Assisted Suicide could jeopardize daughters life

The following letter was written by Jeffrey & Elsie Golin and printed in the Montana Standard on March 7, 2013.

Assisted Suicide could jeopardize daughters life

We have been following the Montana assisted suicide issue with great concern. We are terrified of assisted suicide laws. Our fear is due in part to our having a severely disabled daughter in the institutional care of the State of California. We fear that assisted suicide and its cousin, direct euthanasia, could spread to California and our daughter, if it is not stopped in Montana.

Given the long and notorious history of euthanasia, we are hoping that your readers will encourage their legislators to approve HB 505 and put an end to the deceptions about this “cause.” We don't believe there are any effective safeguards against its possible abuses. While this is Montana legislation, it is also a nationwide issue that affects all Americans.

In our case personally, we fear physician-assisted suicide could conceivably be sold here in California as a means to prematurely terminate difficult disability cases like our daughters’, to supposedly save money for relatives and caregivers, disguised as a “compassionate choice.”

Please vote “YES” on HB 505.

— Editor’s note: On Feb. 28, HB 505 passed in the House by a vote of 51–46. It will go on to the Senate for approval.

Jeffrey and Elsie Golin
Fresno, CA

Aid in Dying: Oregon suicide rate tells the story

The following letter was written by Greg Hinkle, a former Montana Senator, and published on March 6, 2013 in the Missoulian newspaper. under the title: Aid in Dying: Ore suicide rate tells the story.

Greg Hinkle

J. Bruce Beckwith’s (Feb. 6) letter, replying to my (Jan. 30) letter, implies that legalizing physician-assisted suicide will prevent other violent suicides. This has not been the case in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal.

Oregon’s overall suicide rate, which excludes suicide under Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide act, is 35 percent above the national average. Moreover, this rate has been increasing significantly since 2000. Just three years prior, in 1997, Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide. Suicide has thus increased, not decreased with legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Moreover, many of these deaths are violent. For 2007, “firearms were the dominant mechanism of suicide among men.” This is according to an Oregon Department of Human Services report issued in September 2010.

In Oregon, murder-suicides also “follow the national pattern” (http://blog.oregonlive.com/health_impact/print.html?entry/2009/11/recent_murder-suicides_follow.html ).

Legal assisted suicide is, regardless, a recipe for elder abuse in which heirs are empowered to pressure and abuse older people to cut short their lives. I urge your readers to tell their legislators to close on the door on assisted suicide in Montana.

To learn more, see this website: www.montanansagainstassistedsuicide.org.

Greg Hinkle, Thompson Falls

New Hampshire bill might lead to dehydration deaths for people with disabilities.

The following letter was sent by Diane Coleman, from the disability rights group, Not Dead Yet, to New Hampshire legislators opposing New Hampshire Senate Bill SB 170, that will redefine hydration and nutrition in state law. 

Diane Coleman wrote:

I am writing to you on behalf of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group with members in New Hampshire. Among other issues, our organization works to ensure that the law of “informed consent” governs the implementation of the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment.

The purpose of this letter is to express opposition to SB 170, “An Act relative to advance directives pertaining to life-sustaining treatment.” In our view, SB 170 undermines “informed consent” with respect to the provision of tube feeding and/or intravenous fluids.

Current New Hampshire law protects the general public, including but not limited to people with disabilities, by separating the choice to receive or refuse various forms of life-sustaining treatment from the choice to receive or refuse tube feeding and/or intravenous fluids. This distinction is important for at least four reasons.  

First, everyone needs food and fluids to live, but many non-terminal health conditions related to swallowing prevent safe oral ingestion.  

Second, people who need tube feeding on a long-term basis are disabled (such as by developmental disability, neuromuscular disability or brain injury), and protection of this group is subject to a variety of laws to prevent discrimination.  

Third, many people with an uncertain prognosis may depend on tube feeding and intravenous fluids temporarily and then recover, but removing food and fluids at that stage cuts off the potential for recovery and creates a self-fulfilling prophesy resulting in death.  

Finally, many people need assistance from another person to eat orally (e.g. people with dementia, cerebral palsy, quadriplegia), yet there may be insufficient paid staff to feed people in some settings.  In fact, in nursing facilities, many people are placed on tube feeding for this reason alone. Each of these factors argues in favor of the separate treatment that current New Hampshire law gives to “medically administered nutrition and hydration.”

