Nancy Elliott: Speech to the New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee

Nancy Elliott
Chair: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition USA 
 

Nancy Elliott

HB 1659 begins by talking about reasons why a person should take their life. It talks about emotional stress, the prospect of losing control and independence and embarrassing indignities. This sounds like a disability. Before I lost my husband, this was the description of him. He had lost his independence and needed to rely on me. He also dealt with embarrassing indignities. That is no reason to kill a person. At that point, he learned that life has value at all stages. It is cruel for the State to say that someone, like my husband, should not want to live and be pushed toward Suicide.
 
Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia seek to eliminate the weak, sick and elderly among us, while promoting what they call autonomy, which is only valuing individuals who are healthy and productive. They seek to morph Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest” into only the fittest are allowed to survive. While some may choose this, how many were actually steered? I was at a hearing in Massachusetts for Assisted Suicide where a doctor stated that Assisted Suicide laws were something he was in favor of. He continued with his points and ended by saying that he felt it was the responsibility for a good doctor “to guide people to make the right choice.” I do not think he intended to say that, but is there any doubt that this pro-suicide doctor would try to persuade his patients to follow his wishes, concerning their Assisted Suicide.

If a doctor or nurse had suggested to my husband that he should kill himself, it would have devastated him. It would be like saying you are worthless, a piece of junk and should get out of the way. Many would say this can’t happen yet, this did happen to a woman in Oregon, named Kathryn Judson. She took her husband to the doctors and sat down exhausted in a chair. Her ears perked up when she heard the doctor pitching Assisted Suicide to her husband, with the clincher, “Think of your wife.” They left and never came back. Her husband went on to live another five years. What they did to this man is heartless, allowed by an insensitive law. Fortunately Mr. Judson and my husband had someone to look out for them, however there are many in our state who do not.