EUGENICS WATCH: Assisted Suicide Bills Dead In New England

freebeacon
Bill McMorris
April 1, 2018 5:00 am

Two of the most liberal states in the country killed off legislation that would have legalized assisted suicide.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts and Connecticut have shelved bills that would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal medication to patients with terminal diagnoses. Activists, who prefer the term medical aid in dying, were hopeful that heavily Democratic majorities in both states would pass the bill, and Massachusetts, in particular, seemed receptive to assisted suicide after the state's top medical association withdrew its opposition to the practice and pledged neutrality on the bill.

The Massachusetts Medical Society's stance, however, inspired backlash from doctors across the state. Former society president Dr. Tom Sullivan joined physicians across the state in February to lobby lawmakers against legalization. He told the Washington Free Beacon he was "overjoyed" when he learned that lawmakers would table the bill. "The legislature agreed that it doesn't make sense to reverse a practice that's at least 2,500 years old," he said referring to the Hippocratic Oath. "I think the testimony of other doctors made them recognize that many physicians are opposed [to assisted suicide] … it's a call for us to do more and educate not only the public and legislators but our own physicians to take care of dying patients."

Mark Rollo, a primary care doctor and Air Force veteran, said doctors needed to step up to personally lobby lawmakers after the medical society's "gutless" neutrality stance. He said legislators were persuaded about the unintended consequences of legalization would have on insurance companies incentives to withhold more expensive life-extending treatments in favor of pushing suicide.

"I think the most important message in our victory is the reality that PAS would have become a cheap medical procedure that would have steered the vulnerable toward suicide and favored the white, wealthy, and well insured," Rollo said. "The poor, people of color, and people with disabilities would have received the all too familiar denial of care letters from insurance companies and from Medicaid, refusing to cover expensive care but offering to pay for suicide pills. We the people say no thanks."

Supporters of assisted suicide at Compassion and Choices were disappointed in the results. Spokesmen for the group said denying the bill would hinder the wishes of terminal patients. Marie Manis, Massachusetts campaign director for Compassion and Choices, said it would extend the suffering of the seriously ill.

"The tragedy is terminally ill Massachusetts residents with six months or less to live will not have this option to peacefully end their suffering if they need it before the legislature revisits this issue next year," she said in a statement.

Matt Valliere, executive director of anti-assisted suicide Patients Rights Action Fund, said many patients have been spared pressure to opt for suicide.

"We welcome the Massachusetts Health Committee's unanimous vote to send dangerous, regressive bills H1194/S1225 to ‘study,' effectively killing the push for legalized doctor assisted suicide for the session," he said in a statement. "Assisted suicide is not medical treatment. It is bad public policy that puts a great many at risk of deadly harm through mistakes, coercion, and abuse."

The legislative battles drew pro-life activists from across the country to pour into the states. Deanna Wallace, spokesman for Americans United for Life, visited the Connecticut statehouse with other activists to speak out against assisted suicide. She said the failure to pass the legislation in the heavily Democratic states demonstrated momentum for upholding prohibitions against the practice.

"The recent victories in Connecticut and Massachusetts continue the overwhelming trend in state legislatures against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. In the past 23 years, there have been more than 200 failed attempts to legalize this dangerous practice, showing clearly that the momentum is on the side of the pro-life movement," Wallace said. "Americans United for Life will continue to fight to protect vulnerable people such as the elderly, ill, and disabled from this type of fatally flawed legislation."

Assisted suicide is legal in six states and Washington, D.C. While the groups celebrated their victories in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the Hawaii house passed assisted suicide and the Democratic governor has indicated he would sign it. Tim Appleton, Compassion and Choices' Connecticut campaign manager, said the group has not given up hope of returning to states that have rejected assisted suicide.

"The fight for medical aid in dying will continue, but for some terminally ill Connecticut residents, next year will be too late," Appleton said in a statement. "There's too much at stake to stop the fight, and we're confident that Connecticut residents will one day join the 1 in 5 American adults who have access to this compassionate option."

