The 64-year-old B.C. woman who won the right to seek a doctor-assisted suicide last week has thanked her predecessors for helping pave Canada's way out of "the Dark Ages."
Gloria Taylor, who suffers from Lou Gehrig's disease, spoke publicly Monday for the first time since her landmark B.C. Supreme Court victory that saw the ban on physician-assisted death declared unconstitutional and discriminatory on Friday.
"Today we stand tall and say: We changed Canada forever. We made a difference," Taylor declared, her voice audibly strained and hoarse.
The West Kelowna resident revealed that her condition is deteriorating – that she can no longer eat without the help of a feeding tube and is losing her voice – but said she does not have immediate plans to end her life.
"I live one day at a time and I'm not there yet," she said. "When it's time, it's God's will and not mine and I'll leave it at that."
Taylor expressed her gratitude to those who have previously fought for their right to die, giving special thanks to North Saanich resident Sue Rodriguez, who lost a similar court battle 19 years ago.
"I am so very proud that she handed me her torch to carry on her legacy," Taylor said. "It took a long time and now, finally, we have emerged from the Dark Ages to realize that dying is a part of living."
Rodriguez died in 1994, one year after losing her case.
Justice Lynn Smith invalidated Canada's ban on doctor-assisted suicide last week, but suspended her decision one year to give Parliament time to decide how to handle the situation.
"In my opinion, the law creates a distinction that is discriminatory. It perpetuates and worsens a disadvantage experienced by persons with disabilities. The dignity of choice should be afforded to Canadians equally, but the law as it stands does not do so with respect to this ultimately personal and fundamental choice," Smith wrote in her judgment.
She granted Taylor a constitutional exemption, however, to allow her to move forward with an assisted suicide during that period if she so chooses.
Meanwhile, religious groups are split on whether to applaud the ruling or condemn it.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement Monday declaring that life is a gift from God, and that humans are the stewards of the gift, not the owners.
"We stand before a fundamental option," president Richard Smith, the Archbishop of Edmonton, wrote. "Do we show concern for the sick, the elderly, the handicapped and vulnerable by encouraging them to commit suicide or through deliberating killing them by euthanasia?"
"Or, instead, do we fashion a culture of life and love in which each person, at every moment and in all circumstances of their natural lifespan, is treasured as a gift?"
The Canadian Unitarian Council, however, celebrated Smith's judgment as an affirmation of the right of citizens to choose how they wish to meet their end.
"The principles of Unitarian Universalism strongly support the right of individuals to make choices for themselves," wrote Dr. Gray Groot, president of the council's board of trustees.
The CUC was granted intervener status in Taylor's case, and has been an advocate of assisted suicide since the early 1970s.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which argues that doctor-assisted suicide will make elderly and disabled people vulnerable to elder abuse, has already asked Crown prosecutors to fight Smith's ruling, but there is no word yet on whether it will be appealed.
Smith acknowledged in her decision that permitting doctor-assisted suicide does present some risks for the elderly and disabled, but said that stringent safeguards would "substantially minimize" those dangers.
Doctor-assisted suicide is already legal in several European countries and the American states of Washington, Oregon and Montana.