Kansas & Oklahoma are tightening their assisted suicide laws.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kansas Legislature

The Kansas legislature is debating Resolution No 5010, a resolution that opposes assisted suicide and promotes improvements to palliative care. The Resolution states:

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Kansas, the Senate concurring therein: That the legislature strongly opposes and condemns physician-assisted suicide because the legislature has an unqualified interest in the preservation of human life; and

Be it further resolved: That the legislature strongly opposes and condemns physician-assisted suicide because anything less than a prohibition leads to foreseeable abuses and eventually to euthanasia by devaluing human life, particularly the lives of the terminally ill, elderly, disabled and depressed whose lives are of no less value or quality than any other citizen of this state; and

Be it further resolved: That the legislature strongly opposes and condemns physician-assisted suicide even for terminally ill, mentally competent adults because assisted suicide eviscerates efforts to prevent the self-destructive act of suicide and hinders progress in effective physician interventions, including diagnosing and treating depression, managing pain and providing palliative and hospice care; and

Be it further resolved: That the legislature strongly opposes and condemns physician-assisted suicide because assisted suicide undermines the integrity and ethics of the medical profession, subverts a physician's role as healer and compromises the physician-patient relationship; and

Be it further resolved: That the Secretary of State transmit a copy of this resolution to the Governor of the State of Kansas, the Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment and the Kansas Medical Society.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition urges members of the Kansas legislature to support Resolution 5010.

Oklahoma Legislature

On March 6, 2017; the Oklahoma House passed HB 1495 , the Death Certificate Accuracy Act by a vote of 62 - 26. HB 1495 will hopefully lead to change by creating pressure on states that have laws that force doctors to lie on death certificates.

HB 1495 makes it a felony to knowingly lie on a death certificate by improperly stating the manner of death.

Even though assisted suicide is a prohibited act in Oklahoma, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports HB 1495 because it creates awareness of the cover-up that exists in the states that have legalized assisted suicide and it further builds opposition to assisting a suicide in Oklahoma.