Dr. Sullivan, the former Massachusetts Medical Society president, said he is prepared to wage the battle again and plans on visiting the Rhode Island statehouse in the coming weeks as it weighs legalization. He said more must be done to ensure patients have access to palliative care and hospice care to ease suffering in a person's final months.

"I know this is going to be a never-ending battle," Sullivan said. "This isn't just a medical issue it's a moral, cultural, and social issue … We know this is another alarm call that we need to do more for people who are suffering and depressed that has led them to desire to end their own lives."

This entry was posted in Issues and tagged Assisted Suicide, Connecticut, Massachusetts. Bookmark the permalink. 





Thank You Mr McMorris and Free Beacon.

EUTHANASIA WATCH: Doctors Condemn Massachusetts Suicide Bill

freebeacon
Bill McMorris
February 1, 2018 9:45 am

Doctors in Massachusetts are speaking out against a proposal to approve physician-assisted suicide, arguing that its End of Life Options Act could force all doctors to participate in doling out lethal medication and pressure patients into suicide.

On Tuesday, Dr. Tom Sullivan, former president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, led more than 20 physicians into the statehouse to urge lawmakers to oppose a bill that would grant immunity to doctors who help terminal patients kill themselves. Physician assisted suicide—or "Medical Aid in Dying" as supporters call it—violates "a sacred trust" between doctors and patients, according to Sullivan, a cardiologist for more than four decades. He said policymakers should focus on ensuring the comfort of terminal patients through access to hospice or palliative care, rather than suicide.

"I've been practicing ‘medical aid in dying' for 40 years—you find it in hospices, compassionate care, and palliative care, not assisted suicide," he said. "What would a legislator know about taking care of dying patients? A great majority of doctors don't want any part of this."

Sullivan and his fellow physicians see their presence as more important than ever. Assisted suicide took center stage in the 2012 elections after supporters put the Death with Dignity Initiative on the ballot. Despite favorable polling numbers—a poll found 58 percent to 24 percent approval for the measure in August—and President Obama's 23-point victory over former governor Mitt Romney, voters rejected assisted suicide 51-49. Advocates have since set their sights on the legislature to pass the bill but have failed to clear committee each year. Opponents lost a key ally in December when the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) overturned its long-standing condemnation of the practice and voted to remain neutral on the legislation.

Sullivan and several other former MMS presidents spoke out against the neutral stance during debate. While they were unsuccessful in swaying the vote, they were able to insert language into the society's stance, including conscience protections for any doctor who objected to the practice. The current bill includes no such protections, which would force any doctor in the state to refer patients seeking assisted suicide to a willing physician. A Massachusetts Medical Society spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon that the current bill language will not alter the stance of the society. Some doctors are upset at their refusal to lobby for protections for members who do not agree with the practice.

"This is not giving the patient the right to die. It is giving the doctor the right to kill," primary care doctor Mark Rollo told the Washington Free Beacon. "We are mandated by this current bill to transfer a patient to someone else. I don't want to be complicit in killing a patient."

Dr. Laura Petrillo saw firsthand what the transition to assisted suicide means for the medical community. Petrillo began her career as a palliative care doctor in San Francisco just as California lawmakers took up the bill. She spoke out against the measure, but assisted in implementing it after Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law to ensure that practitioners gave equal voice to alternatives, such as hospice and pain management through palliative care. She recently moved to Boston to take a faculty position at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Despite working across the aisle with proponents to try to achieve the safest possible implementation in California, I still believe the safest thing is not legalized assisted suicide in any form," she said.

Assisted suicide generally enjoys broad support from the American public with 73 percent of Americans voicing support, according to a June Gallup Poll. Much of that support is superficial, as many people do not consider the realities of assisted suicide, according to Petrillo. Many patients who opt for lethal medication are not yet experiencing extreme pain, but instead fear deterioration in capabilities.

