Spousal homicide: another reason why euthanasia and assisted suicide must be prohibited.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The recent case of an elderly man who plead guilty to killing his wife is an example of why assisted suicide must be prohibited.

Robert Edgar (83) was sentenced to 10 years for second degree murder after admitting to smothering to death Zdenko Sekora (79), his wife of 32 years.

An Ottawa Citizen article reported that Teresa Sernets, his daughter-in-law, was afraid of Edgar and was upset that she didn't warn her mother. The article reported:

Tereza Sernets, said she had been afraid of her stepfather, Robert Edgar, since she met him when she was 19 years old. He often chased her and taunted her, she told court. 

“How can I continue living happily when I couldn’t protect her, didn’t warn her?” Sernets said. “Why didn’t I share my fear?”

There have been many cases of spousal homicide where the perpetrator claimed that the act was an assisted suicide or euthanasia/"mercy killing."

Last year, in Montecello New York, Andrew Moore claimed that he strangled to death his mother, Margaret Regalia, as part of an assisted suicide pact.

In 2010 I wrote an article titled: Homicide or "Mercy Killing" in response to another spousal homicide case in New York.

Recently, a man in the Netherlands was acquitted for assisting the suicide of his mother. 

Canada's courts have always dealt more leniently with cases of euthanasia or assisted suicide. Now that Canada's assisted suicide act was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in February, I fear that similar cases will claim to be assisted suicide or euthanasia deaths in the near future in an attempt to get an acquittal.