By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

The Governor of Hawaii has signed the law, making Hawaii the sixth state to legalize assisted suicide (plus the  District of Columbia). Hawaii has had more bills introduced to legalize assisted suicide than any other state, having defeated more than 40 bills over the past two decades. Compassion and Choices had virtually unlimited funds to spend in Hawaii and it was too much for our coalition to overcome.

To date, here are the bills/initiatives, besides Massachusetts, that have been defeated in  2018:

• Connecticut:   HB 5417, bill died in committee
• Indiana:  HB 1157, no action taken on the bill
• Maine:  Petition campaign for a ballot initiative failed, wrong papers filed  
• Nebraska:  LB 450, no action take on the bill
• New Hampshire:  SB 490, bill to study end of life options, defeated in the Senate
• Utah:   HB 210, no action taken on the bill
• Wisconsin:  AB 216, SB 312, no action by either house

Ten states have passed bills to prohibit assisted suicide during the same time period that six states have voted to legalize, so we are ahead but can take nothing for granted.

The pro-lifers in Hawaii worked very hard...

Photo: MykReeve/Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA-3.0.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

As of 4:00pm today, the doctor-prescribed suicide bills have been sent to a study committee, which effectively kills them!

We were working against 40 bill sponsors, the media, and Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) which has four full-time, paid employees in the state.

How did we overcome all that?  So many, many of you testified; 25 doctors held a Doctors' Day at the State House; they and members of the disability community visited committee members at the State House; and you visited them in their districts.

Aides told us what really did it: They were counting calls. You called, and got so many others to call and that did it!

People who are elderly, who are poor, who have disabilities or terminal illnesses are safe until after the election - thanks to you.

We can celebrate together at the Convention on Saturday.

You are the best - bless you!

By Nancy Valko

Last year, both Hawaii and New Zealand physician-assisted suicide bills were defeated but, much like zombies, both bills were changed and resurrected for 2018.

As I wrote in a  previous blog about Hawaii’s bill, there are concerted efforts not only to pass but also expand assisted suicide laws. This bill is currently awaiting either passage or defeat in the Hawaii legislature’s Senate.

Recently, I submitted testimony on the “End of Life Choice Bill” to legalize physician-assisted suicide in New Zealand. Currently, the bill is being considered in the Select Committee.

The New Zealand bill is different from Hawaii’s in significant ways. Here are some of the differences, with emphasis added:

• It adds “grievous and irremediable medical condition in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability”  to the usual condition of terminal illness.
• It give patients the option of 4 ways to kill themselves or be killed, including lethal injections:

(i) ingestion, triggered by the person:

(ii) intravenous delivery, triggered by the person:

(iii) ingestion through a tube:

(iv) injection

• “The attending medical practitioner must be available to the person until the person dies; or arrange for another medical practitioner to be available to the person until the person dies” by being “in the same room”  or “in close proximity to the person”.
• Conscience rights: If doctors refuse to provide the lethal overdose, they must refer to a SCENZ group established by the Director General to “make and maintain a list of medical practitioners who are willing to act for the purposes of this Act as—replacement medical practitioners: independent medical practitioners”,  list of pharmacists, and “to prepare standards of care; and to advise on the required medical and legal procedures; and to provide practical assistance, if assistance is requested.”
• The assisted suicide death (whose official cause is listed “as if assisted dying had not been provided”) must be reported within 14 days and sent to registrar who must send the report to a Review committee consisting of a medical ethicist and a medical practitioner who practices in area of end of life care and another medical practitioner. The Review committee has these functions: “to consider reports sent to it”, “to report about its satisfaction or otherwise with the cases reported” and “to recommend actions that the registrar may take to follow up with which the review committee was not satisfied.”
• Regular reports will be issued every five years after the first to be done 3 years after the law is implemented. These reports go to the minister and Parliament.

By Nancy Valko

As so-called “safeguards” for doctor-prescribed suicide are now starting to be eliminated (See my recent blog “Legal Safeguards, Burdensome Obstacles and Conscience Rights”), the predicted advance directive (aka “living will”)— already biased against tube feedings—is now on track to include even spoon-feedings.

In an article in Today’s Geriatric Medicine, entitled “Judicious Feeding Options at the End of Life”, writer Mike Bassett writes that “In some states, patients can sign directives that allow refusal of feeding when the end of life approaches” and relates the 2013 case of an 82-year-old Alzheimer’s patient whose family filed a lawsuit against a British Columbia nursing home to force the home to stop spoon-feeding her. The lawsuit failed in court but now End of Life Washington, a pro-assisted suicide group, has devised a document called “My Instructions for Oral Feeding and Drinking”. The document is similar to an advance directive, but addresses the signer’s wishes about when to stop oral food and drink in “late-stage” dementia.

Although such a document can be signed, witnessed, and notarized, it is not a binding legal document. But this sets the stage for a legal challenge like the British Columbia case, but with assisted suicide groups hoping for a different judgment.

