This summer, courts in British Columbia will decide whether faith-based healthcare institutions may keep their current exemption from providing euthanasia services, euphemistically known as medical aid in dying (MAiD). Under current rules, Canadian religious hospitals, most of them Catholic, are not obligated to euthanize patients on-site but must arrange referrals and transfers for patients.
The legal issue was ignited in 2023, when Samantha O’Neill, who had Stage 4 cervical cancer, died shortly after being transferred from St. Paul’s in Vancouver, a Catholic hospital, to a facility willing to provide MAiD. Her mother, along with Dr. Jyothi Jayaraman, a palliative care physician formerly employed by Providence Health Care, the hospital’s parent company, and Death with Dignity Canada, sued St. Paul’s, alleging a violation of O’Neill’s constitutional right to die. This constitutional challenge derives from the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2015 decision in Carter v….