California Assisted Suicide Law is Denounced by Leading Disability Rights Policy Center

The following media release was originally sent out on June 7, 2016.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Marilyn Golden, 

Senior Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)

(510) 549-9339  mgolden@dredf.org

Announces national web resource for reporting abuses and other problems

Berkeley, CA – June 7, 2016 – The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a leading national disability rights law and policy center based in Berkeley, California, denounces the enactment of California’s End of Life Option Act, which goes into effect on June 9.

DREDF is pleased to announce, along with our coalition partners in Californians Against Assisted Suicide, that this week, the national organization Patients Rights Action Fund will launch a new web page where concerned individuals, family members, and friends can bring to light abuses, problems, and complications associated with assisted suicide laws. The new online resource is located at http://patientsrightsaction.org/stories.

California’s assisted suicide law, which is modeled on Oregon’s law, is marked by extraordinarily weak safeguards and oversight, posing great danger to many Californians with disabilities. as well as people with chronic and terminal illnesses, lower-income Californians, and to the general public.

DREDF and all our coalition partners, including the many California disability organizations that opposed this law, remain gravely concerned about it. The End of Life Option Act:

• creates a deadly mix with our broken, profit-driven healthcare system,
• is conducive to elder abuse, 
• has very weak safeguards, allowing families to shop for other doctors to provide lethal drugs if the first physician says no, and endangering patients who receive terminal diagnoses that are often mistaken, 
• puts people with depression at risk, and does not require patients requesting lethal drugs to receive a mental health evaluation, 
• provides for no investigation of abuse, and 
• requires no neutral witness to be present when the lethal drugs are taken.

Because the dangers are so significant, many national disability organizations, plus the American Medical Association (AMA), also oppose the legalization of assisted suicide.

DREDF is part of the Californians Against Assisted Suicide coalition, which has worked against assisted suicide laws since 2005. The new California law allowing doctor-prescribed suicide received significant Democrat and Republican opposition in the California Legislature, particularly in the State Assembly. It stalled in the Democrat-controlled Assembly Health Committee because of a significant failure to receive adequate support. The bill was later passed only through the use of an unusual legislative maneuver that placed the bill into a Special Legislative Session on healthcare funding that bypassed many established legislative protections.

Recent attempts to pass similar assisted suicide laws in at least fourteen other states, including Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, and New Hampshire, have failed.

About Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF). Founded in 1979, by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) is a national law and policy center, based in Berkeley, CA, dedicated to protecting and advancing the civil rights of people with disabilities.

California assisted suicide law is challenged in court.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The California assisted suicide law came into effect on June 9. Based on the 15 day waiting period, the earliest possible death is June 24. The Coalition Against Assisted Suicide has launched a legal case and have asked for an injunction stating that the California assisted suicide law violates the equal protection Act. 

The Jurist reported on the case with the following:

A group of five doctors and the American Academy of Medical Ethics (AAME) [advocacy website] filed suit [application, PDF] Wednesday challenging a physician-assisted suicide law. The End of Life Option Act would allow "terminally-ill" patients, an individual who, determined within reasonable medical certainty, is going to die in 60 days due to an incurable disease, to be given a prescription for a lethal dose of "aid-in-dying" drugs. Those challenging the legislation argue that, "[t]he Act violates the equal protection and due process guarantees of the California Constitution in that it fails to make rational distinctions between ['terminally ill' citizens] , and the vast majority of Californians not covered by the Act." They argue that the term "terminally ill" is unconstitutionally vague and for that reason the law would "deprive individuals the protection of previously-existing California laws against assisted suicide by unconstitutionally creating a class of persons again based on arbitrary, unreasonable, and irrational distinctions." Finally, they argue that the legislature lacked constitutional authority to legislate on the matter of physician-assisted suicide during an extraordinary legislative session.

Californians Against Assisted Suicide is a diverse, broad-based coalition of disability rights organizations, physicians, medical groups, palliative and hospice care specialists as well as faith-based organizations.

California renews push to legalize assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

California Governor Jerry Brown may need to veto the assisted suicide Bill AB 15.

The assisted suicide lobby has renewed their push to legalize assisted suicide in California after their previous assisted suicide bill, SB 128, was stopped in the Health Committee.

The assisted suicide lobby is taking advantage of the special legislative session called by Governor Jerry Brown to address shortfalls in healthcare funding. The new assisted suicide bill AB 15 is nearly identical to SB 128, but AB 15 will not be heard by the Health Committee.

Tim Rosales, a spokesperson for the Californians Against Assisted Suicide told the media:

"It is particularly troubling that in this rush to judgment, proponents are linking this bill with health care financing," 

"That should be truly frightening to those on MediCal and subsidized health care, who quite logically fear a system where prescribing suicide pills could be elevated to a treatment option."

Dr Jacqueline Harvey has written about how the assisted suicide lobby uses subversive strategies to sell assisted suicide. 