"Physician-hastened death is not limited to the extreme cases of suffering. In many cases patients are experiencing existential dread or fear of having a bad end of life outcome … it is the fear of pain, rather than the pain they feel at the time [of the suicide]," she said. "A lot of the reasons patients give for physician-hastened death could be addressed by good quality hospice and palliative care."

Dr. Rollo, a former Air Force doctor who has practiced in Massachusetts since 1991, said he was compelled to visit lawmakers to remind them of continued opposition from the medical community. He saw the Massachusetts Medical Society's new stance as an abdication of the Hippocratic Oath, saying that it mirrored the California Medical Association's decision to remain neutral on assisted suicide in 2015, and the practice began in June 2016.

"I want them to realize that even though a select few [MMS] delegates voted for this there are lots and lots of physicians out there that are strongly opposed," Rollo told the Washington Free Beacon. "The legislature should not feel comfortable passing this because it's encouraging people to die and feel like they're a burden—their ‘right to die' soon becomes a duty to die."

Doctors who oppose assisted suicide see it as a shortcut for policymakers. Sullivan said it will create perverse incentives for insurance companies and government health programs like Medicaid to skimp on paying for care to save money, threatening "the less fortunate in our society, the terminal, those with congenital illnesses for which there is no cure." Petrillo said it spares lawmakers from developing ways to ensure access to palliative care, pointing to recent advances in the United States as superior to those of countries with assisted suicide, such as the Netherlands and Belgium.

"People are dissatisfied with the status quo. Rather than thinking of developing the slow, difficult path of developing comprehensive palliative and hospice care systems—training people and opening up clinics, none of that is easy," Petrillo said. "A pill that can end someone's life is easy."

The bill has been referred to the state's Joint Committee on Public Health.

This entry was posted in Issues and tagged Assisted Suicide, Massachusetts. Bookmark the permalink.


Thank You Mr McMorris and FreeBeacon.

Belgian Catholics: Euthanasia Laws Used To 'Kill People Without Consent'

dailycaller

Joshua Gill Religion Reporter
3:21 PM 01/14/2018

So much for the 'Death With Dignity' supporters.

Medical professionals and leaders of the Belgian Catholic Church claimed Belgian officials are abusing euthanasia laws to kill people without reasonable consent.

Jean Kockerols, Auxiliary Bishop of Mechelen-Brussels, claimed that Belgian doctors are euthanizing patients without following proper medical and legal checks, sparking outcry from “not just the church’s hierarchy, but doctors and medical professionals as well,” according to the Catholic Herald. Belgium’s Federal Commission for Monitoring and Evaluation of Euthanasia has violated “both the law and its role” by allowing the euthanization of the mentally handicapped and mentally ill and failing to prosecute doctors who shirk the required safeguards under current euthanasia law, according to a report from Cathobel.

“It’s shocking that, 15 years since its creation, this commission has not referred a single file to prosecutors or condemned a single doctor,” the report from the Belgian Catholic Church’s news agency read.

“It is acting as judge and jury, and not fulfilling its role. It isn’t broadening application of the law, but violating it,” the report added.

Belgium’s Euthanasia Control Commission, led by Dr. Wim Distelmans, has failed to prosecute doctors despite public complaints and ample evidence of malpractice, the report claims, citing the example of a 38-year-old woman who requested euthanasia after her boyfriend broke up with her. The woman was subsequently diagnosed with autism after meeting with three doctors, and euthanized two months later.

The woman’s two sisters claimed the doctors never explored alternative treatments and reported the doctors’ violations to the Euthanasia Control Commission. The commission found that the presiding doctor even failed to file the necessary paperwork and record of the euthanasia treatment, but showed grace for his negligence by allowing him to file the paperwork two months later. The commission did not prosecute or otherwise penalize anyone.