SB 170 redefines “life-sustaining treatment” to include “medically administered nutrition and hydration” and removes any specific reference to “medically administered nutrition and hydration” from the New Hampshire form for the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care. While the form includes a place where “additional instructions” may be inserted, nothing suggests topics or issues that one might wish to address there. The form will presumably be presented to patients in various contexts in accordance with federal law, but patients will be “on their own” if they want to go beyond just checking the box for or against “life-sustaining treatment” and try to fill in the blanks under “additional instructions”.

In her March 5th testimony, the chief sponsor of SB 170, Senator Peggy Gilmour, attempted to justify the proposed change by stating, “This separate section for Medically Administered Nutrition & Hydration is described as confusing by those completing the NH Advance Directive and among health professionals/others who help guide people in the advance directive process.” This purported “confusion” is a very thin justification, and raises questions about what underlying issues led to this bill. If health care professionals and others who guide people in the advance directive process have trouble explaining tube feeding, a relatively simple treatment that’s been around for over 100 years, how are they managing to talk about ventilators and dialysis? The current New Hampshire form itself explains, “I realize that situations could arise in which the only way to allow me to die would be to not start or to discontinue medically administered nutrition and hydration.” Perhaps the real issue is that professionals are having trouble convincing people to choose to forego food and fluids by tube if that is “the only way to allow me to die”? In any case, no evidence was offered that people are harmed by the current law, which requires individuals to make a simple choice by checkmark.

While SB 170 allows individuals to write in a specific provision relating to food and fluids by tube, it reduces the information provided to the individual, undermines informed consent, and actually shifts the burden to the individual to know and articulate their wishes.  Unless the individual is unusually knowledgeable, food and fluids by tube will be swept up in the all-or-nothing, yay-or-nay check box that applies to other treatments that fall under the increasingly pejorative term “life support.”

For the reasons stated above, we urge you to reject SB 170.

Sincerely,
Diane Coleman
Not Dead Yet

New Hampshire Bill may lead to more dehydration deaths

Nancy Elliott, the former three term state Representative from New Hampshire, uncovered a dangerous problem with New Hampshire Senate Bill SB 170, a bill that concerns Advanced Directives and Life-Sustaining Treatment. SB 170 in fact redefines medically administered nutrition and hydration as "Life-Sustaining Treatment", which will lead to a far greater number of people being denied fluids and food when Life-Sustaining Treatment is withdrawn.

The following is a letter sent by Nancy Elliott to New Hampshire Senators. 

Nancy Elliott

I am writing to ask you to reject SB 170 concerning Advance Directives and Living Wills. I was a State Representative from 2004 to 2010 on the House Judiciary Committee and worked extensively with RSA 137 J.

This bill seeks to make substantial changes to that law. The sponsors seek to redefine medically administrated nutrition and hydration as “Life Sustaining Treatments.” There are many individuals with disabilities that live on medically administrated nutrition and hydration and by redefining it their lives could be put at risk. 

In the hospital they routinely put patients on medically administrated nutrition and hydration if they fail the swallow test. What happens if this is now classified as a “Life Sustaining Treatment,” as opposed to this persons’ method of nutrition and hydration. Will insurance companies refuse to pay for nutrition and hydration for those in need because it is now a new category of something intrusive.

This change removes “choice” for NH residents. Our law states that one must use the form provided in statute. In other words, you may not use another form of your choice. Therefore residents are limited to what is in our form. With this proposed change a patient must chose all or nothing. In other words you may not chose to not have very invasive “life extending measures” yet still be given an IV to keep your tongue from sticking to the top of your mouth and your lips to crack while you are being dehydrated to death. As our law already allows a person that wishes to not receive “medically administrated nutrition and hydration” to have that option by just checking the specific box those who’s choice is being taken away are the ones that do not want intrusion yet want to be comfortable with nutrition and hydration.

This change is also a bait and switch for the citizens of NH. Nowhere on the form or instruction page given to the individual, is there a mention that “medically administrated nutrition or hydration” are now “Life Sustaining Treatments.” Most people think of that, as extreme measures such as machines. These people will not be looking up 137 J to see what the definition is. They might even be signing these forms in Nursing Homes or Hospitals without a lawyer present to tell them exactly what rights they are giving up. (As a matter of fact every time you go to the hospital now they try to get you to sign an Advance Directive and Living Will.) When a patient realizes that they will not be hydrated it may be too late if they are determined to be mentally incapacitated as they cannot change the document. Not even their Health Care Agent can override what is in the Advanced Directive.

