Thursday, January 17, 2019

Delaware bill defines assisted suicide as a palliative care option

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition



The assisted suicide lobby has instituted a new direction by redefining assisted suicide as palliative care. This has long been a talking point for assisted suicide advocates but now they are attempting to change the legal definition of palliative care.

Assisted suicide laws give physicians, or others (New Mexico bill) the right in law to assist the suicide of their patients.

The Delaware assisted suicide bill follows the new suicide by physician game plan by redefining palliative care to include assisted suicide. The bill states:

WHEREAS, 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.
The World Health Organization definition of palliative care states:
palliative care intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
The assisted suicide lobby and the Delaware assisted suicide bill intend to change the meaning of palliative care.

The Delaware assisted suicide bill negates physicians conscience rights by forcing the physician to refer patients for assisted suicide. The bill states:

(c) An attending physician’s failure to inform an individual with a terminal illness who requests additional information about available end-of-life treatments, including medication to end their life in a humane and dignified manner, or failure to refer the individual to another physician who can provide the information, is considered a failure to obtain informed consent for subsequent medical treatment.
There are more egregious parts of this assisted suicide bill but this article focuses on the assisted suicide lobbies intention to change palliative care to include assisted suicide and to force physicians to participate in the act of suicide by physician.

5 comments:

gordon friesen said...

This is all déjà-vu for us in Canada and particularly Quebec where euthanasia has been defined as end-of-life care co-equally with palliative care and available in virtually all Palliative Care facilities.

But the latest and worst bit of linguistic leap frog is in the definition of suicide.

Doctor assisted suicide is, obviously, suicide. But euthanasia is a medical procedure performed by a doctor, healthcare, and therefore by definition voluntary euthanasia is NOT suicide.

And now, with the Truchon-Gladu case to extend the criteria to include people who are not dying, when we suggest that such a change will greatly increase the risk of suicide (disguised as medecine), we are told that this is not possible. MAID is not suicide remember ? Therefore no matter how many people die of MAID, none of them can be counted or feared as suicides. period.

french speakers might enjoy this account :

http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/le-proces-truchon-gladu/

Best Regards,

Gordon Friesen, Montreal
http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/

Ruth Oliver said...

I agree with Alex that Dekaware Bill IS NOT palliative care. It promotes MURDER.See my new book called "Medicine of God. Christian Medical Ethics for These Times,"now available in the bookstores or they can order it for you,from Christian Faith Publishing, Inc,or they can order it for you from 832 Park Avenue,Meadville,PA16335. or wwwchristianfaithpublishing.com.

Unknown said...

As a hospice and palliative care physician I find this entire concept offensive, and a violation of palliative and hospice care principles.
in addition, it is an insult to the principles of practicing Christians Orthodox Jews and Muslims to force assisted suicide upon them.
Francis J Schell MD

Paul Anderson said...

In the age of Trump and Giuliani, no wonder legislators think they can change reality simply by changing the description of it. It is as though they imagine that the objective qualitative difference between relieving pain, on the one hand, and actively bringing about death, on the other, can be erased simply by denying that there is any qualitative difference.

gordon friesen said...

Dear Paul,

I appreciate the sentiments, but this is one particular place where it is the progressives who are to blame.

Disabled individuals who feel a natural affinity with the progressive coalition feel betrayed that their friends and allies, cannot, for the life of them, understand that euthanasia is the embodiment of the very worst discriminatory bias against the ill and the handicapped.

Best Regards,

Gordon Friesen, Montreal

http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/