Life Legal uncovers shocking facts about assisted suicide law

The following article was published by Life Legal Defense Foundation on June 22, 2018

In the course of challenging California’s End of Life Option Act, we have learned that a handful of doctors have written most of the prescriptions for lethal drugs since the law went into effect.

Life Legal attorneys have uncovered shocking facts about how California’s assisted suicide law is being implemented and who is doing the “assisting.”

One of those doctors is Lonny Shavelson, a former contract ER doctor who came out of retirement as soon as the law was passed to dispense lethal prescriptions. Shavelson is not board-certified in any medical specialty, including diagnosing or treating mental illness, which is often at the root of a request for suicide.

His sole “practice” consists of getting people to die.

Shavelson admits to having “attended at bedside” as 89 people committed suicide. He stresses that the lethal drugs must be taken within 2 minutes, or they can “fail.” By “fail,” he means the people don’t die—and may decide that they don’t want to kill themselves.

In his book “Chosen Death,” Shavelson writes about observing an assisted suicide. Gene, a lonely widower, contacted the Hemlock Society, which has since changed its name to “Compassion and Choices.” “Sarah” the head of the local Hemlock Society office, came to Gene’s home to prepare and dispense the deadly concotion. This was not Sarah’s first experience with “assisting” a person’s death. She called it “the most intimate experience you can share with a person. . . . More than sex. More than birth . . . more than anything.”

Sarah held Gene’s head on her lap as she gave him the suicide drugs. As he started to fall asleep, Sarah put a plastic bag over his head and told Gene to “Go to the light.”

But the drugs failed. Gene woke up and started screaming.

Shavelson describes what happened next:

“His good hand flew up to tear off the plastic bag. Sarah’s hand caught Gene’s wrist and held it. His body thrust upwards. She pulled his arm away and lay across Gene’s shoulders. Sarah rocked back and forth, pinning him down, her fingers twisting the bag to seal it tight at his neck as she repeated, ‘the light, Gene, go toward the light.’ Gene’s body pushed against Sarah’s. Then he stopped moving.”

As Wesley Smith writes, “There is a word that describes what happened to Gene, and that word is murder.”

There is no evidence that Shavelson ever reported the circumstances of Gene’s death to authorities.

Why would he?

Once a person requests assisted suicide, the law presumes that everyone—the doctor, the suicide facilitator, family members, hospital workers—is acting with the purest of intentions.

Here is how the law protects bad actors:

• Unlike other suicides, law enforcement will not investigate an assisted suicide to determine the cause of death or whether the person was coerced or forced—or if the person was murdered after he changed his mind, as Gene was.
• The underlying disease —not suicide—is listed as the cause of death, which means doctors and coroners have to lie on the person’s death certificate. 
• In fact, the law does not permit the use of the word suicide to describe the process of self-ingesting a lethal dose of barbiturates to end one’s life.
• If a doctor was negligent in making the initial diagnosis or prognosis, no one will know because all records will state that the person died of the alleged disease.
• An “interested” witness—someone who will benefit financially from the person’s death—can sign off on the suicide drug request.
• A family member can initiate the request for assisted suicide—Shavelson says that most of the calls to his suicide clinic come from family members, not from the person seeking suicide.
• Any doctor or osteopath can write the prescription. No prior doctor-patient relationship with the person seeking suicide drugs is required.
• No mental health evaluation is required, even though the majority of people who receive a terminal diagnosis suffer from depression.
• Someone else can pick up the lethal drugs from the pharmacy.

In short, assisted suicide laws are designed to facilitate the perfect crime.

So how does this affect me?

You might wonder how this affects you or your loved ones since you would never seek assisted suicide.

Proponents of assisted suicide want to normalize suicide as THE end-of-life option. It is not an accident that California’s law is called the End of Life Option—not options—Act.

Shavelson’s goal is for hospice to “take over” assisted suicide. Compassion and Choices—the former Hemlock Society now heavily funded by George Soros—wants to “change the health care system” so that suicide is legalized nationwide. Faye Girsh, Senior Adviser at the Final Exit Network, says it should “be a crime” to not allow someone to kill themselves. Dr. Philip Nitschke, Director and Founder of Exit International, says “people have a right to dispose of [their] life whenever they want.”

Former Compassion and Choices litigator and head of the End of Life Liberty Project Kathryn Tucker says “it would be appropriate for the practice to become more normalized within the practice of medicine, with less government oversight and regulation.”

