It Really is a Mad, Mad World

Assisted Suicide:  A Recipe for Elder Abuse

   Next November, Massachusetts voters will decide via ballot initiative whether to allow physician-assisted suicide.  The Death with Dignity Act is modeled closely on an initiative passed by Washington State voters in 2008.   In states that have taken up these laws, pro-life groups, religious groups, and advocates for the disabled have fought them.  Massachusetts is a heavily Catholic state, and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston called the act “a corruption of the medical profession that violates the Hippocratic Oath.”

National Right to Life calls the proposed Massachusetts act “a recipe for elder abuse.”  Key provisions of the act include that an heir, who will benefit financially from a patient’s death, is allowed to actively help sign the patient up for the lethal dose. 

In the United States, assisted suicide is legal only in Washington and Oregon.  In both states, the law was enacted through a ballot initiative.  In 2010, the Montana Supreme Court’s Baxter decision did not legalize assisted suicide but gave physicians, if prosecuted, a potential defense.  A law that would have allowed assisted suicide in Montana went down to defeat in February.

In addition to Massachusetts, pro-euthanasia activists are currently mobilizing in Hawaii and Vermont.  Compassion & Choices, a pro-euthanasia activist group, has a new campaign claiming that assisted suicide is already legal in Hawaii.  Ironically, assisted suicide bills have repeatedly gone down to defeat in Hawaii, most recently on February 7, 2011.  In Vermont, a bill has been introduced in the state legislature.

No assisted suicide law has yet made it through any state legislature.  Besides the failed bills in Montana and Hawaii, this year an assisted suicide bill was defeated in New Hampshire.  Idaho enacted a statute to strengthen its law against assisted suicide.  Earlier pro-euthanasia bills failed in Michigan and Maine.

Since assisted suicide has been legalized in Oregon, there have been reports of cancer patients being denied medical treatments by the Oregon Health Plan but offered suicide drugs instead.  People voted in favor of the law because they thought they were giving themselves a right to a dignified death.  What they didn’t anticipate was that they were giving health plans the right to cut corners on their treatment.

Since its founding in 1973, Lake County Right to Life has opposed euthanasia with the same conviction with which it opposes abortion.  Currently, Illinois law specifically prohibits assisted suicide. Lake County Right to Life will continue to resist any attempts to overturn this law.

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