A hospice housed in a retired church cannot be forced to provide MAID, or medical assistance in dying, the Catholic archbishop of Quebec argues.
A hospice housed in a retired church cannot be forced to provide MAID, or medical assistance in dying, the Catholic archbishop of Quebec argues.
The Catholic Church is challenging a Quebec law requiring all palliative-care centers to provide assisted suicide, arguing that it violates the church’s right to religious freedom.
Archbishop of Montreal Christian Lépine filed a lawsuit last week asking the Quebec Superior Court to invalidate the mandate passed in June by the Quebec parliament. The suit argues that a hospice housed in a retired Catholic church owned by the archdiocese should not be forced to provide medical assistance in dying (MAID).
St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre opened in 2019 after St. Raphael the Archangel parish closed in 2009. A lease agreement between the archdiocese and the hospice prohibited the administration of MAID on the property, but the government’s new mandate forced St. Raphael to choose between following its agreement with the church or following the law.
The archdiocese said in a press release that the law “undermines the exercise of the right to freedom of religion and conscience,” which are enumerated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Before the law’s passage, St. Raphael arranged transfers for patients seeking MAID to a facility that provided it. No patient had asked for MAID since the law took effect in December, a spokesperson for the hospice said in an email last week.
The hospice asked the Quebec government for an exemption in September, but it was denied, according to the lawsuit. After talks with the Quebec government failed to protect the hospice from the new mandate, Lépine said, a lawsuit was his “last resort.”
“In good conscience, I cannot welcome the idea that some building owned by the archbishop will be a place where there is euthanasia,” Lépine said in an interview.
Negotiating with the government “behind the scenes” has been part of efforts by faith leaders to “carve out a space for faith-based health care,” said Andrew Bennett, program director for faith communities at Cardus, a Canadian think tank. But that strategy is reaching its limits.
“Increasingly, there’s a reckoning that they’re coming up against a radical ideology that simply cannot countenance opposition,” Bennett said.
The archbishop’s lawsuit was a “very rare” but “much needed intervention,” Bennett said.
“What the government is doing is just riding roughshod over the right of a faith-based hospice to say ‘no’ to ‘medical assistance and dying,’ so called,” Bennett said.
Jasmin Lemieux-Lefebvre, a coordinator for the nonprofit citizen network Living with Dignity, said he expects that the court will decide whether to grant an immediate stay in “a matter of weeks” but that it will take much longer to rule on the broader religious-freedom issue.
“Is it too much to ask for one euthanasia-free palliative-care home in all of Quebec?” Lemieux-Lefebvre asked.
A ruling against St. Raphael would make it harder for religious institutions across Canada to act according to their values, Lépine said.
“It’s not only about a particular home,” Lépine said. “It’s about the idea that we live in a democracy. We are all winners if we live in a democracy where we make sure that freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are respected.”
Pro-euthanasia activists are preparing to sue a Catholic hospital in Vancouver, invoking the same religion and conscience freedoms in the Canadian Charter, National Review reported last week.
Daphne Gilbert, a member of the legal team and vice chairwoman of Dying with Dignity Canada, said that patients have a “conscience right” to MAID.
“My argument would be that there is no freedom of religion for an institution,” Gilbert said. “Bricks and mortar don’t have conscience and religious beliefs. People within them might — and those people need to be respected and accommodated — but the four walls of the building are publicly funded health-care institutions.”
Assisted suicide was illegal in Canada until 2015, when the Supreme Court found the nationwide prohibition unconstitutional. In response, Parliament passed MAID, which legalized assisted suicide in certain circumstances.
Patients could receive MAID if their death was “reasonably foreseeable” and their illness “grievous and irremediable.” A 2021 amendment removed the “reasonably foreseeable” requirement.
Since its legalization, deaths from MAID have dramatically increased as eligibility requirements have expanded. Assisted suicides and euthanasia deaths have risen from 1,018 in 2016 to 13,241 in 2022, accounting for 4 percent of all deaths in Canada.
More than 6 percent of all deaths in Quebec in 2022 were from MAID — the highest rate in Canada — according to the country’s annual MAID report.