(Comment) – Reflections from a Canadian public policy researcher.

Tracy’s story has reverberated through the years. Amid news in 2018 that Robert Latimer was applying for a pardon or a new trial, my friend Taylor Hyatt, who lives with cerebral palsy, published an essay reflecting on the impact of Tracy’s story on her: 

“The sense of kinship I felt with her, and the disgust I felt at the thought of her murder, has stayed with me. If I had to put it all into words, it would read something like ‘She’s like me, and her father resented having to care for her and feared for her future so much that he killed her.‘” 

And now, many years later, the fears and prejudices involving disability that surrounded the Latimer case have not dissipated, argues Hyatt. Rather, “legal euthanasia and assisted suicide now offer a socially-sanctioned escape from those negative messages [about disability]; the procedures are prompting a startling shift in our country’s view of disability, death, the definition of ‘suffering’ and how much of it someone can live with.” (Read More)