It’s not unconstitutional to refuse an organ transplant to people who refuse a COVID-19 mRNA injection, an Edmonton judge ruled this week.
Annette Lewis went to court seeking to preserve her spot on an Edmonton-based transplant program’s wait-list after doctors told her she would not be eligible because she is unvaccinated.
In a decision filed Tuesday (July 12), Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Paul Belzil dismissed Lewis’s argument that her charter rights had been violated.
In March 2021, Lewis was told that she required a COVID-19 vaccine in order to receive a potentially life-saving transplant. She refused.
“Taking this vaccine offends my conscience,” Lewis wrote in an affidavit filed with the court.
“I ought to have the choice about what goes into my body and a life-saving 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.”
The names of the doctors and the hospital were redacted from Belzil’s decision.