Life Legal regularly handles cases involving the denial or withdrawal of life-sustaining medical care without the patient’s consent. People are starved and dehydrated to death against their will because it has become “normalized within the practice of medicine” to deprive people of basic care.

I shudder to imagine what full-scale normalization of assisted suicide would look like.

What we do know already is that normalizing suicide means:

• Insurance providers will happily cover the cost of a deadly dose of barbiturates to avoid having to pay for actual medical care and treatment.
• Some doctors will simply write a prescription for lethal drugs instead of encouraging patients to seek a second opinion for potentially treatable diseases.
• A new industry is being created that allows doctors who do not offer any medical care or treatment to charge patients exorbitant fees in exchange for a prescription for lethal drugs.

We are following in the path of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, where the normalization of assisted suicide quickly led to voluntary—and involuntary—euthanasia.

California Hospital Sued for Refusing to Assist a Suicide.

The article was published by the National Review online on August 13, 2017.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

This lawsuit is a little before its time. 

Should assisted suicide become widely accepted in this country, activists will try to force all doctors to participate–either by doing the deed or referring to a doctor known to be willing to lethally prescribe. 

But it isn’t yet, and so the pretense of the movement that they only want an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy change in mores and law continues as SOP. 

But sometimes they show their true intentions. Thus, when UCSF oncologists refused to assist a cancer patient’s suicide, the woman died of her disease. Now, her family is suing–using the same attorney (Kathryn Tucker) who tried (unsuccessfully) to obtain an assisted suicide Roe v Wade in 1997 and has brought other pro-assisted suicide cases around the country. From the San Francisco Chronicle story: 

Judy Dale died of cancer in her San Francisco home in September, in agony, after being denied the pain-relieving medication she might have received under the state’s aid-in-dying law that had taken effect three months earlier. 

Bias alert! Pain relieving medication is palliative, to ease pain or other very uncomfortable. Dale was not issued a lethal prescription intended to kill her. That’s not the same thing. 

Back to the story: 

A lawsuit by her children will determine whether UCSF Medical Center, where Dale first went for treatment, was responsible for her suffering by allegedly concealing its oncologists’ decision not to provide life-ending drugs to patients who ask for them. 

More broadly, their suit illuminates the inner workings of a law that confers new rights on terminally ill patients, but few obligations on their health care providers. 

Specifically, doctors and hospitals are provided clear and explicit conscience protections in the law. No hospital or physician can be forced to participate or refer in an assisted suicide.

Demonstrating the disingenuousness of the lawyers bringing suit, that provision was–as the story reports–required to induce the California Medical Association to go neutral on the law, without which it almost surely would never have passed. 

The primary claim is elder abuse. If that theory prevails, not helping kill a patient would become a form of abuse! Unthinkable. 

The plaintiffs also contend that the hospital had assured Dale she would be able to receive assisted suicide, and then failed to follow through. I don’t know if that kind of statement would be actionable or not since there is no legal duty to do the deed, as it were. 

But this I do know: The lawsuit illustrates where the assisted suicide/euthanasia movement wants to go. As in Ontario, Canada, they want doctors and hospitals to be forced to participate in assisted suicide or get out of medicine.

Another California Judge rejects assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The suicide lobby, in the past few weeks, has lost 3 court cases that challenged laws that protect people from assisted suicide in the US.

Yesterday, San Francisco Judge Ernest Goldsmith upheld the law that protects Californians from assisted suicide. Goldsmith said: 

he felt that by granting the petition he would be creating a judge-made law without input from constituents. He agreed the legislature would be better equipped to take on the issue. 

The judge repeatedly expressed concern Friday about the possibility that, if the law was changed, a patient who is suffering financially from a terminal illness would be able to choose to die simply because their family wasn’t able to afford their continued medical expenses.

The San Francisco case concerned a woman with cancer and a doctor who is willing to assist her suicide. The plaintiffs lawyer, Kathryn Tucker, is the former legal director for a leading suicide lobby group. 

Last week Wesley Smith reported that Tucker is trying to impose unfettered assisted suicide on Americans by way of the courts. Smith reported:

...Tucker ... called SB 128 an “outdated approach, seeking to replicate a measure adopted 21 years ago in Oregon.” In her view, litigation would be more effective than legislation. For example, if the plaintiffs prevail in Brody, Tucker says, “the same open practice of aid in dying will emerge in California … [without] burdensome requirements for collecting and reporting data.”

