There is a movement in the United States to legalize Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) in all 50 states. Below is a perspective on Physician-Assisted Suicide that is not often heard, but one worth considering.
Also, below the video is an article I wrote on a proposal to legalize Physician-Assisted Suicide in Indiana. Yes, that’s right, in Indiana. Thankfully, it failed. The article has a lot of really troubling facts about how PAS is used in other states and countries of which most people are completely unaware.
I’d love to get your thoughts and comments on the video and article.
Blessings,
Brigid
Physician-Assisted Suicide bill fails in Indiana
By Brigid Curtis Ayer
INDIANAPOLIS–House and Senate proposals to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in Indiana failed to advance during the 2017 session of Indiana General Assembly. The Indiana State Medical Association (ISMA) and the Indiana Catholic Conference (ICC), among others, opposed the legislation.
Members of the Indiana House and Senate introduced bills which would have allowed a person with a terminal illness to request a lethal dose of medication from their attending physician to end the individual’s life provided certain criteria was followed.
Indiana Catholic Conference and Indiana Medical Association work to halt assisted suicide law
Glenn Tebbe, executive director of the ICC who worked with members of the ISMA to urge lawmakers to halt the legislation, said there is a new threat to human dignity in the form of physician-assisted suicide. Some who fear death or the potential pain of a living with a terminal illness, may believe self-induced, drug overdose at the hand of a physician is the answer.
Indiana Medical Association Opposes Physician Assisted Suicide
In September 2016, the ISMA voted to adopt a formal statement expressing its opposition to physician-assisted suicide. ISMA outlined numerous reasons why it opposes legalizing the lethal practice. Medical professionals stated that they should focus their attention on providing care and comfort to patients rather than be a source of lethal drugs. Legalized physician-assisted suicide could create situations of conflict of interest for doctors treating challenging patients and provide a shield for physicians to help kill their difficult patients. Doctors also recognize that persons who are diagnosed with a terminal illness may live many months or even years beyond the initial diagnosis, and sometimes, patients are misdiagnosed.
ISMA believes legalized physican-assisted suicide would foster abuse of elderly and disabled persons because it provides abusers with access to lethal drugs. Furthermore, given that there would be little to no oversight, or witnesses required once the lethal drugs leave the pharmacy, physicians fear a relative who is an heir to the patient’s estate or an abusive caregiver could acquire the lethal drugs and administer them without the patient’s knowledge or consent.
Physician-assisted suicide runs contrary to the basic medical ethics of doctors. For over 2,000 years physicians have professed the “Hippocratic Oath,” the first tenant which is “primum non nocere” or first, do no harm. The oath explicitly forbids physician-assisted suicide.
Physician Assisted Suicide in other countries leads to denied coverage, and abuse
Other countries which legalized physician-assisted suicide indicate initial safeguards established to protect vulnerable patients erode. One study of Belgium’s practice of physician-assisted suicide published in the May 2010 issue of Canadian Medical Association Journal showed that over a third of euthanasia deaths in Belgium were performed without an explicit patient request. Of the deaths without a specific patient request, the decision was not discussed with the patient 77 percent of the time.
Tebbe said when people are facing a terminal illness; a caring community needs to devote more attention, not less, to them. Even when a cure is not possible, medicine plays a critical role in providing “palliative care”—alleviating pain, meeting basic needs, including emotional and spiritual needs at the end of one’s life.
“I am grateful that the physician-assisted suicide proposals failed to get a hearing this year,” said Tebbe. “We need to stand up for the inherent dignity and respect due each person, especially the most vulnerable.”
“To Live Each Day with Dignity: A Statement on Physician-Assisted Suicide” by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops it says, “Catholic teaching views suicide as a grave offense against love of self, one that also breaks the bonds of love and solidarity with family, friends, and God (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], no. 2281). To assist another’s suicide is to take part in ‘an injustice which can never be excused, even if it is requested’ (John Paul II, “Evangelium Vitae,” no. 66).”
Catholic teaching is not the only faith tradition that is opposed to physician-assisted suicide. Many other Christians as well as Muslims, Jews, Hindus and adherents of other faiths also oppose it.
Legalized Assisted Suicide leads to denied heath coverage of life saving treatments
Indiana Alliance Against Assisted Suicide, an advocacy organization working to prevent legalizing PAS in Indiana, asserts that if physician-assisted suicide is made legal, based on what has occurred in other states with legalized physician-assisted suicide, it quickly would become another form of treatment. In Oregon where physician-assisted suicide has been legal for a decade, two cancer patients were denied insurance coverage for potentially life-saving treatment, but were granted coverage for the much cheaper option of physician-assisted suicide.
Tebbe who serves as a member of the Indiana Alliance Against Assisted Suicide said while the Indiana General Assembly did not move the bill this year, he expects the bill or others like it to surface again next year. “By raising awareness of the benefits of palliative care, and the ill effects of physician-assisted suicide, we hope to better equip people to support vulnerable persons through palliative care.”