By MIKE MANNO
While the “life” arguments these days seem to center around abortion, both pre-birth and post-birth varieties, there are other anti-life currents stirring the progressive winds of change, one of them being physician-assisted suicide, or, as I prefer, doctor-prescribed death, which, incidentally, includes euthanasia.
During the run of my old radio program, Faith on Trial, we covered the issue extensively and had numerous guests, including medical practitioners, disability and elder advocates, pro-life attorneys, as well as leaders of anti-suicide organizations. It was, to me at least, appalling how quickly the clamor, the demand, and the justification for such an idea spread. It was disheartening to see voters approving pro-suicide legislation.
We’ve come a long way since Dr. Kevorkian crudely peddled his notion of “death with dignity” by use of a suicide machine he carried from one patient to another in an old van. And, as with too many of today’s social changes, attitudes and legalities quickly bent to the will of activists who took the side of death and convinced a gullible public that designed death was not only humane but had automatic safeguards built-in.
Of course, neither was true. It was not humane and the safeguards were nonexistent. Patients who wanted to dispose of themselves were often to provide witnesses to their requests, yet most laws allowed anyone to be a witness — even someone who stood to gain from the patient’s death. Drugs prescribed were mailed to the patient who oftentimes didn’t know how to use them correctly, which resulted in a less than the promised painless death.
If the patient changed his mind, there was no protection against someone who wanted a different outcome from slipping the patient the drugs anyway — grinding up the pills to put in Uncle Ned’s morning oatmeal.
We also saw numerous abuses. Insurance companies and governmental agencies denying payment for lifesaving treatments, but offering to pay for death-producing drugs. Protocols requiring medical providers to discuss with all patients over a particular age their end-of-life options.
In one outrageous case in the Netherlands, a doctor actually drugged a patient and forced the death-producing drugs on her while she physically fought back. He was successful only after her family held her down so she could be injected with the lethal substance. A Dutch court later cleared the doctor of any wrongdoing.
In another case, the family of an older woman who went missing only learned her fate when the “death clinic” called to tell them they could pick up her remains. Two blind brothers were put to death under a European law that allowed them to be euthanized at will, as were an alcoholic and a woman with ringing in her ears. None had a fatal disease. Babies with deformities and even school-aged children can be “put down” in some places over something as simple as chronic depression. The first child was euthanized in Belgium in 2016.
In the United States, one of the common qualifications for physician-assisted suicide was that the individual had less than a six-month life expectancy, without reference to medical treatment. Thus a diabetic who with treatment who could expect a long life would qualify, since left untreated the disease might cause an early death.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea: These laws and protocols were written with vague language and dozens of loopholes that could be used to justify a lethal prescription. Unfortunately, the American merchants of death are now doubling down and proposing an expansion of this Hell-sent phenomenon.
New Mexico is proposing a new assisted suicide law that lowers the waiting period to 48 hours for a patient to receive the death-dispatching drugs. It allows nurses and physician assistants to participate by expanding the definition of “health-care provider.” It also allows psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health counselors, and those with master’s degrees in social work to approve a patient with mental disorders for an assisted suicide.
Fortunately, a provision to allow tele-med suicides was dropped from the bill. But it still contains the provision, adopted in other states — that the person’s death certificate is to list the patient’s underlying condition, not suicide, as the cause of death.
In Oregon, the proposed amendments to its assisted suicide law will expand the definition of “terminal illness” to “a disease that will, within reasonable medical judgment, produce or substantially contribute to a patient’s death.” Which, of course, can mean almost anything.
The bill also expands the definition of “health-care provider” to “a person licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized to be permitted by law of this state to administer health care or dispense medication in the ordinary course of business or practice of a profession, and includes a health-care facility.”
The Hellhounds in Delaware have even gone a step further. They now want to consider assisted suicide “palliative care.” The preamble of the proposed act says that “the integration of medical aid in dying into the standard for end-of-life care has improved quality of services by providing an additional palliative care option to terminally ill individuals.”
It also follows other states in requiring that death certificates list the person’s underlying condition as the cause of death, and goes further to state: “A request for medication to end life in a humane and dignified manner under this chapter, or the fact that medication to end life in a humane and dignified manner is prescribed or dispensed under this chapter, does not, for any purpose, constitute a suicide, assisted-suicide, homicide, or euthanasia.”
This is, of course, a well-used trick of the progressive left: Legally define a lie as the truth. A health-care provider (who under the bill need not be a doctor) gives a patient medication knowing that the patient will use it to kill himself, and it cannot be described as either a suicide or assisted suicide.
The Delaware bill also provides that any physician who is asked to prescribe a suicide dose of medication must either do so, or refer the patient to someone who will, thus becoming complicit in what is legally a “non-suicide.”
Montana, happily, is considering another path. That state has had a complicated relationship with assisted suicide. A local court ruled that Montana citizens had a right to assisted suicide. That ruling was appealed to the State Supreme Court which upheld the state law that prohibited assisted suicide, but also opined that a physician who was charged could claim the patient’s consent as a defense, thus leaving this issue up to an almost case-by-case analysis.
The proposed law, if adopted, will succinctly clarify the law: “Physician aid in dying is against public policy, and a patient’s consent to physician aid in dying is not a defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician.”
At least some sanity in an otherwise sea of insanity.
You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com
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