- This topic is empty.
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
-
Posts
-
Sheila Annette Lewis, the Alberta woman who was denied an organ transplant because she refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, has died.
In recent months, Lewis had been crowdsourcing funding to travel to the United States to get an organ transplant, but she died before that happened, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.
She was 58.
“I’ve got a lot to live for,” Lewis told BridgeCityNews in November 2022. “I have grandchildren, I have children. Like, they’re grown men, but they’re my kids.”
In 2018, Lewis was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was placed on the Alberta transplant wait list. (The organ in question is redacted from court documents and subject to a publication ban.) As she awaited the transplant, Lewis updated a number of her childhood vaccinations, as a pre-requisite for receiving an organ transplant.
In 2021, Lewis was told she would also need the COVID-19 vaccine to receive the transplant. Given the high risks of death following a transplant, and the immunosuppressed condition of transplant patients, the COVID-19 vaccine was considered crucial. She refused, and sued Alberta Health Services.
“Taking this vaccine offends my conscience. I ought to have the choice about what goes into my body, and a lifesaving treatment cannot be denied to me because I chose not to take an experimental treatment for a condition — COVID-19 — which I do not have and which I may never have,” Lewis said in an affidavit.
Alison Pejovic, her lawyer, told the National Post on Friday that Lewis “had a strong sense of what she perceived to be right and wrong, a strong moral compass, and she never stopped fighting for what she perceived to be justice.”
“She’s in any unique situation where her choice to not comply with a mandate was going to result in a loss of her life and she was willing to face that for what she believed in,” Pejovic said.
She lost her fight to have the courts order the medical system to give her a transplant.
The Alberta Court of King’s Bench said that if it did so, there would be “significant adverse public policy implications.
“The proposition that Treating Physicians exercising clinical judgment would be subject to the Charter would result in medical chaos with patients seeking endless judicial review of clinical treatment decisions.”
Lewis appealed, but the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled against her.
“While Ms Lewis has the right to refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Charter cannot remediate the consequences of her choice,” the court concluded.
Lewis fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which declined to hear her case. JCCF, a libertarian legal group that fought against a number of public-health measures and resulting charges in court, had argued that Lewis had natural immunity from a prior COVID-19 infection in letters written to Alberta Health Services.
“If Ms. Lewis does not get her transplant, she will not survive, and her family will lose years of time with their mother, wife, and grandmother,” her Justice Centre lawyer wrote.
The case caught the attention of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who said she wanted a “second medical opinion” in the case, in an unusual move of a politician weighing in on a case of individual medical treatment.
After losing in the courts, Lewis turned her attention to raising funds to get an organ transplant in the United States. Her page on GiveSendGo, a fundraising website, says that she had found a hospital in the U.S. that would do an organ transplant absent the COVID-19 vaccine. Her page had received $124,776 as of Friday.
“She really wanted to be around a long time to see her grandchildren grow. And so most people saw the side of Sheila that was very strong in interviews, but she also had a warm, tender heart and was a kind person and so this news is devastating for her family, especially, but also for those who are cheering for her,” Pejovic said.
source:Alberta woman denied transplant for refusing COVID vaccine dies | National Post
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.