SB 128 is the assisted suicide bill that the suicide lobby is currently pushing California legislators to approve.

On July 24, San Diego Judge, Gregory Pollack, found that the California assisted suicide law is constitutional.

On August 11, the New Mexico court of appeals overturned a lower court activist decision claiming that their is a "right" to assisted suicide in the New Mexico constitution.

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the district court had erred when it determined that “aid in dying is a fundamental liberty interest.”

In-spite of using subversive strategies to sell assisted suicide, the suicide lobby, in the US, continues to fail.

Pushing the Courts to Impose Assisted Suicide

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on August 12, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

The suicide pushers want to win by any means possible. 

Hence, Kathryn Tucker, the lawyer who brought the Glucksberg case, wants judges to impose assisted suicide legalization on us all. From, the California Lawyer story on the so far unsuccessful fight here to pass an Oregon-style assisted suicide law: 

Director Tucker of the Disability Rights Legal Center called SB 128 an “outdated approach, seeking to replicate a measure adopted 21 years ago in Oregon.” In her view, litigation would be more effective than legislation. For example, if the plaintiffs prevail in Brody, Tucker says, “the same open practice of aid in dying will emerge in California … [without] burdensome requirements for collecting and reporting data.” 

Ah, the cat is out of the bag! These were the very “guidelines” that Tucker once said was so important to protect against abuses. 

DO YOU NOT SEE NOW that the suicide fanatics are running a con about “guidelines?” They are merely an expedient to be ignored or discarded as soon as society swallows their hemlock. 

Hopefully, that might not be so easy. 

Way back in 1997, in Glucksberg v. Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court found–9-0!–that there is not a constitutional right to assisted suicide. 

Florida State Supreme Court agreed with regard to state law. So did Alaska’s. Connecticut trial court agreed. Ditto a recent California trial court, among others. 

Heck, even Montana’s Supreme Court, which issued one of the most muddled confusing decisions I have ever read, did not find a constitutional right to assisted suicide. 

Then, a New Mexico trial judge wanted to make history. But she was overturned in the New Mexico Court of Appeals, in a long decision that hearkens quite a bit to the Glucksberg case. From the Washington Times story: 

The New Mexico Court of Appeals handed a defeat to the right-to-die movement Tuesday by striking down a lower-court ruling establishing physician-assisted suicide.  

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the district court had erred when it determined that “aid in dying is a fundamental liberty interest.” “We conclude that aid in dying is not a fundamental liberty interest under the New Mexico Constitution,” said Judge Timothy L. Garcia in the majority opinion.; 

Good. IF this horrible idea is to become law, it should be done through democratic processes. 

Next time an assisted suicide promises guidelines to protect against abuse, remember Tucker’s disdain for the very concept.

• Great News: The New Mexico Court of Appeals struck down an activist assisted suicide decision, upholding protections in law from assisted suicide.

"Aid in Dying" IS Assisted Suicide

The article was published on Wesley Smith's blog on February 11.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Sophistry, redefinition of terms, blurring vital distinctions, postmodern deconstruction of words–such are the weapons wielded by assisted suicide ideologues as they work unceasingly to undermine Hippocratic medical values and promote suicide as a “medical treatment.”

Here in California, the assisted suicide pushing attorney, Kathryn Tucker, has filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration that assisted suicide isn’t assisted suicide when a terminally ill persons kill themselves with an overdose of drugs provided by a doctor. From the complaint:

21. California’s Assisted Suicide Statute provides that “[e]very person who deliberately aids, or advises, or encourages another to commit suicide, is guilty of a felony.” This statute does not reference physicians providing aid in dying to terminally ill, mentally competent persons. 

22. “Aid in dying” is a recognized term of art for the medical practice of providing a mentally competent, terminally ill patient with a prescription for medication that the patient may choose to ingest in order to bring about a peaceful death if the patient finds his dying process unbearable. It is recognized that what is causing the death of a patient choosing aid in dying is the underlying terminal illness.

This is utter nonsense; Dadaism as a legal theory.

The case should be laughed out of court. But I can’t predict judicial hilarity: The case was filed in San Francisco, and not by accident. Anything can happen within that city’s limits.

Hawaii: Assisted Suicide is Not "Already Legal"

Margaret Dore

By Margaret Dore

Kathryn Tucker, Director of Legal Affairs for Compassion & Choices, claims that physician-assisted suicide, which she terms "aid in dying," is already legal in Hawaii.[1] Her claim, based in part on a 1909 statute, fails for the reasons set forth below.