A member of the commission also recently resigned over the commission’s failure to prosecute a doctor who euthanized a dementia patient without their consent, according to the report. Deaths by euthanasia have increased annually in Belgium by 27 percent since euthanasia’s legalization in 2002, health ministry data shows, according to Catholic Herald.

The commission is required to verify that each of those deaths follow the procedures mandated by current euthanasia law, but Kockerols asserted the commission’s willful failure to do so is an open secret.

Kockerols told Catholic News Service the church has known for a long time that the commission was “not working as it should” and that it should be investigated and corrected. The church, Kockerols said, will continue to fight euthanasia practices and rally citizens against the moral evils they believe it represents.

“Even if there’s little chance for now of legal changes, the church can work on a moral and pastoral level with medical staff and support critical voices,” Kockerols told Catholic Herald.


Thank You Mr Gill and the DC. 


Lives 'Unworthy' of Living.

Eugenics Watch: Colorado Disability Rights Advocates Hold 'Funeral March' To Protest Assisted Suicide Legislation

CNSNews
 Lauretta Brown | August 10, 2016

Ed; You're used up and just too expensive to keep. 
http://usdebtclock.org

"If [Govt.]spending were the solution we wouldn't have the problem."

Disability rights advocates from the groups ADAPT and Not Dead Yet held a “funeral march” to the secretary of state office in Colorado on Monday to protest a proposed ballot initiative, which will likely end up on Colorado’s November ballot, that would legalize assisted suicide in some cases.

The Colorado End-of-Life Options Act would allow someone suffering from a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months or less to receive life-ending drugs if the individual expresses a voluntary wish for such a prescription and is deemed by a physician to have “mental capacity.”

Proponents of the ballot initiative delivered more than 160,000 signatures last week to the secretary of state’s office, according to the Colorado Independent, which is more than the number necessary to get the measure on the ballot in November. The office has 30 days to ensure that at least 98,492 signatures are valid. 

The protesters marched two and a half miles from the Atlantis Community Center to the Colorado secretary of state’s office where they held a wreath laying ceremony.

“We are engaging in this street theater to educate the community about how legalization of assisted suicide will cause people to needlessly lose their lives through mistakes, coercion and abuse,” said Dawn Russell, an ADAPT advocate in a press statement preceding the march.

ADAPT is “a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom.”

“Elder abuse, and abuse of people with disabilities, are a rising problem,” said Anita Cameron, another ADAPT advocate, and Not Dead Yet board member. “With legalized physician-assisted suicide, an heir or abusive caregiver may steer someone towards assisted suicide, witness the request, pick up the lethal dose, and even give the drug — no witnesses are required at the death, so who would know?”

“Colorado’s suicide rate is among the highest in the nation,” Cameron added.  “This bill will promote suicide to one class of disabled citizens, rather than provide suicide prevention. That is discrimination.”

Not Dead Yet is “a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination against old, ill and disabled people. Not Dead Yet helps organize and articulate opposition to these practices based on secular social justice arguments. Not Dead Yet demands the equal protection of the law for the targets of so called ‘mercy killing’ whose lives are seen as worth-less.”

Thank You ADAPT, Not Dead Yet, Ms Brown and CNS.

'Mental Health/Euthanasia' Royal Dutch Medical Assc Advises Legalizing Lethal Injection For Newborns, To Relieve PARENTS Suffering

'Mental Health', the gift that just keeps on, . . . Killing

The UK Telegraph has;
Belgium And Netherlands Consider Permitting Euthanasia For Children - Including To Relieve 'Suffering For The Parents'
By Tim Stanley World Last updated: June 19th, 2013

The Verbessem brothers opted for euthanasia after they started to go blind

Of all the social/moral questions facing us, euthanasia is one of the toughest to draw a conclusion on. On the one hand, nobody likes to think of a patient being left to suffer. As individuals we have a right to control our own way of living and, by that logic, our own way of dying. On the other hand, there’s a worry that legalising euthanasia encourages a culture of death. Sadly, the news coming out of Belgium and the Netherlands confirms the critics' worst fears.

