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The home for VPR's coverage of health and health industry issues affecting the state of Vermont.

Canada Moves To Legalize Assisted Suicide

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 SharonKirkey, a senior reporter and health writer with Postmedia News; her articles appear in the Montreal Gazette and   National Post newspaper.  

A graduate of NYU with a Master's Degree in journalism, Mitch has more than 20 years experience in radio news. He got his start as news director at NYU's college station, and moved on to a news director (and part-time DJ position) for commercial radio station WMVY on Martha's Vineyard. But public radio was where Mitch wanted to be and he eventually moved on to Boston where he worked for six years in a number of different capacities at member station WBUR...as a Senior Producer, Editor, and fill-in co-host of the nationally distributed Here and Now. Mitch has been a guest host of the national NPR sports program "Only A Game". He's also worked as an editor and producer for international news coverage with Monitor Radio in Boston.
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