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| Nancy Elliott |
Chair – Euthanasia Prevention Coalition USA
The New Jersey legislature may be voting in October on whether to legalize assisted suicide. While this would be a sweeping change to the medical landscape, there are others who want this law to have even more power to end people’s lives.
The New Jersey legislature may be voting in October on whether to legalize assisted suicide. While this would be a sweeping change to the medical landscape, there are others who want this law to have even more power to end people’s lives.
The New Jersey Law Journal’s Editorial Board on September 3, 2018 wrote they do not think bill #A-1504 and S-1072 go far enough. The assisted suicide bill has not even passed yet and these lawyers want it to include more. What they are looking for is the bill to include euthanasia. That is pretty scary stuff, to think that a doctor or nurse could lethally inject their patient.
Euthanasia has not worked out that well in the Netherlands where they had a case of a doctor who had the family hold down a struggling woman who did not want to be Euthanized, while the doctor injected her with the lethal dose. (Link).
Not only do these lawyers want euthanasia, they want people who are not fatal to be included in the definition of who can be euthanized. They mention people who may have as long as 20 years to live. They also say people with “no quality of life” should be candidates for euthanasia. My question is who will be making these decisions? People with disabilities, who fear these laws, will be pushed toward euthanasia just like in Canada, where they do not want to give a disabled man the help he needs, but have suggested euthanasia for him. (Link).
One thing I thought strange was that lawyers were asking for this expansion. What is their motivation? It brings me back to when lawyers were asking someone close to me to sign an Advance Directive to limit care saying, “Do you want your estate eaten up?” This is the way many lawyers think. It is about the money, but that is not the way to have the best medical care. Where assisted suicide or euthanasia become law, rationing follows. If euthanasia is the “cure” for a certain ailment, then everyone with that ailment should have euthanasia.
I hate the term “slippery slope” but that is what happens with this kind of law, it is constantly expanding. In the Netherlands and Belgium they now euthanize children. They also euthanize otherwise healthy depressed patients. Once we go down that road it is ever expanding. One may say, who am I to tell someone they can’t commit suicide? Saying no will stop doctors and nurses from killing their patients and keeps the government out of saying who is worthy to die and who is not.
One thing I thought strange was that lawyers were asking for this expansion. What is their motivation? It brings me back to when lawyers were asking someone close to me to sign an Advance Directive to limit care saying, “Do you want your estate eaten up?” This is the way many lawyers think. It is about the money, but that is not the way to have the best medical care. Where assisted suicide or euthanasia become law, rationing follows. If euthanasia is the “cure” for a certain ailment, then everyone with that ailment should have euthanasia.
I hate the term “slippery slope” but that is what happens with this kind of law, it is constantly expanding. In the Netherlands and Belgium they now euthanize children. They also euthanize otherwise healthy depressed patients. Once we go down that road it is ever expanding. One may say, who am I to tell someone they can’t commit suicide? Saying no will stop doctors and nurses from killing their patients and keeps the government out of saying who is worthy to die and who is not.
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