Assisted Suicide lobby is using Covid 19 virus to promote assisting suicides via telehealth.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The death lobby is promoting the approval of assisted suicide and prescribing of lethal drugs via telehealth. This means that a person could be approved for death by lethal drugs, without being examined or even meeting the death prescribing doctor.

Today's fundraising email from Kim Callinan, the President of an assisted suicide lobby group, states that the current Covid-19 crisis provides new opportunity for assisted suicide. She writes:

As always, we are responding quickly to the needs and opportunities of the times. As the workforce grapples with the pandemic, telehealth is gaining prominence as a critical mode of delivering medical care. This provides a unique opportunity to make sure health systems and doctors are using telehealth, where appropriate, for patients trying to access end-of-life care options. These efforts should improve access to medical aid in dying in the short and long-term.

This is not a new plan. The 2019 New Mexico assisted suicide bill included a telehealth provision and the recent bills to expand assisted suicide in Hawaii include a telehealth provision.

Let's think this through. A person with difficult health issues who feels like a burden on others, or experiencing depression or existential distress, could be assessed, via telehealth, and prescribed lethal drugs for suicide.


The death lobby focuses on facilitating death and protecting doctors who are willing to be involved with killing their patients. They are not concerned with protecting people.


For more information read the articles:  

• Assisted suicide bills are not what they appear to be. 
• Oregon assisted suicide deaths increase again in 2019.

 

Assisted suicide bills are not what they appear to be.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The assisted suicide lobby has introduced assisted suicide bills in at least 18 States in 2020. All of these bills include "safeguards" that appear to provide oversight of the law.

Recently I published an article explaining how the "safeguards" are written with loosely defined language to permit the laws to be redefined over time. I also explained that the "safeguards" are designed to convince legislators to legalize assisted suicide, while the assisted suicide lobby intends to remove them overtime. 

For instance, the Hawaii legislature passed an assisted suicide bill in 2018 that came into effect on Jan 1, 2019. There were 27 assisted suicide deaths in 2019.

The assisted suicide lobby is proposing to expand the assisted suicide law after only one year. The Hawaii legislature is debating bills SB 2582 and HB 2451 to expand the assisted suicide law by:

• permitting nurses to prescribe the lethal drugs,
• shortening the waiting period in general, and 
• waiving the waiting period when someone is "nearing death."

The Hawaii legislature also debated bill SB 3047 that would have allowed:

• assisted suicide for incompetent people who requested death in an advanced directive,
• physicians to waive the counseling requirement, 
• assisted suicide to be approved by "telehealth" and 
• require insurance companies to pay for assisted suicide.

Its hard to believe that the assisted suicide lobby wants death by "Telehealth."

The Washington State legislature is debating Bill 2419, a bill to study the "safeguards" in their assisted suicide law. One of the issues to be studied is allowing euthanasia (lethal injection) rather than limiting it to assisted suicide.

Last year the Oregon legislature expanded their assisted suicide law by waiving the 15 day waiting period.

Assisted suicide may not be a peaceful death.

The assisted suicide lobby has been using experimental lethal drug cocktails as they attempt to find a cheaper way to kill. The current assisted suicide drug cocktails have caused painful deaths that may take many hours to die. A recent article stated:

The (first drug mix) turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients — and up to 31 hours in one case.

The assisted suicide lobby is working on their third experimental lethal cocktail. Assisted suicide is not guaranteed to cause a "peaceful or painless death."

Our greatest concern is the New York assisted suicide bill. Governor Cuomo stated that he will sign an assisted suicide bill into law.

New York Assembly Bill A2694 and Senate Bill S3947 where introduced as the Medical Aid in Dying Act.

As Margaret Dore, the President of Choice is an Illusion stated in her article: New York: Reject Medical Aid in Dying Act:

“Aid in Dying” is a euphemism for euthanasia.[3] The Act, however, purports to prohibit euthanasia. On close examination, this prohibition will be unenforceable.

If enacted, the Act will apply to people with years or decades to live. It will also facilitate financial exploitation, especially in the inheritance context. Don’t render yourself or someone you care about a sitting duck to heirs and other predators. I urge you to reject the proposed Act.

Assisted suicide is an act whereby one person (usually a physician) provides a prescription for a lethal drug cocktail knowing that the other person intends to use it for suicide.