Wesley Smith

Bioethicist Wesley Smith stated on his blog:

Having lost fair and square in a California Assembly Committee, the suicide pushers have filed a new legalization bill–AB 15–for a special session intended to grapple with health care costs.

Assisted suicide advocacy is about lying. Catch this bit of mendacity from the bill: Aid-in-dying drug” means a drug determined and prescribed by a physician for a qualified individual, which the qualified individual may choose to self-administer to bring about his or her death due to a terminal disease. 

No. The death would not be from any disease, but a lethal dose of drugs.

The committee has been re-jiggered to take the “no” votes away, I am told. Can we say, stacked deck?

And the bill is on a very fast track. Can’t give people time to think or understand why assisted suicide is bad medicine and even worse public policy.

If this shameful machination works, I hope Jerry Brown remembers his service to the dying with Mother Theresa. She is definitely spinning in her grave.

California Governor Jerry Brown may need to veto Bill AB 15.

The assisted suicide lobby is becoming desperate after losing two court cases in California, after assisted suicide bills have been defeated in several states and after the New Mexico Court of Appeals overturned an activist lower court decision to once again affirm protections in law from assisted suicide in that state.

"Big Business" and Assisted Suicide

This article was published on the California Against Assisted Suicide website.

Margaret Dore

By Margaret Dore Esq., MBA*

Assemblyman Roger Hernandez was recently quoted as concerned that big business would use California's assisted suicide proposal, SB 128, to "guide people in that direction," meaning early death via a lethal overdose.

This is a valid concern.

I am an attorney in Washington State where assisted suicide is legal. Our law is based on a similar law in Oregon. Both laws are similar to SB 128, which seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in California.

In Oregon, it is well documented that Oregon's Medicaid program uses coverage incentives to steer people to suicide. See: Affidavit of Oregon doctor, Ken Stevens, pp 3-4. With legal assisted suicide, private health plans have this same ability. Dr. Stevens states:

If assisted suicide is legalized in [your state], your government health plan could follow a similar pattern. Private health plans could also follow this pattern. If so, these plans would pay for you and/or your family to die, but not to live. (Emphasis added). Id, ¶16.

Dr. Stevens also notes that the mere presence of legal assisted suicide steers people to suicide, which was the case with his patient Jeanette Hall. Her cancer treatment was fully covered, but with the existence of Oregon's law, she nonetheless became adamant that she would kill herself. Dr. Stevens convinced her to be treated instead. (Affidavit, ¶¶ 5-9). She is alive today, fifteen years later.

As for Assemblyman Hernandez's specific "big business concern," in 2013, a Montana State Senator made a similar observation:

I found myself wondering, Where does all the lobby money come from? If it really is about a few terminally ill people who might seek help ending their suffering, why was more money spent on promoting assisted suicide than any other issue in Montana? 

Could it be that convincing an ill person to end their life early will help health insurance companies save a bundle on what would have been ongoing medical treatment? How much would the government gain if it stopped paying social security, Medicare, or Medicaid a few months early? [it could actually be years earlier]. How much financial relief would pension systems see? Why was the proposed law to legalize assisted suicide [SB 220] written so loosely? Would vulnerable old people be encouraged to end their life unnecessarily early by those seeking financial gain?

Finally, there is the expansion issue. In Washington State, we have had informal "trial balloon" proposals to expand our law to non-terminal people. For me, the most disturbing one was in the Seattle Times, which is our largest paper. A column suggested euthanasia as a solution for people without funds in their old age, which could be any of us, say if the company pension plan went broke.**

Assemblyman Hernandez is right to be concerned about what could happen to his constituents if SB 128 is passed.

Don't let California make Washington and Oregon's mistake. Urge your legislators to vote "NO" on SB 128.

* Margaret Dore is a former Law Clerk to the Washington State Supreme Court and the Washington State Court of Appeals. She is a former Chair of the Elder Law Section of the ABA Family Law Committee. She also worked for a year with the United States Department of Justice. She is president of Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia. To learn more, see: www.margaretdore.com and www.choiceillusion.org.

** Jerry Large, "Planning for old age at a premium," The Seattle Times, March 8, 2012 ("After Monday's column, . . . a few [readers] suggested that if you couldn't save enough money to see you through your old age, you shouldn't expect society to bail you out. At least a couple mentioned euthanasia as a solution.") (Emphasis added).

Disability rights advocates fight California assisted suicide bill.

Anthony Orefice

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

USA Today published a very interesting article by Anna Gorman of Kaiser Health News concerning the role of disability rights activists in the assisted suicide debate in America. For instance Anthony Orefice from Valencia California who had a motorcycle accident when he was 19.

Anthony Orefice hit a telephone pole on his motorcycle going 100 miles per hour. Doctors told his family he wouldn't survive. He did, but the accident left him paralyzed from the chest down ... All you are thinking is the worst, worst, worst – everything you can't do," ... "I wanted to be dead. 

