Medically Assisted Dying in Canada: from where we’ve come; to where we’re going
Professor Arthur Schafer, University of Manitoba
Thursday, 07 May 2020, 4pm to 5pm
This meeting will be held via Zoom. See registration details below.
The New St Cross Special Ethics Seminars are jointly arranged by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities (WEH).
abstract
In June of 2016 the Canadian Parliament passed legislation (Bill-14) legalizing MAiD: medical assistance in dying. Subject to various restrictions, both mercy killing and medically assisted suicide are now legal in Canada.
The contours of the Canadian euthanasia debate will be described, with special focus on the ethical issues that remain most controversial.
Two salient Canadian Supreme Court decisions will be analysed: Rodriguez (1993) and Carter (2015), as well as more recent constitutional challenges.
The presentation will conclude by outlining the further legal changes that are likely to (or that should) occur in the reasonably near future.
speaker bio
Professor Schafer is Founding Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, at the University of Manitoba. From 1985 – 2015 he was the Centre’s Director. Arthur Schafer is also a Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy and an Ethics Consultant for the Department of Child Health at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. For ten years he was Head of the Section of Bio-Medical Ethics in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Manitoba. He has served as Visiting Scholar Green College, Oxford.
Arthur Schafer has published widely in the fields of moral, social, and political philosophy. He is author of The Buck Stops Here: Reflections on moral responsibility, democratic accountability and military values, and co-editor of Ethics and Animal Experimentation. He is also co-editor of Fragile Freedoms: The Global Struggle for Human Rights. His curriculum vitae lists more than 80 scholarly articles and book chapters, covering a wide range of topics, with a special focus on issues in professional and bio-medical ethics, business and environmental ethics. He has made several hundred conference presentations in Canada and abroad, and has written dozens of newspaper articles for The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Medical Post, and The Sunday Times (London).
registration
Register in advance for this webinar here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.