Please reject HB170 and give “choice” to our citizens and our community of people with disabilities and keep our Advance Directives from giving something other than the signer intended.

Pro-suicide advocacy in Globe and Mail

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith, published on his blog, March 2, 2013

Here we go again. A woman committed suicide and it is depicted in the press as a positive – "on her own terms.”

And note, she was not terminally ill, the usual excuse for supporting suicide. From the Globe and Mail story, “A Social Activist’s Ultimate Legacy: Advocating for the Right to Die:”

Ruth Goodman died the way she lived – on her own terms. She campaigned for social justice all her adult life: by training as a welder to earn the same wages as men in wartime shipyards, by speaking out for freedom of expression during the McCarthy era, by picketing napalm manufacturers in Seattle during the Vietnam War and by challenging the abortion laws in Canada after she and her husband moved north to Vancouver with their young sons to evade the voracious American military draft.

Why should life be prolonged for an aged social activist who believed the right to die was the ultimate human choice? That’s the question raised in the aftermath of Ms. Goodman’s death by her own hand and in her own bed on Feb. 2. “People are allowed to choose the right time to terminate their animals’ lives and to be with them and provide assistance and comfort, right to the end. Surely, the least we can do is allow people the same right to choose how and when to end their lives,” she wrote in a suicide note made public by her now middle-aged sons…

This impacts others, who may be on the edge of suicide and reading the story of suicide as a positive could push them over. That’s why the WHO urges media not to publish pro suicide stories – not that it probably even crossed the minds of the reporter and editors of the Globe and Mail.

That point aside, this is where we now are–thanks in large part to the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement and a complicit media that extols many suicides these days as a matter of social justice. Suicide is being transformed into a human right before our very eyes. But if it’s a “right” that meansfor anyone and any reason:

Death on demand. Reader take warning!

Media Release: EPC wants BC Court of Appeal to reverse errors in assisted suicide court case.

Media Release - March 3, 2013

EPC wants BC Court of Appeal to reverse errors in assisted suicide court case.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), an intervener in the assisted suicide case at the BC Court of Appeal, wants the BC Court of Appeal to reverse the errors in the Carter decision concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada.


Norman Kunc, a long-time disability rights activist will be speaking out against assisted suicide at Monday's courthouse demonstration.

Kunc has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. He would like to share his story and his perspective on behalf of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, and explain why 2012's Carter case will harm citizens with disabilities. About one in seven Canadians have a disability.

EPC-BC chair Dr. Will Johnston expressed his concern that legal assisted suicide is already being extended to those who are not terminally ill in jurisdictions where it is practiced. "People have lost months and years of life after being steered to suicide by its availability."

John Coppard (2012 photo)

Johnston also stated: "Elder abuse, is already difficult to detect, would be no easier to combat when a suicide offer is always dangling before a vulnerable older person. Giving legal immunity to those who would provide suicide does not make our loved ones safer."


EPC Executive Director, Alex Schadenberg, stated: “the Carter decision erred in several significant areas … the judge came to her decision by falsely assuming that there is a ‘right to suicide’ in Canada.”

Schadenberg further explained: “the Carter decision misinterpreted the data from other jurisdictions that have legalized assisted death when it suggested that there is no significant risk to vulnerable patient groups. A recent study found that 32% of all assisted deaths in Belgium were done without request. The same study revealed that incompetent people who are over the age of 80 are vulnerable to dying by an assisted death without request.”

EPC legal counsel Hugh Scher stated: “EPC is concerned about the safety, security and equality of people with disabilities and seniors, which is central to the protections set out under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our Criminal Code.”


For more information, contact:

Alex Schadenberg, EPC Executive Director: (519) 851-1434, info@epcc.ca
Dr. Will Johnston, EPC-BC Chair: (604) 220-2042, www.epcbc.ca
Hugh Scher, EPC Legal Counsel: (416) 816-6115, hugh@sdlaw.ca
Norm Kunc, disability activist: (604) 366-6263, ndkunc@gmail.com

Washington State Assisted Suicide Act negatively effects the care of patients.