Euthanasia is an act whereby one person (usually a physician) lethally injects another person, usually after a request.

Several of the assisted suicide bills have language that can be interpreted to permit euthanasia.

Assisted suicide bills are usually designed as an application process for obtaining a lethal dose.

For instance the Maryland assisted suicide bill HB 0643 may permit euthanasia (homicide) because it doesn't require the person to self-administer. The Maryland bill doesn't protect the conscience rights of medical professionals either.

The Massachusetts assisted suicide bill can also be interpreted to permit euthanasia.

The New Hampshire assisted suicide bill gives physicians the right to write a lethal prescription but the term self ingest is not found in the main text of the bill. Only within the life insurance section is there a statement that may be construed as limiting the act to assisted suicide where it states:

Neither shall a qualified patient’s act of ingesting medication to end such patient’s life in a humane and dignified manner have an effect upon a life, health, or accident insurance or annuity policy.

Even this statement does not refer to self-ingestion.

The New Hampshire bill permits euthanasia by giving a physician the right in law to write a lethal drug prescription, but it does not limit how the lethal drugs can be used.

New Hampshire assisted suicide bill will create a perfect crime (Link).

Assisted suicide bills are intentionally written in a deceptive manner, so that if legalized, the legislation can be interpreted in a wider manner. Further to that, the assisted suicide lobby has no intention of maintaining the "safeguards" in the bills. These "safeguards" are simply mean't to sell assisted suicide to the legislators.

Hawaii is debating the expansion of its assisted suicide law only one year after it came into effect, and Washington State is examining all of the safeguards, while Oregon expanded its assisted suicide law last year.

Clearly assisted suicide bills are not what they appear to be.

In the Last Ten Years, at Least Nine U.S. States Have Strengthened Their Laws Against Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia

Margaret Dore published this list of legislative and judicial victories to counter the media narrative that the United States is legalizing assisted suicide.

Alabama Governor, Kay Ivy

In the last ten years, at least nine states have strengthened their laws against assisted suicide/euthanasia. They are (alphabetical): 

1. Alabama: In 2017, Alabama enacted the Assisted Suicide Ban Act; 
2. Arizona: In 2014, Arizona strengthened its law against assisted suicide. 
3. Georgia: In 2012, Georgia strengthened its law against assisted suicide. 
4. Idaho: On April 5, 2011, Idaho strengthened its law against assisted suicide. 
5. Louisiana: In 2012, Louisiana strengthened its assisted suicide/euthanasia ban. 
6. New Mexico: In 2016, the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision recognizing a right to physician aid in dying, meaning physician assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicide is no longer legal in New Mexico. See Morris v. Brandenburg, 376 P.3d 836 (2016). 
7. Ohio: In 2017, Ohio strengthened its law against assisted suicide. See http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3795 
8. South Dakota: In 2017, the South Dakota Legislature passed Concurrent Resolution 11, opposing physician-assisted suicide. See Bill History. 
9. Utah: In 2018, Utah amended its manslaughter statute to include assisted suicide. For more information, see https://le.utah.gov/~2018/bills/static/HB0086.html and click “status.”

The media promotes the legalization of assisted suicide but it ignores the success in preventing euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Massachusetts Court case seeks to legalize assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Masslive published a report by Shira Schoenberg concerning the court case that has been launched to overturn the Massachusetts assisted suicide law. According to Schoenberg, Roger Kligler, who is living with cancer, and Dr. Alan Steinbach launched a lawsuit to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Massachusetts.

This is not the first time similar lawsuits have been filed. There have been several lawsuits that were simply dismissed by the court, while others were heard with the finding that there is no right to assisted suicide.

The Baxter case in Montana didn't legalize assisted suicide but the Montana Supreme Court created a "defense of consent" for Montana physicians and an activist judge in New Mexico found a right to assisted suicide in that state, but her decision was overturned by the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Schoenberg reported that Kligler and Steinbach asked the court to overturn the Massachusetts assisted suicide law:

Kligler and Alan Steinbach, a doctor who wants to write lethal prescriptions for terminally ill patients, have sued Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, arguing that criminal prosecution of a doctor for prescribing a lethal dose of medication to a competent, terminally ill patient is illegal under the state constitution. Today, a Massachusetts doctor who prescribes a lethal dose of medication could be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Schoenberg reported that the Massachusetts Attorney General believes that the issue of assisted suicide is properly a legislative decision. The article reported:

Assistant Attorney General Robert Quinan said Healey has not taken a position on whether physician-assisted suicide is good or bad policy. But, he said, it is not for Healey — or the court — to decide. The plaintiffs, he said, want “to resolve through litigation a policy dispute that’s properly reserved for the Legislature.”

