Although Peter Fenker died last month after a long bout with Lou Gehrig’s disease, his voice was still heard yesterday as a trial challenging Canada’s assisted-suicide laws got underway at the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.
Joe Arvay, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, read out Fenker’s affidavit about his body wasting away from ALS and his wish to have had an option to end his life in a “dignified way.”
“My body belongs to me, and it always will. The government should not be able to tell me what I can do with my body. The government should not be able to control my body.”
Arvay said there are now new legal arguments and evidence supporting the right-to-die argument since the Supreme Court of Canada rejected Victoria resident Sue Rodriguez’s application for the right to assisted suicide in a 5-4 decision in 1993.
Fenker also described how he couldn’t even scratch his head, turn the pages of a newspaper or digest food without medication.
“I still have my mind, but it is a terrible thing to be a mind trapped in a wasted body. There is no future for me.”
The affidavit of Fenker’s wife, Grace, was also read to Justice Lynn Smith, describing her husband’s final four days in the hospital.
“It was a horror to watch Peter labour to die. Four days may not sound like a long time, but it is a painful eternity when you are helplessly watching your beloved husband suffer.
“I will never forget the pleading look in his eyes as he asked me to help him and there was nothing I could do.”
The 71-year-old retired logger said in his affidavit that he even considered shooting himself, but decided he couldn’t die in such an ugly manner because he didn’t want to hurt his family.
Fenker was a friend of Gloria Taylor, a Kelowna woman also suffering from ALS and one of the five plaintiffs hoping to amend Canada’s laws.
“It’s important for the court to hear very much the human side of this case because the court’s going to hear a lot of expert evidence, but at the end of the day this case is about real people,” Arvay said outside court.
Federal lawyer Donnaree Nygard said during her opening statement that while the court will hear heart-wrenching stories, it “does not mean that we should euthanize (people) because there are other individuals that would be put at risk.”
Striking down the laws as unconstitutional would also open up the risk for elder abuse, she added.
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
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