The article also interviewed the vice president of constituent services for the Alzheimer’s Association who said that when to stop even oral feeding “should be an important consideration for anyone issuing end-of-life instructions.”

Stephen Drake of the disability advocacy group “Not Dead Yet” made strong points about the dangers of this scheme both in the article and his blog “‘End of Life Washington’ Promotes Directive to Prevent Feeding Assistance to Those with Dementia”.

By Nancy Valko

In my last blog “Legal Safeguards, Burdensome Obstacles and Conscience Rights”, I wrote about influential lawyer Thaddeus Pope’s article “Medical Aid in Dying: When Legal Safeguards Become Burdensome Obstacles” that listed  four ways to address such  “burdensome safeguards” in medically assisted suicide laws: “Expanding From Adults to Mature Minors”, “Expanding From Contemporaneous Capacity to Advance Directives” to pre-choose assisted suicide before becoming incompetent, “Expanding From Terminal Illness to ‘Reasonably Predictable’” and “Expanding From Self-Ingestion to Physician Administration”. (Emphasis added)

Other “burdensome obstacles” Mr. Pope has also cited include the waiting time between requests for assisted suicide and the administration of the lethal overdose for some patients and the physician requirement because of problems finding willing doctors.

While groups like Compassion and Choices and a mostly sympathetic mainstream media continue to tout allegedly strong “safeguards” in assisted suicide laws that allegedly prevent abuse, these “burdensome obstacles”- which already have been mostly eliminated in countries like Canada and Holland- are now beginning to fall here in the US and other new countries. Few of us are aware of this.

By Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life

The Health Care Committee is scheduled to vote this week on the Doctor-Prescribed Suicide bills, S.1225 and H.1194. It is very important that the Committee oppose these bills.

If you are a constituent of one of the committee members listed below and I have your phone number, I have already called you.  I thank you for making your call.

If you are a constituent of one of these committee members and I did not call you, it is imperative that you call your member right now.  Identify yourself as a constituent and urge your member to vote against S-1225 and H-1194 because they are poor public policy and fraught with possibilities for abuse.

• Sen Paul Feeney, Bristol and Norfolk, 617-722-1222
• Sen Jason Lewis, 5th Middlesex, 617-722-1206
  
• Rep. Evandro Carvalho, 617-722-2017
  
• Rep. Kate Hogan, 3rd Middlesex, 617-722-2130
  
• Rep Hannah Kane, 11th Worcester, 617-722-2430
  
• Rep Paul Schmid, 8th Bristol, 617-722-2017
  
• Rep Chynah Tyler, 7th Suffolk, 617-722-2130
  

NB: Some of the reps share phone numbers

If you are not a constituent of any of the members, please call Committee Chairs, Sen Jason Lewis, 617-722-1206, and Rep. Kate Hogan, 617-722-2130.  Explain you are calling because they are the committee chairs and urge each to oppose S.1225 and H.1194.

We do not have the money or the media that the death lobby has, but we have you and me.  We can stop these dangerous bills.

By Nancy Valko

After I wrote last week’s blog “The New Federal Conscience and Religious Freedom Division”, I was surprised by this criticism: “Arguing conscience can make doctors (and others) look whiney, as opposed to heroic” and give assisted suicide supporters “an easy platform to describe them as selfish and out of touch ideologues who want to make their parents suffer.” But this comment did make me think.

By Xavier Symons, BioEdge

Evidence of gross negligence is mounting against Belgium’s top euthanasia regulatory body, the Federal Commission for Euthanasia Control and Evaluation.

Dr. Ludo Van Opdenbosch, a neurologist who was a Commission member for several years, resigned in September 2017. Associated Press recently obtained the letter of resignation that Dr. Van Opdenbosch sent to senior politicians, which details his dissatisfaction with the oversight processes of the Commission. "I do not want to be part of a committee that deliberately violates the law," he wrote.

By Xavier Symons, BioEdge

Editor’s Note: Apparently you no longer own your own organs, your own body, but it is first considered to belong to the state. Combined with euthanasia and assisted suicide legalization, it turns the weak, vulnerable, and elderly into a chattel class.

The Netherlands has joined Belgium and Spain in adopting “opt-out” organ donation legislation.  

Earlier this week the Dutch parliament narrowly passed a bill that requires every person over the age of 18 to notify government officials if they do not want to be an organ donor. 

By Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Last month, a concerned Swedish citizen wrote – Oregon Health Authority Reveals Hidden Problems with the Oregon Assisted Suicide model.

Fabian Stahle became concerned with the Oregon assisted suicide model after the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics published the report, “Assisted death: A Knowledge Compilation,” which supported the legalization of “Oregon Model” assisted suicide.

Stahle communicated by email (December 2017) with Craig New, an analyst for the Oregon Health Authority. Stahle learned from New that the definition of “terminal disease” used by the Oregon Health Authority was wider than the basic definition of terminal disease. New confirmed that people who are chronically ill can be approved for assisted suicide in Oregon, even if they do have a terminal disease, if they refuse effective treatment.