Nancy Houghton and John Kelly

Disability rights activists, John Kelly from the disability right group Second Thoughts and Nancy Houghton from the disability rights group ADAPT told Schoenberg in the interview:

“There’s no safeguard in place or possible that could prevent the loss of lives due to misdiagnosis, insurer treatment denial, depression and coercion and other forms of abuse,” said John Kelly, director of Second Thoughts Massachusetts, a group of disability rights advocates who oppose assisted suicide. 

Nancy Houghton, who is on the board of the Massachusetts chapter of the disability rights group ADAPT, said she was told she had three to five years to live when she was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. That was 15 years ago.

“If I had listened to the doctors back then, I could be dead now,” she said.

There is no right to assisted suicide in the US or Massachusetts. Legalizing assisted suicide gives doctors the right in law to be involved with killing their patients.

New Mexico legislators listened, read the assisted suicide bill and opposed it.

This story was published by OneNewsNow on March 14, 2019

Alex Schadenberg

The fate of New Mexico's doctor-assisted suicide bill has been decided for now: legislators listened to their constituents and now the measure is dead.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has described HB 90 as the most dangerous physician-assisted suicide bill he had ever seen.

One reason is that is also permits euthanasia, when a doctor takes the life of another person, and he was also concerned about questionable language in the bill and allowing a brief 48-hour waiting period.

“It allowed assisted suicide for mental health conditions,” he warns. “It did not protect physicians’ conscience rights even so they were forced to refer.”

The latest news is that the bill sponsor Deborah Armstrong did not have the votes for passage and asked that it be tabled. And it was.

Schadenberg, who led a session in January to help New Mexico residents oppose the bill, attributes the success to citizen activism in the Land of Enchantment.

Citizens contacted their legislators to alert them to the bill’s language, he says.

But Schadenberg cautions the measure is dead only for now and he predicts it will return.

New Mexico assisted suicide bill (HB 90) was stopped.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

New Mexico legislature.

I have amazing news. 

The New Mexico assisted suicide bill (HB 90) has been tabled. I assessed that HB 90 was the most extreme assisted suicide bill that I had ever seen, and even after it was amended, the language of the bill allowed for euthanasia and enabled the practise of the law to expand.

Yesterday, the Arkansas assisted suicide bill also died.

An article by Robert Nott published in the Sante Fe New Mexican stated:

Though the bill, known as the Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act, made it through two House committees this year, it was quietly tabled in the House of Representatives in late February.

On Tuesday, Armstrong wrote in an email that the bill was tabled “at my request.”

“At the time we are just a few votes shy to pass the bill,” she said.

Alexandra Snyder (lawyer) speaking on January 26.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition held the Stopping Assisted Suicide in Your State Training Seminar on Friday January 25 and Conference on Saturday January 26 in Albuquerque NM. 

The events featuring world-wide speakers and excellent presentations by Not Dead Yet, Choice is an Illusion and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

The Stopping Assisted Suicide in Your State events were well attended by local leaders from many different groups who became focussed on how to defeat the assisted suicide bill. It is very expensive to organize these events but the results are life saving.

We have received several messages from key leaders in New Mexico, and other states asking us to organize similar events.

Thank you to all of the New Mexico citizens and leaders who testified against HB 90 and spoke to State representatives and Senators. The bill was first amended and then tabled.

Coalition building and relationships enable us to focus on defeating the bill together and the result is that we stop assisted suicide in your state.

New Mexico should oppose assisted suicide

The following excellent letter was written by Dr Anthony Vigil and published in the Sante Fe New Mexican on February 2, 2019.

Dr Anthony Vigil 

From the Oath of Hippocrates: 

“I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.” 

When I began medical school decades ago, we were not taught that there were a handful of clinicians out there who were interested in assisting patients with suicide (suicide definition: ending one’s life voluntarily and intentionally) or assisting at death row executions. 

There was really no need; we were there because we wanted to be healers. Also, the American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians in the world, has clear ethical guidelines prohibiting its members from participating in assisted suicide or assisting at state sanctioned executions. 

