agonizing death.
However, Julia did not qualify for medical assistance in dying (MAID) because Canada’s 2016 law limited MAID to patients whose natural deaths are “reasonably foreseeable.”
In September, one of the government’s expert witnesses admitted that Julia qualifies for an assisted death, if she requests one. The BC Supreme Court adjourned the case at our request.
We are thrilled with this victory for Julia—but our fight is not over.
Publicly-funded medical and care facilities continue to deny patients the right to access MAID based on moral and religious grounds—undermining patients’ rights and impeding physicians’ efforts to provide their patients with the best care. The BCCLA stands up for the freedom of conscience and religion of health care workers. But we do not believe that these institutions have the right to deny a patient’s end of life medical care or block physicians or nurse practitioners from providing that care.
These institutions put vulnerable people at risk of greater suffering because patients are forced to leave facilities to receive, or even be assessed for, MAID.
Next year, we will fight to end these “forced transfers” and defend patients who are denied their constitutional right to access MAID.
Take advantage of matching funds, and donate today to help continue the fight for compassion and choice.
Donate Now
Thank you for empowering us to continue our fight.
Sincerely,
Emily Lapper
Senior Counsel (Litigation)
BC Civil Liberties Association
Tel: 604.687.2919
Toll-free: 855.556.3566
www.bccla.org
306-268 Keefer Street
Vancouver, BC V6A 1X5 You're receiving this message because you are a donor or volunteer with the BCCLA, or you have opted in to receiving communications from us. 