Belgium adopted euthanasia in 2002, one year after the Netherlands, and its laws were designed to help adults riddled with “unbearable physical or mental suffering”. Today, roughly one per cent of all deaths in Belgium are due to euthanasia – and the grounds on which it is carried out are becoming looser and looser. As the Telegraph recently reported, two deaf brothers opted to die after they started to go blind. They were young and their condition wasn’t terminal. They couldn’t bear the thought of living alone and in darkness, which is entirely understandable – but the case bends the spirit of the original law.

Now Belgium is weighing up some changes. One would allow patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and other diseases leading to dementia to sign an agreement permitting a doctor to allow them to die when the condition enters an advanced stage – even if they appear perfectly happy and physically stable. Another reform is to allow Belgians under 18 to choose euthanasia, too. This means that children who can’t drive, marry, vote or drink alcohol will be regarded as competent enough to decide whether or not they can die.

There’s an even more troubling development in the Netherlands. Since 2005, the Dutch have permitted doctors to euthanise minors so long as they act in accordance with a set of tight medical guidelines – 22 babies with spina bifida have been given lethal injections. But now the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) is advising that a new test be established for euthanising the newborn: if their suffering distresses the parents. In a recent policy document, the KNMG states that a lethal injection might be appropriate if “the period of gasping and dying persists and the inevitable death is prolonged, in spite of good preparation, and it causes severe suffering for the parents.”

The proposal might sound reasonable to some; after all the infant is their child and is already dying. But it’s surely troubling to establish as the grounds for euthanasia the emotional state of a third party. This is killing justified not by relieving the suffering of the patient but by relieving the suffering of those around them. It is another step down that slippery slope towards making euthanasia far more common and easier to obtain than even many of its supporters would wish it to be.

This is why societies have to take a stand – in law and culture – against euthanasia. Without that stand, without a commitment to always act in defence of life, we open a space within which the potential for abuse is possible and the extension of exceptions to otherwise golden rules is potentially endless. In Belgium and the Netherlands, everything the critics warned about is starting to come true.

Thank You Telegraph and Mr Stanley.

It's BAAAACK! Euthanasia In Belgium

Yahoo news has;

Deaf Twins Going Blind Euthanized

By Russell Goldman | ABC News – Jan 14  
Two deaf twin brothers in Belgium were euthanized by their doctor after realizing they were going blind and would be unable to see each other ever again, their physician says.

The 45-year-old men, whose names have not been made public, were legally put to death by lethal injection at the Brussels University Hospital in Jette, on Dec. 14.

The men, who were born deaf, had a cup of coffee and said goodbye to other family members before walking into hospital room together to die, their doctor told Belgian television station RTL.

"They were very happy. It was a relief to see the end of their suffering," said Dr. David Dufour.

"They had a cup of coffee in the hall. It went well and a rich conversation. Then the separation from their parents and brother was very serene and beautiful," he said. "At the last there was a little wave of their hands and then they were gone,"

More than 1,000 people legally availed themselves of doctor-assisted deaths in Belgium in 2011, most of them were terminally ill cancer patients.

The brothers are unique in that their illness was not terminal. Belgian law, however, allows doctors to euthanize "suffering" patients who are both mentally sound, over 18 and want to die.

Belgian lawmakers are considering a law that would extend euthanasia to dementia patients and children, whose families and doctors consented.

Thank You Yahoo, ABC and Mr Goldman.

And next up will be?

And the point at which it becomes no longer 'Voluntary'?

The 'Mentally Ill' are incurable. The Debt is skyrocketing. 

"I'm sorry Mrs Mood Disordered, but the orders didn't come  from my office. They came from higher up. You and your Bipolar Husband and your Temper Dysregulation Disordered Children have been ordered to, . . . . 

The State simply can't afford you anymore." 

http://www.world-war-2-diaries.com/holocaust-facts.html

Political Diseases, in 'Progressive Societies'.