A. Hawaii's Manslaughter Statute Applies
Tucker argues that Hawaii's manslaughter statute, providing that an individual commits manslaughter if "[t]he person intentionally causes another person to commit suicide," does not apply to "aid in dying" because aid in dying is not "suicide."[2] Just last year, in Blick v. Connecticut, Tucker made a similar argument that was summarily rejected by the trial court.[3] The trial judge stated:

"[T]he legislature intended the [manslaughter] statute to apply to physicians who assist a suicide . . ." [4]

B. The 1909 Statute
Tucker's brief states:

"Hawaii law . . . contains a unique provision that gives physicians broad discretion when treating terminally ill patients: '[W]hen a duly licensed physician or osteopathic physician pronounces a person affected with any disease hopeless and beyond recovery and gives a written certificate to that effect to the person affected or the person’s attendant nothing herein shall forbid any person from giving or furnishing any remedial agent or measure when so requested by or on behalf of the affected person.'"[5]

She further states: "Added in 1909, the purpose of this provision was to give terminally ill patients the option to obtain treatment that had not yet been approved by the government."[6]

C. Bills Have Repeatedly Failed
In Hawaii, bills to enact physician-assisted suicide have repeatedly failed and/or been defeated in the Legislature since at least 2002.[7] This fact alone is sufficient to defeat Tucker's claim that the above statute has somehow already legalized assisted suicide. Consider for example, Lawrence v. Lawrence, 105 Wn.App. 683, 687-8, 20 P.3d 972 (2001). The Washington State Court of Appeals held that the "friendly parent concept" was not the law because bills to enact it had been rejected by the legislature. In Hawaii, bills to enact physician-assisted suicide have repeatedly failed and/or been rejected in the legislature. For this reason alone, physician-assisted suicide is not the law of Hawaii.

D. False and "Malarky"
Tucker argues that "aid in dying" should emerge in Hawaii as a practice governed by a developing standard of care due to the influence of Oregon, Washington and Montana.[8] This is similar to an argument she made last year in The Advocate, the official publication of the Idaho State Bar.[9] She claimed that "aid in dying" was already legal in Idaho due to the law of Oregon, Washington and Montana.[10] In The Advocate's next issue, a former Chief Justice and other lawyers denounced her reasoning as "false" and "malarkey."[11]

E. Matters Not Addressed
Tucker's brief does not address address language in the Hawaiian Pain Patient's Bill of Rights, which states:

"Nothing in this section shall be construed to: . . . prohibit the discipline or prosecution of a licensed physician for: . . . Causing, or assisting in causing, the suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of any individual . . ."[12]

Her brief also fails to address Hawaii case law, which imposes a duty of care to prevent suicide on a defendant with actual custody of a suicidal person.[13] In other words, civil damages can be imposed for failing to prevent a suicide in Hawaii.[14]

* * *
Margaret Dore is President of Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation opposing assisted suicide and euthanasia. She is also an attorney in Washington State where assisted suicide is legal. For more information, see www.margaretdore.com

* * *
[1] Kathryn Tucker, "End-of-life Law and Policy in Hawaii Aid in Dying," as of September 20, 2011, available at http://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/tucker-brief_0011.pdf
[2] Tucker, note 1 above, Section II.B. ("Criminal Prohibitions Governing End-of-Life Care").
[3] http://www.choiceillusionconnecticut.org/p/connecticut-2.html, paragraph 3.
[4] Id., paragraph 4.
[5] Tucker, note 1 above, Section II.A. ("Hawaii Law Empowers Patients to Make Autonomous End-of-Life Treatment Decisions")
[6] Id.
[7] Tucker concedes that bills to legalize physician-assisted suicide have been proposed and failed since 2002. See Tucker, note 1 above, second paragraph. Just this year, Senate Bill 803 bill was voted down in Committee, 4 to 0.
[8] Tucker, note 1 above, Sections titled: "Aid in Dying Should be Governed by Standard of Care," "Aid in Dying in Other States" and "Conclusion: Aid in Dying Can and Should Emerge as an End-of-Life Option in Hawaii as a Practice Governed by Standard of Care."
[9] See Kathryn Tucker & Christine Salmi, "Aid in Dying: Law, Geography and Standard of Care in Idaho, 53 The Advocate, Official Publication of the Idaho State Bar, No. 8, 42-45 (2010).
[10] Id .
[11] Hon. Robert E. Bakes et al, Letters to the Editor, 53 The Advocate, Official Publication of the Idaho State Bar, No. 9, 15-17 (2010).
[12] Haw. Rev. Stat. Ann. Sec. 327H-2.
[13] See e.g., Schwenke v. Outrigger Hotels, 122 Hawai'i 389, 392 (2010).
[14] Id.

