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“She saw her friends and family getting old and dying in horrible ways, and she became more and more convinced that this was right,” her son, Sam Goodman, told The Province newspaper.

“She was adamant she would not move into a care home,” he said, adding that Ms. Goodman had first made the choice about 25 years ago, shortly after her husband died.

Ms. Goodman’s family says she was not depressed, was thinking clearly and had just renewed her licence to drive in December. However, she had started to experience difficulty in moving around her home.

“People are allowed to choose the right time to terminate their animals’ lives and to be with them and provide assistance and comfort, right to the end,” she wrote in the letter. “Surely, the least we can do is allow people the same right to choose how and when to end their lives.”

The Criminal Code of Canada prohibits suicide assistance, and for decades B.C. has been at the forefront of challenges to the federal law.

In June, 2012, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and several terminally ill plaintiffs succeeded in partially defeating the ban in court. The B.C Supreme Court ruled the federal law discriminates against those with disabilities, and doctors should be allowed to assist terminally ill patients to end their lives. The federal government will challenge the ruling in March, in the B.C. Court of Appeal.

Grace Pastine, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association’s litigation director, who will argue the case against the federal government, said that since Ruth Goodman was not terminally ill or assisted in any way, the association would take no legal position on her case.

Ms. Pastine was asked if the issue of senior citizens seeking assistance to end their lives before losing independence could be a new horizon in right-to-die law.

“It is interesting,” Ms. Pastine said. “What I would say is, none of the countries in the world, or the U.S. states that have legislation permitting physician assisted dying, would allow for it, in this situation.”

Postmedia News, with files from National Post