Article promotes legalizing euthanasia in America.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An opinion article by Alison McCook published by the Philadelphia Inquirer promotes the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Pennsylvania. McCook is an assistant opinion editor at The Inquirer.

McCook writes about the death of her mother in 2007 by ALS and asks the question - Why is assisted suicide not legal in Pennsylvania? The article is well crafted but this article is designed to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia which is the new goal of the American death lobby.

What is the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide?

With assisted suicide two medical practitioners approve a person's request to die, the primary practitioner writes the prescription for the lethal drug cocktail. The person receives and consumes the lethal drug cocktail and dies by assisted suicide. Assisting a suicide is currently legal in 10 states.

With euthanasia, two medical practitioners approve a person's request to die, the primary practitioner then lethally injects the person with a lethal drug cocktail. Lethal injection is currently defined as homicide in all 50 states. The death lobby is now working to expand assisted suicide laws to euthanasia.

McCook makes her case for euthanasia by writing:

Even if Pennsylvania manages to pass a medical aid-in-dying law, it would be flawed, along with all the other aid-in-dying laws on the books in other states, because these laws require that patients give themselves lethal medication. By the time my mother was ready to die, she would have likely been too paralyzed to do this. There’s a whole class of patients who are terminally ill and cannot ingest the medication without assistance. Our laws, as written, leave them behind.

McCook is arguing that legalizing assisted suicide leaves out a group of people who are not capable of self-administering the lethal drugs. This argument assumes that there is nothing wrong with killing people, which is what euthanasia does, but in fact, without going into details, people with ALS are dying by assisted suicide since the term self-administer is loosely defined.

This article shows us the direction of the death lobby in America. Historically, they started with trying to legalize euthanasia but failed. In 1994 Oregon passed its assisted suicide voter initiative because they limited the act to assisted suicide. Now the death lobby is working to expand their assisted suicide laws to euthanasia.

The good news is that their first attempt in California has failed. In June 2022 a California federal judge rejected a case designed to permit euthanasia within California's assisted suicide act. Lonny Shavelson, a doctor that solely focuses on assisted suicide argued that the state's assisted suicide law discriminated against people who had difficulty self-ingesting lethal assisted suicide drugs and to remedy the situation the state needed to permit euthanasia (lethal injection) in those cases. (Link to the decision). The Judge decided that legalizing euthanasia would not extend the state assisted suicide law but fundamentally altered it.

The American death lobby lost their first battle in legalizing euthanasia in America but clearly their goal is to continue this battle.

Opposing euthanasia is most effective when we all it what it is, that being homicide/murder. It is never a good or a safe idea to give doctors the right in law to kill you.

Link to my previous articles about the California court case (Link 1) (Link 2).