By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
Most of us remember M*A*S*H, the popular television show running from 1972 to 1983. But I wonder who remembers its theme song, Suicide is Painless. Its message, in a single verse: “That suicide is painless; It brings on many changes; And I can take or leave it if I please.”
We’re back in that season now. Legislatures across the nation reconvened last month, which means that the architects of death are ready to battle in state capitols and courthouses for the “right” to terminate the lives of their citizens, and death-supporting politicians are readying to take that message — artfully disguising the hideous reality that suicide can be very painful — to the voters.
We’ve documented here numerous cases where drugs given to induce death have caused hours of agony before delivering the intended result.
But now there is further proof. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Jaideep Pandit explains the inhumanity of the act. In cases where patients are given prescriptions for their deadly elixir, barbiturates are used to render them unconscious, eventually causing their lungs and heart to stop. But a study of recent deaths reported serious complications with the drugs, including difficulty swallowing and vomiting.
And after ingestion, rather than taking five minutes to act, death did not come for 90 minutes in fully two-thirds of the cases studied, and among the other third, death could take up to 30 hours, and in four percent of the cases, up to seven days.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, and a frequent guest on the old Faith on Trial radio program, also reports that the current drug cocktails being used “failed to provide a painless, fast death” as promised.
Yet proponents are still pushing others to consider adopting such legislation. Recently the Ohio Nurses Association actually endorsed legalizing assisted suicide. And a new bill has been introduced into the Indiana legislature which will permit doctors to assist any state resident 18 or older to commit suicide who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. With new legislative sessions across the nation, expect more.
And expect attacks not just by lawmakers, but by lawyers as well, who continue to tinker with soft definitions and useless safety precautions.
In Canada, for example, a Quebec court has ruled unconstitutional part of the assisted suicide law that required the patient’s death to be “reasonably foreseeable” as “forcing [the two litigants] to endure harsh physical and psychological suffering,” the judge said. Thus something other than impending death can be used to obtain the deadly cocktail from their doctors.
Supporting the expanded parameters, Cory Ruf, a spokesman for the advocacy group Dying with Dignity Canada, said his group has heard from people without “reasonably foreseeable” terminal conditions who later starved themselves, tried other methods, or traveled to Switzerland for physician assistance because they failed to qualify in Canada.
“People with disabilities have been told, with this decision, that simply having a disability is reason enough for us to want to die,” said Amy Hasbrouck, director of Toujours Vivant — Not Dead Yet, which had intervened in the Quebec case.
“By removing the terminal illness requirement, that means you can have euthanasia for physical or psychological suffering,” said Schadenberg. “I do believe this situation is going to be opening up the gates to far more deaths by euthanasia. At the same time, our euthanasia numbers have just been skyrocketing. So as much as we have seen this huge increase in euthanasia, they’re only going to be opening the doors more.”
Health Canada has reported that at least 6,749, and perhaps more, have used the Canadian act to terminate their lives.
Schadenberg warns that Parliament is now considering ideas to further expand aid in dying to include psychological reasons such as depression. “The reality of this thing is we need to reverse this trend of allowing killing, because what we’ve done in law is we’ve given physicians the right to kill their patients,” he added.
In Canada, like the Netherlands and Belgium, most of these deaths are euthanasia by lethal injection, rather than providing the patient with a prescription for the drugs they need. Which, of course, involves a physician who actually does the killing and in some instances while the patient is in a coma or unable to understand what is happening.
There are, apparently, no ethical bounds for this activity. In New York, Arline Lester, 91, died recently after a judge, ceding to the will of Arline’s son, ordered life support removed even though another son provided the court with a video of his mother pleading for her life.
Arline died “after having her respirator removed while being put on aggressive ‘palliative sedation,’ a term that refers to aggressive pain medication that inevitably leads to the death of the patient,” reported LifeSiteNews.
According to LifeSite, the son who was taking care of Arline, Edward, said his mother had asked him for help to revoke her “living will.” He stated: “My mother’s perception of a living will was, ‘If I’m a vegetable, if I’m brain dead and I’m laying there…pull the plug,’ but that’s not the situation we have now.” To support his claim that his mother’s clear wish was to live, Ed released a video where Arline clearly communicates that she did not want to die, but instead wanted to live.
The other brother, Kyle, initiated the lawsuit asking the court to declare him Arline’s sole guardian, acknowledging that he hoped to take her off life support, maintaining that this is what their mother wanted. The judge, ignoring the video, sided with Kyle and now is being accused of issuing a secret order gagging all parties and their attorneys from discussing the case in public.
“The case of Arlene Lester is especially alarming at a time when [New York’s] Democrat-controlled legislature is considering legalizing assisted suicide. Many pro-lifers worry that if the courts are willing to enforce an old ‘living will’ against the express wishes of an elderly woman who was conscious enough to orally communicate them, then what guarantee will there be that people who change their mind at the last moment about assisted suicide will have their right to life respected and protected?” said LifeSite.
Change their mind? How about making it up for them!
Legislatures and courts involved? Add to that list administrative agencies.
In Vancouver, Delta Hospice Society is being pressured by a government agency to provide suicide assistance. Angelina Ireland, president of Delta, said that “the Society’s charter specifically mandates it to provide compassionate care and support for persons in the last stages of living, so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible. Helping and supporting patients to live fully and comfortably in their last days and giving support to them and their families is what our patients and families come to us for and expect, and it is certainly what our staff is dedicated to providing. Taking steps to end a patient’s life is not providing care and support so that they may live fully.
“The issue is not accessibility. It seems to be a purely agenda-driven demand that runs roughshod over both Delta Hospice Society’s desire to live up to its legal requirements under our Charter, as well as ignoring the reality that we are dealing with patients and families in a very vulnerable and delicate position,” Ireland said.
Of course, anyone who is a regular reader of this column knows that this is just the tip of the iceberg. We could go around the world and from state to state following similar efforts and stories as these. The lesson here, which we did not learn — or ignored — with Terri Schiavo, is that there is not much that deters these merchants of death from their dastardly mission. And if we don’t wake up to what is going on, these stories will be repeated again and again.
And then — ready or not — they could come for you.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)
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