Hey there, it's Kathy. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to History of the 90s early and ad-free on Amazon music included with Prime.

Imagine you're married, you get pregnant, and everything seems to be going just as you hoped.

During childbirth, though, something goes wrong. Your baby girl doesn't get enough oxygen and is born with

cerebral palsy. You give her everything you can, and yet she lives in constant pain. She's had so many

seizures that the joints in her hips have nearly been destroyed. Doctors have performed

dozens of surgeries. You've nursed your daughter through all of them. But to find relief,

they've proposed yet another painful operation. What do you do? For most, the choice is obvious. Allow the surgery and continue to hope that

your child will find some comfort. But in 1993, a Saskatchewan farmer made a different choice,

one that reverberated across the country.

This is the history of the 90s, a podcast about a decade that changed the world.

I'm Kathy Kinsora. On this episode, I'll tell you the story of that little girl, Tracy Latimer.

We explore that choice and unpack the long, simmering debate of what constitutes a mercy killing or murder. Robert Latimer was a typical prairie farmer, hardworking, clean

living, and self-reliance.

He would repair his own vehicles or replace the barn roof himself rather than hire someone.

He was a low-key, no-b-s-kind of guy. At least that's how a McLean's article from 1994 described him.

At the local grain elevators, where he sold the wheat grown on his farm in the small town of Wilkie, Saskatchewan,

he was known as Laddie and viewed more as a friend than a customer.

Latimer had grown up on the thousand-acre grain farm and had bought it from his family in

1976.

He soon married his wife Laura, and on November 23, 1980, their first child, a baby girl they named

Tracy, was born.

Laura's pregnancy had been normal, but during labor, something went wrong, very wrong.

...