Link to the original article by Kathryn Tucker.

Link to the original publication of this article at Choice is an Illusion.

Assisted Suicide lobby Attorney Kathryn Tucker to Pitch Legalized Assisted Suicide at Conference on Abuse of Elderly and Disabled?

Not Dead Yet has published an incredibly important blog post concerning Kathryn Tucker from Compassion & Choices, the assisted suicide lobby group, being named as a speaker to the upcoming conference fro the National Adult Protective Services Association in the United States.

Here is what Stephen Drake from Not Dead Yet wrote:

Recently, we became aware of a very disturbing development.

Every year, the National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) hosts a conference on abuse of the elderly and people with disabilities, sharing research and prevention strategies. The 2010 conference is being held next week in San Diego, California.

The conference sessions and workshops are a reflection of the organization itself, as stated on the front page of the website:

The National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) is a national non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization with members in all fifty states, including the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. It was formed in 1989 to provide state Adult Protective Services (APS) program administrators and staff with a forum for sharing information, solving problems, and improving the quality of services for victims of elder and vulnerable adult abuse.

And for the most part, that is what you see in the program for the 2010 conference (pdf).

There is one glaring exception. On November 9, the second day of the conference, a concurrent presentation is being given by "Compassion & Choices" attorney Kathryn Tucker. (Most often, this organization is referred to as "Conflation & Con Jobs" here.)

Tucker's presentation is titled "Abuse in Terminally Ill Patients: Failures of Care." However abuse is defined by Tucker, it's an easy bet that a large part of her "solution" will entail legalization of assisted suicide. Tucker and her allies in the euthanasia movement are predictable and zealous - just as radical conservatives offer "tax cuts" as the solution to most problems, Tucker and her organization offer legalized assisted suicide as their own panacea of choice.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of being alarmed at seeing Tucker getting a podium at this conference. Over the past year, Tucker and C & C have been busy exploiting tragic cases in which elderly men murder their wives and then commit suicide themselves. In all of these cases, there has been no evidence that the murder victim had agreed to or wished for her own death. In more than one case, the woman murdered wasn't terminally ill.

Nevertheless, C & C has exploited these tragedies using two deceptive tactics in statements to the press: 1.) they imply the deaths were mutually planned and consensual when there is no evidence of that claim; 2.) they refer to the nonterminal conditions of the murdered women as "terminal;" 3.) the punchline is, of course, that they make an absurd claim that legalization of assisted suicide would somehow have prevented the tragedy.

Of course, it's absurd to think that a man who would kill a wife who didn't want to die would reach out to his doctor just because assisted suicide was legal. It would still be illegal for him to ask for help in killing a wife who wanted to live, wouldn't it?

In order to make the argument at all plausible, you have to significantly distort the facts. Tucker and her employers have shown no hesitation in this regard.

For a detailed analysis of two instances of this brand of warped advocacy, please check out the following two blog entries:

* Exploitation of a murder/suicide case in Connecticut - the murder victim had moderate Alzheimer's.
* Exploitation of a murder/suicide case in in Montana - the murder victim had cerebral palsy and some pain issues.

I would like to know what the organizers of this conference were thinking in accepting this proposal. Tucker gives presentations with only one goal in mind - advancing the main mission of legalizing assisted suicide.

Will attendees notice that she's using a different definition of "terminal" than they're used to? Or will they note that her biggest problem with these murder/suicides is that they are "violent" and messy? She doesn't mention the nonconsensual part.

Her participation in this conference is offensive and dangerous to the lives of people the organization involved is devoted to protecting. Tucker's solution to the ultimate form of abuse - murder - is to redefine it as something else so she and C & C can use these murders to help their own agenda.

I can only think that her inclusion happened through gross ignorance on the part of the organizers. That's bad enough. I'd hate to think that they actually knew what the organization has been doing over the past year. That would mean that vulnerable elderly women are in more danger now than ever. --Stephen Drake