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VANCOUVER, B.C., October 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While Canadian pro-lifers are celebrating the decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal to uphold the country’s laws prohibiting euthanasia and assisted suicide, the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has said that it will seek to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“We will ask the Supreme Court [to] hear this case and to recognize the right to die with dignity,” said Grace Pastine, Litigation Director for the BCCLA, in a press release.

“We will continue to argue that the government has no place at the bedside of seriously ill Canadians, denying the right to decide to those who have made firm decisions about the amount of suffering they will endure at the end of life.”

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Last week the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld Canada’s laws in a two to one decision, overturning a 2012 lower court decision by Justice Smith who ruled in the Carter case that the Criminal Code prohibition on assisted suicide discriminates against the disabled.

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition told LifeSiteNews.com that he expected the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court “right from the beginning.”

Schadenberg hopes that the Supreme Court will uphold Canada’s laws as it did in its 1993 Rodriguez decision.

Sue Rodriguez, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, forced the question of assisted suicide into the Supreme Court twenty years ago with her demand to commit suicide with medical assistance. The Supreme Court ruled against Rodriguez at that time, arguing that the state has a “fundamental interest in protecting human life.” The Court argued that the state has an obligation to “protect the vulnerable” and that this obligation outweighs the rights of the individual to self-determination.

The B.C. Court of Appeal overturned Smith’s decision on the grounds that the decision and the principles set forth in the Rodriguez case are still valid.

Schadenberg said that the current law is designed to “protect vulnerable Canadians” and that nothing has changed in twenty years that lessens the need for such protection. 

At issue is the moral chaos that would ensue if a person were permitted to kill another person with the force of law behind them, said Schadenberg, not the autonomy of the individual who seeks ultimate power over his or her body.

“Is society willing to continue to protect its people at the most vulnerable time of their lives?” he asked.

Dr. Will Johnston, B.C. chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said it is “not a trivial thing” that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects people from “being killed,” adding that the “right to life […] doesn’t change based on your quality of life.”

“There’s a real charter legal protection against you being killed and that is there to safeguard all of us,” he said in a video release after the B.C. ruling.