Orefice, who is now 40, is married, has a 7-year-old son, owns a medical supply company and counsels people who are newly disabled with spinal cord injuries. Orefice says that:

"Depression,... is part of the healing process." 

Marilyn Golden (on right)

Orefice is one of many disability rights activists who are speaking up against the California assisted suicide bill. He and others are concerned that:

depression and incorrect prognoses may lead people with serious disabilities to end their lives prematurely.

Marilyn Golden, the senior policy analyst at Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, argues that the assisted suicide bill poses "considerable dangers" to people with new disabilities who may have suicidal thoughts. Golden states that:

"It would almost be too easy to make an irrevocable choice,"

Golden added:

many people who initially received terminal diagnoses have "lived full lives (for) years or even decades" longer than expected.

John Kelly

John Kelly, with the disability rights group Not Dead Yet, explained that the disability rights groups were less organized when the Oregon and Washington State and Vermont passed assisted suicide bills, but since then they have effectively defeated assisted suicide bills in many states including Massachusetts, Colorado and Connecticut. Kelly is quoted as saying:

"We have had success after success in stopping these bills," ... they are determined to defeat any bill, including the one in California.

The disability rights coalition is actively opposing the California assisted suicide bill SB 128. Deborah Doctor, a legislative advocate for Disability Rights California, wrote in a letter to State Senator Lois Wolk:

disabled people are vulnerable to abuse and could be coerced by family members not acting in the patients' best interests. Relatives, she said, could put pressure on people to take life-ending medication. 

"Our responsibility is to think of people who are the most vulnerable to coercion, abuse and pressure."

Doctor is also concerned that:

physicians may simply be wrong about how long someone has to live. Insurance companies also might overrule treatment for people with disabilities because of the cost of care.

Laurie Hoirup is another disability rights activist who strongly opposes assisted suicide, based on her personal experience. Hoirup has had spinal muscular atrophy since she was a toddler. She has a curved spine and rods in her back, she cannot eat, bathe or go to the bathroom on her own and has trouble breathing. According to Gorman, Hoirup said that:

Physicians told her family that she wouldn't live past 10 years old.

Anyone could be given the wrong diagnoses, I am certainly the perfect example of that.

Laurie Hoirup

Hoirup, who is now a grandmother, spent many years working in government and other positions on behalf of people with disabilities.

The article concludes:

Orefice, who wished for death when he was 19, said he is now glad for what he calls the years of "bonus time." 

But Orefice said he doesn't dwell on his disability or think much about death. Instead, he focuses on his family and thinks what he's been able to accomplish and what he still hopes to. He paddle boards, plays wheelchair hockey and races specially equipped off-road vehicles. 

"I have affected more lives than I would have if I was walking," he said. "When you are in the trenches, you don't see that."

• Marilyn Golden: What you don't know can kill you.
• John Kelly: Assisted suicide laws are more dangerous than people acknowledge.
• Diane Coleman: Why disability rights activists oppose assisted suicide.
• Stephen Mendolsohn: Assisted suicide would be fraught with problems and abuses.
• Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick: Debating assisted suicide: 'Contempt for life with disability surrounds us.'

California Assisted Suicide Bill SB 128 Placed on Senate Suspense File

(Sacramento, CA) – On Monday, May 11th, the Senate Appropriations Committee sent SB 128, the bill legalizing doctor assisted suicide in California, to the suspense file. This action represents the latest hurdle the bill is facing in addition to growing opposition as more comes to light regarding abuses of the Oregon law and impact on suicide rates.

Part of the testimony offered in Monday's hearing addressed the significant lack of state oversight and regulation in both the Oregon law and the proposed California bill.

Dr. Warren Fong, president of the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California gave testimony highlighting the fiscal impact of SB 128:

"In the short term, there will be costs to the Department of Public Health and various state licensing boards to create the regulations which will allow physicians to prescribe life-ending medication, and pharmacists to dispense it. The state will also have to consider whether, if this becomes legal, it will become a covered benefit in the Medi-Cal program. If so, physicians, pharmacists, and drug manufacturers will all have to be reimbursed for participating. 

"In the long term, there will be costs associated with performing oversight of this program, which is noticeably absent from the bill in print. The Medical Board will need additional funding to review complaints against physicians who participate in this program, and local and state law enforcement may need funds to investigate criminal complaints."

Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund also drew attention to the financial implications of the bill: 

"Making sure [abuse] doesn't happen might be impossible but if it isn't, it would cost a lot more money."

The bill must move out of the Senate by June 5th in order to progress this year. If the bill fails, assisted suicide supporters like Compassion & Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) led by former Oregon HMO executive Barbara Coombs Lee have promised to go to the ballot in 2016.

Contact: Californians Against Assisted Suicide - 916.475.4900