When Sam O’Neill — a 34-year-old terminal cancer patient — decided to pursue medical assistance in dying (MAID), she was transferred from St Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, where she was being treated. The hospital, operated by the Catholic-based care provider Providence Health Care, does not provide the procedure under its ethical and religious guidelines. In O’Neill’s mother, Gaye O’Neill — along with Dr Jyothi Jayaraman and the advocacy group Dying with Dignity, launched a lawsuit against the Providence Health Care Society, the BC Ministry of Health, and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. As Canadians await a verdict later this year, the case is poised to test the boundaries between individual rights and institutional conscience in the healthcare system.

Her lawyers argued that the transfer violated O’Neill’s charter rights to “life, liberty, and security of the person” and “freedom of religion”. Because the hospital is partly publicly funded, they also claim it should provide all legal medical procedures — and that institutions, unlike individuals, do not hold Charter rights such as freedom of conscience that would allow them not to do so.

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Can institutions claim conscience rights? I think they can.........

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