For now, the New Mexico Medical Board shares the same ethical standards of the AMA, and it will enforce and correct any deviations from ethical standards. However, that could change, depending on New Mexico’s proposed assisted suicide legislation.
The Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act, House Bill 90, would make assisted suicide legal throughout the state. Proponents in New Mexico have been trying to pass assisted suicide legislation for years, but it has thus far been unsuccessful. Recently in 2016, the New Mexico Supreme Court chose to uphold the state’s current law punishing anyone who participates in an assisted suicide with a fourth-degree felony. Again, in 2017, another legislative effort to legalize assisted suicide failed. 

The past legislative efforts to allow assisted suicide in New Mexico have been unsuccessful for a reason. Assisted suicide is dangerous, hard to regulate and puts the most vulnerable in society at risk for mistakes, coercion and abuse. 

It is hypocritical for clinicians to decry the rates of suicide in our state, including veteran-related suicide and teen suicide, and yet promote the suicide of a small fraction of vulnerable patients to “prevent unnecessary suffering.” A physician’s place is not to decide which sector of the population should be able to have suicide as an option versus other groups who should not have that option. 

Physicians are indeed trained to alleviate the physical suffering of most any patient, up and to the point of loss of consciousness. It turns out, however, that physical suffering is not one of the main reasons patients request assisted suicide. In Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal for 20 years, physical pain does not even make the top five reasons a person requests assisted suicide. According to data from Oregon’s public health department, the No. 1 reason people opt for assisted suicide is because of loss of autonomy. Other top reasons include losing dignity or becoming a burden on family, all of which are related to existential suffering and disability — not physical pain. 

Patients who are contemplating assisted suicide need a strong support network with physicians who are committed to healing, not death. Assisted suicide is dangerous and hard to regulate. It leaves the most vulnerable members in society, the terminally ill, the poor and the financially disadvantaged, at risk for coercion and abuse. New Mexico should follow the American Medical Association and the New Mexico Medical Board’s opposition to assisted suicide. 

Physicians are healers by nature and to participate in anything other than healing patients violates the Hippocratic Oath. I hope that New Mexico legislators uphold the current law and reject the Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act. 

Dr. Anthony Vigil is a general surgeon practicing in Albuquerque.

• New Mexico's radical assisted suicide bill is part of the new suicide lobby strategy.
• New Mexico amends the most extreme assisted suicide bill in America.

Vote "No" on New Mexico Euthanasia Act

By Margaret Dore - Choice is an Illusion

1. The Act

The Act (HB 90 as amended, and SB 153) seeks to legalize medical “aid in dying,” a traditional euphemism for active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.[1]

2. Who is Especially at Risk?

Individuals with money, meaning the middle class and above.

3. Assisting Persons Can Have an Agenda

Persons assisting a suicide or euthanasia can have an agenda. Consider Tammy Sawyer, trustee for Thomas Middleton in Oregon, which has a similar law. Two days after his death by legal assisted suicide, she sold his home and deposited the proceeds into bank accounts for her own benefit.[2] Consider also Graham Morant, recently convicted of counseling his wife to kill herself in Australia, to get the life insurance. The Court found:

[Y]ou counseled and aided your wife to kill herself because you wanted ... the 1.4 million.[3]

Medical professionals too can have an agenda. Michael Swango, MD, now incarcerated, got a thrill from killing his patients.[4] Consider also Harold Shipman, a doctor in the UK, who not only killed his patients, but stole from them and in one case made himself a beneficiary of the patient’s will.[5]

4. “Even If the Patient Struggled, Who Would Know?”

The Act has no required oversight over administration of the lethal dose, not even a witness is required to be present at the death.[6] The drugs used are water or alcohol soluble, such that they can be injected into a sleeping or restrained person without consent.[7] Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, puts it this way:

With assisted suicide laws in Washington and Oregon [and with the proposed Act], perpetrators can . . . take a “legal” route, by getting an elder to sign a lethal dose request. Once the prescription is filled, there is no supervision over administration. Even if a patient struggled, “who would know?” (Emphasis added).[8]

5. Cover for Murder

With the lack of witnesses to say otherwise, perpetrators will be able report deaths as “self-administered.” Per the Act, this will require death certificates to list a terminal illness as the cause of death. See the Act, Section 7, “Death Certificate - Cause of Death.” The official legal cause of death will be a terminal illness (not murder) as a matter of law.

