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BY PHILIP SLAYTON TOP COURT TALES will the court do this time? In 1992, Sue Rodriguez was dying Times have changed A ssisted suicide — the issue that rips everyone's heart out — is headed back to the Supreme Court of Canada. What from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig's disease), a degenerative disease of the nervous system. She didn't want to live once she could no longer enjoy life. Rodriguez knew by the time that hap- pened she would be physically unable to kill herself. She looked for a doctor who would construct a machine allowing her to commit suicide when severely disabled. But s. 241(b) of the Criminal Code says that assisting suicide, unlike suicide itself, is a crime. Any doctor who helped Rodriguez would risk jail. Rodriguez asked the Supreme Court of British Columbia to declare s. 241(b) invalid, claiming it violated her rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She lost at trial, and before the B.C. Court of Appeal. In 1993, she lost again before a nine-member panel of the Supreme Court of Canada, but only by one vote. Justice John Sopinka gave judg- ment for the Supreme Court major- ity. He agreed that Rodriguez had been deprived of her right to personal secu- rity, but said she had not been deprived in a way contrary to the principles of fundamental justice (s. 7 of the Charter says, "Everyone has the right to life, 18 SEPTEMBE R 2012 www.CANAD I AN Lawyermag.com Society isn't in the same place it was when the Supreme Court ruled against physician-assisted suicide in 1992. Will Gloria Taylor's case be different? liberty, and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of point, said Sopinka, was the need to prevent suicide being encouraged and assisted in an abusive situation. Justice Beverley McLachlin was fundamental justice"). The decisive one of the four dissenters. She wrote: "Parliament has put into force a legisla- tive scheme which does not bar suicide but criminalizes the act of assisting sui- cide. The effect of this is to deny to some people the choice of ending their lives solely because they are physically unable to do so. This deprives Sue Rodriguez of her security of the person (the right to make decisions concerning her own body, which affect only her own body) sébasTien ThibaulT