HINTON, Alberta, June 6, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Details have finally emerged about the charge of assisted suicide laid against a woman who allegedly helped her mother to kill herself in Hinton, Alberta, last month.
Hinton RCMP charged Linda McNall, 53, with assisting in the suicide of her 79-year-old mother Shirley Vann. Vann’s body was discovered on May 10 inside a car with U.S. plates parked outside the Hinton Healthcare Centre.
A publication ban on the identity of the accused had been in effect until Wednesday — McNall’s first court appearance — to protect the accused from self harm and furthering her “suicidal resolve”.
Alex Schadenberg, executive cirector of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.com that the case demonstrates why Canada should maintain its assisted suicide prevention law.
“It’s important to have laws that prevent people from assisting the suicide of others, because usually it is done to people who are going through a very vulnerable time in their life and who actually need protection in law from others,” he said.
Canada’s Criminal Code currently states (s. 241) that “every one who (a) counsels a person to commit suicide, or (b) aids or abets a person to commit suicide, whether suicide ensues or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.”
Last June Justice Lynn Smith struck down the prohibition against assisted suicide in the B.C. Carter case.
Smith argued that since suicide is technically legal in Canada, the ban on assisted suicide is “unconstitutional,” because it prevents the disabled from getting the help they may need to kill themselves.
The Conservative government appealed the decision, saying that the law against assisted suicide exists to “protect all Canadians, including the most vulnerable members of our society, such as those who are sick or elderly and persons with disabilities.”
Schadenberg said that if Smith’s decision holds up and the assisted suicide act is abolished, vulnerable people like Vann would have “no law to protect them whatsoever”. He said that such a law is specifically designed to protect the vulnerable from others who might persuade them to commit suicide.
Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!
Crown Prosecutor Bob Marr said the women, both from the U.S., appeared to be vacationing in Canada. He said that while the cause of Vann’s death is uncertain, there was an “indication of partly carbon monoxide. We're waiting on autopsy results on the deceased person so we really don't know yet.”
Schadenberg said that it was difficult to know why “someone would consider killing their mother in this way”. He said that right-to-die advocates have promoted ways to cause death on their websites and “this would fit within that genre”.
The defence lawyer told court on Wednesday that McNall may have a mental disorder and was suicidal. The judge ordered McNall to be psychiatrically assessed for one month at Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.
McNall is scheduled to return to court July 3.