6. “Eligible” Persons May Have Years or Decades to Live

The Act applies to persons with a terminal illness, which is expected to result in death “within six months” (HB 90, as amended). Oregon’s law has a similar criteria, which is interpreted to include chronic conditions such as diabetes mellitus, better known as diabetes. This is because the six months to live is determined without treatment. Oregon doctor, William Toffler, explains:

In Oregon, people with chronic conditions are “terminal,” if without their medications, they have less than six months to live. This is significant when you consider that a typical insulin-dependent 20 year-old will live less than a month without insulin.

Such persons, with insulin, are likely to have decades to live; in fact, most diabetics have a normal life span given appropriate control of their blood sugar. [9]

(Link to PDF of this article).

Footnotes

[1] Craig A. Brandt, “Model Aid-in-Dying Act,” Iowa Law Review, 1989 Oct; 75(1): 125-215, (“Subject: Active Euthanasia ....”), at https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/738671 and Maria T. CeloCruz, “Aid-in-Dying: Should We Decriminalize Physician-Assisted Suicide and Physician-Committed Euthanasia?,” American Journal of Law and Medicine 1992 (“Subject: Active Euthanasia ....”) at https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/744116

[2] KTVZ.com, “Sawyer Arraigned on State Fraud Charges,” at https://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/sawyer-arraigned-a-63.pdf

[3] R v Morant , 11/02/18, p. 11, ¶ 78, at https://archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/2018/QSC18-251.pdf

[4] Charlie Leduff, “Prosecutors Say Doctor Killed to Feel a Thrill,” The New York Times, 09/07/00 (“Basically, Dr. Swango liked to kill people. By his own admission in his diary, he killed because it thrilled him.”)

[5] David Batty, “Q & A: Harold Shipman,” The Guardian, 08/25/05, at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/25/health.shipman

[6] See HB 90 and SB 153, in their entirety.

[7] In Oregon, the drugs used include Secobarbital, and Pentobarbital (Nembutal) , which are water and alcohol soluble. See http://www.drugs.com/pr/seconal-sodium.html and http://www.drugs.com/pro/nembutal.html

[8] Alex Schadenberg, Letter to the Editor, “Elder abuse a growing problem,” The Advocate, Official Publication of the Idaho State Bar, October 2010

[9] Toffler Declaration, at https://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/toffler-decl-new-mexico-01-23-19.pdf

New Mexico amends the most extreme assisted suicide bill in America.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

New Mexico legislature.

Yesterday, the New Mexico's Health and Human Services committee held public hearings on assisted suicide bill HB 90 that I have called the most extreme bill that I have ever seen. 

According to Eric Wicklund, writing for mhealthintelligence.com, the bills sponsor amended the bill, after the public hearing, removing the approval of death by telemedicine and changing the definition of terminal to a 6 month prognosis.

The original Bill HB 90 (red means removed):

1. Allows nurses and physician assistants to participate in assisted suicide by defining "health care provider" to include: a licensed physician, a licensed osteopathic physician, a licensed nurse, and a licensed physician assistant. 
2. Does not require the person to "self administer." The bill states "may self-administer" meaning that euthanasia is possible.
3. Reduces waiting period to 48 hours to receive the lethal drugs.
4. Allows people with mental health disorders to die by assisted suicide by enabling licensed psychiatrist, psychologist, master social worker, psychiatric nurse practitioner or professional clinical mental health counselor to approve assisted suicide for people with mental health disorders.
5. Requires health care providers to falsify the death certificate.
6. Removes conscience rights for health care providers who object to assisted suicide by requiring them to refer patients to a health care provider who is willing to prescribe assisted suicide.
7. Basis decisions on a "good faith compliance."  It is impossible to prove that someone who participated in the act did not do so in "good faith."
8. Allows the "health care provider" to approve death via "telemedicine."
9. Replaces a the normal 6 month terminal diagnosis with the undefined term: "foreseeable future."  What does it mean that a terminal illness may cause death in the foreseeable future?

Legalizing assisted suicide gives "third parties" the right in law to be involved with abandoning patients to death of a person when they are at the lowest time of their life.

It is the concept of assisted suicide that is wrong. The fact that the extreme bill was amended doesn't mean that the bill can now be supported.