Last year, my brother, Wes Olfert, died in Washington State where assisted-suicide is legal. When he was first admitted to the hospital, he made the mistake of asking for information about assisted-suicide. I say a mistake, because this set off a chain of events that interfered with his care and caused him unnecessary stress in what turned out to be the last months of his life.

By asking the question, he was given a "palliative care" consult by a doctor who heavily and continually pressured him to give up on treatment before he was ready to do so. It got so bad that Wes actually became fearful of this doctor and asked me and a friend to not leave him alone with her. Justified or not, Wes was afraid that the doctor would do something to him or have him sign something if she would find him alone. In fact, even though he was on heavy doses of narcotic pain medications and not in a clear state of mind to sign documents without someone to advocate for him, this palliative care MD actually did try to get him to sign a DNR or “Do Not Resuscitate” form without his Durable POA or any family member present. Fortunately, his close friend / POA arrived at that moment in time to stop this from happening. Some of the other doctors and staff members seemed to also write Wes off once they learned that he had asked about assisted-suicide.

I am writing to urge you to prevent assisted suicide in Montana.

Thank you so much

Marlene Deakins, RN
Sanders County, MT

Irish assisted suicide court case is based on flawed assumption

By Peter Saunders, Care Not Killing Campaign Director - March 1, 2013

Peter Saunders

Marie Fleming is a 59 year old former Irish lecturer who has multiple sclerosis and wants her partner to be able to help kill herself without risk of prosecution (See Irish Times and BBC Europe reports).

Her landmark case in Ireland is very similar to that of Debbie Purdy in Britain, who won a case in 2009 forcing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to make public the criteria he used in deciding to bring a prosecution for assisting suicide. These criteria were published in February 2010 and have been the subject of some controversy.

Fleming has thus far, however, had far less success than Purdy.

What makes the Fleming case particularly interesting is that her partner who wishes to avoid prosecution is none other than Tom Curran, the Coordinator for Exit International Europe (EIE), a pro-euthanasia lobby group (EIE is part of Exit International, which is headed by controversial Australian euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke). 

Fleming’s case is currently before seven judges at the Irish Supreme Court, and although the hearing of evidence is expected to conclude on Tuesday, the judgement may not come out for some time.

Suicide was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993, but Section 2.2 of the Criminal Law Suicide Act 1993 makes it an offence to ‘aid, abet, counsel or procure’ a suicide. Those convicted under this law still face a custodial sentence of up to 14 years.

The Irish Act is almost identical to the Suicide Act 1961 of England and Wales, with the exception that in the latter the words ‘aid, abet, counsel or procure’ were amended to ‘encourage or assist’ by the Coroners and Justice Act in 2009 in an attempt to make it easier to secure convictions in cases of internet suicide promotion where the guilty party did not personally know the victim.

In her case against Ireland, the Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Fleming claims section 2.2 of the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act, which renders it an offence to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another, is unconstitutional on grounds that it breaches her personal autonomy rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights (See more here) 

Fleming argues that the absolute ban should and must be relaxed to meet her particular circumstances as a terminally ill person in severe pain who is mentally competent to decide when and how she wants to end her life but cannot do so without assistance. She is claiming that the law discriminates against her as a disabled person who needs assistance to kill herself. 

A three judge High Court ruled last month the absolute ban does not disproportionately infringe Ms Fleming's personal rights under the Constitution and is wholly justified in the public interest to protect vulnerable people.

The High Court also ruled that the Director of Public Prosecutions has no power to issue guidelines setting out what factors she would consider in deciding whether to prosecute cases of assisted suicide. However, the court was however ‘sure’ the Director would adopt a humane and sensitive approach to Ms Fleming's plight, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said.

Ms Fleming is not appealing against that aspect of the court's decision. Her appeal focusses on arguments that the absolute ban on assisted suicide breaches her personal autonomy rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights and that, in her particular circumstances, this ban is not justified on public interest grounds but is disproportionate and discriminatory.

Fleming’s case rests on the flawed assumption that, since suicide itself is not illegal, there is thereby a right to suicide. It is on this basis that she claims that as a seriously disabled person she is being discriminated against for not being able to exercise that right, when able-bodied people can.

