Last year, Canada's Supreme Court overturned the country's ban on doctor-assisted suicide. Advocates for a patient's right to choose to end their own lives with a physician's help applauded the ruling. But they have been waiting since then for the federal government to issue a new law that spells out the conditions for which seriously ill or dying Canadians can ask for a doctor's help to end their lives.
And the wording of that last sentence is important, because in ruling to overturn the ban, the Supreme Court in Canada did not require that a person's condition has to be terminal to make the end-of-life request.
To learn more about the federal government's long-awaited bill, VPR spoke with Sharon Kirkey, a senior reporter and health writer with Postmedia News; her articles appear in the Montreal Gazette and National Post newspaper.
