Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Oregon extends assisted suicide nationally by eliminating residency requirement

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Associated Press reported that Oregon has expanded its state assisted suicide law to permit all Americans to die by assisted suicide by Oregon eliminating its state assisted suicide residency requirement.

In October 2021, Compassion and Choices, an assisted suicide lobby group, and Dr Nicholas Gideones, an assisted suicide prescribing doctor, launched a court case challenging the Oregon assisted suicide residency requirement. The assisted suicide lobby wanted to eliminate the "residency requirement" to allow all Americans to die by assisted suicide in Oregon. The lawsuit was filed in the federal court, claiming that the residency requirement is unconstitutional. (Link to news article).
 
EPC-USA were convinced that the Gideones case could be defeated.

The Associated Press article by Gene Johnson reported that:
Oregon will no longer require people to be residents of the state to use its law allowing terminally ill people to receive lethal medication, after a lawsuit challenged the requirement as unconstitutional.
EPC-USA was concerned that the Oregon government, which is supportive of assisted suicide, would not defend the state assisted suicide residency requirement in court, not because the residency requirement was unconstitutional but for political reasons. Sadly our fears were correct.

Johnson reported for the Associated Press that:
In a settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Portland on Monday, the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Medical Board agreed to stop enforcing the residency requirement and to ask the Legislature to remove it from the law.
This decision has changed assisted suicide from a state to a national issue since all Americans will be able to die by assisted suicide in Oregon. The assisted suicide lobby announced that they will now pressure other states that have legalized assisted suicide to also eliminate their residency requirements.

This decision also highlights our concerns with the use of telehealth. The assisted suicide lobby wants to approve out of state assisted suicide requests via telehealth and to send the lethal drugs by mail to the out of state requestor.

EPC-USA hopes that a state that opposes assisted suicide will launch a court case to prevent out of state assisted suicide laws from killing their citizens.

This is an historic decision because it extends assisted suicide nationally, including the many states that have strengthened their laws prohibiting assisted suicide.

EPC-USA opposes assisted suicide. These laws give physicians, and in some states nurses, the right to be directly involving with causing the death of another person. This is not an issue of self-killing, which is always a tragedy, but rather these laws enable healthcare workers to have the right to decide who should live and who should die and to prescribe lethal drugs with the intention of causing death.

7 comments:

dougsned said...

Thank you Oregon for extending such a basic human right to all the autonomous adults of the nation! We are the masters of our fates.

Carol V said...

Since when is the state helping you kill yourself a basic human right?

Learner said...

Hitler’s legacy didn’t die, it is alive and well here in the USA and Canada. The new death camps: universal murder of unborn children, lethal injection for anyone by any doctor or nurse(those who are depressed or suffer other mental health issues, those who are physically disabled, the elderly etc) Now we call it compassion. Yikes we have truly fallen!!!

dougsned said...

The right for mentally competent autonomous adults to choose how they die is a right. Don't like it? Don't choose it. Christianity is a scourge.

colleen10001 said...

To commenter niavetly referencing "autonomy"...With Assisted Suicide LIVES ARE stopped( ended, terminated) because of Coercion, Abuse and mistakes. Doctors prescribing lethal drugs instead of caring for the patient, becomes the opposite of
"Autonomy". Disability groups and anyone thinking ahead understands this.

dougsned said...

"To commenter niavetly referencing "autonomy"...With Assisted Suicide LIVES ARE stopped( ended, terminated) because of Coercion, Abuse and mistakes."

And what evidence do you have for this? Are you one of those people who cannot fathom someone choosing to end their life willingly? That someone had to have been "coerced" or manipulated no matter what? I had a family member choose it for early-onset dementia.

Don't want MAID. Don't request it. Put it on your advance directive that you don't ever want MAID even if you change your mind down the road so that your future wishes are not honored. Those groups don't speak for the entirety of the disabled or anyone else. They didn't speak for Nicole Gladu and Jean Truchon. I am a mentally competent adult, and it's my own life.

dougsned said...

Approval?