Dignity in Dying (the former British Voluntary Euthanasia Society) has used a similar line of argument.

However this is to misunderstand the basis and intention of the law.

When the British Parliament passed the Suicide Act in 1961 it was assured that the decriminalisation of suicide did not indicate any reduction of the seriousness with which either (a) suicide or (b) assisting suicide were viewed.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, moving the Suicide Bill's Third Reading, said:

'Because we have taken the view, as Parliament and the Government have taken, that the treatment of people who attempt to commit suicide should no longer be through the criminal courts, it in no way lessens, nor should it lessen, the respect for the sanctity of life which we all share. It must not be thought that because we are changing the method of treatment for those unfortunate people, we seek to depreciate the gravity of the action of anyone who tries to commit suicide…..' (Hansard: HC Deb 28 July 1961 vol 645: 1961(a): Cols 822-823)

He went on:

'I should like to state as solemnly as I can….that we wish to give no encouragement whatever to suicide…..I hope that nothing that I have said will give the impression that the act of self-murder, of self-destruction, is regarded at all lightly by the Home Office or the Government.' (Hansard:HC Deb 19 July 1961 vol 644: Cols 1425-1426)

Fleming and others wish to argue that in some cases suicide is not serious and is in fact a morally good course of action. That is a position that needs to be strongly resisted at all costs.

It is one thing to argue that people who attempt suicide should be treated with mercy and compassion by the courts. But it is quite another to argue that committing suicide, taking one’s own life, is a moral good and thereby a right.

That would be a very dangerous precedent indeed, which once established would be used as a legal lever for more and more incremental extension.

Euthanasia deaths increase by 25% in Belgium (2012).

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Recent studies concerning the Belgian euthanasia law found that: 32% of the assisted deaths are done without request and 47% of the assisted deaths go unreported in the Flanders region of Belgium. Another recent study found that even though nurses are prohibited from doing euthanasia, that in fact nurses are euthanizing their patients in Belgium. There has never been an attempted prosecution for abuses of the Belgian euthanasia law.

Confirming that euthanasia is out-of-control in Belgium the 2012 euthanasia statistics indicate that there was a 25% increase in the number of assisted deaths in Belgium. 

Recent government statistics indicate that the number of reported assisted deaths increased from 1133 in 2011 to 1432 in 2012, representing 2% of all deaths in Belgium. The number of reported assisted deaths in 2010 was 954. It is important to note that these statistics do not include the unreported assisted deaths.

The study that found that 32% of the assisted deaths are done without request, indicated that the people who died by euthanasia without request were usually: incompetent to make decisions, were, on average, over the age of 80, and living in a hospital. The same study indicated that these deaths represented: 

"a vulnerable patient group at risk of life ending without explicit request."

Further to that doctors who admit to not reporting assisted deaths usually do not follow the guidelines of the Belgian law. A recent study found that: 73.1 % of the reported assisted deaths followed the guidelines while only 12.3% of the unreported assisted deaths followed the euthanasia guidelines in the Belgian law.

The response by Belgian legislators to the abuses of the euthanasia law is to widen the definitions of the law to include children with disabilities and people with dementia. By widening the definitions in the law, fewer doctors will be abusing the law. It is also feared that the proposed changes to the euthanasia law may effect the freedom of conscience for health care workers in Belgium.

The proposed changes to the Belgium euthanasia law, combined with the lack of attempted prosecutions for abusing the Belgium euthanasia law, in conjunction with the massive increases in the number of euthanasia deaths, indicates that a slippery slope, also known as incremental extensions, has occurred in Belgium.

If you think that is bad enough, consider the fact that a woman with anorexia nervosa recently died by euthanasia, a man wrote that his depressed mother died by euthanasia, belgian twins who were born deaf were euthanized out of fear of blindness, and Belgium is experimenting with euthanasia/organ donation.

A recent 10 year report of the Belgian euthanasia law that was done by the European Institute of Bioethics found:

• A written declaration of a desire for euthanasia is required, either by the patient or a surrogate. However, the Commission often waives this obligation. 

• Initially patients had to have a life‐threatening and incurable illness. Nowadays, the illness need only be serious and debilitating. 

• The pain is supposed to be unbearable, unremitting and unrelievable. However, a patient can refuse medication to relieve the pain. The Commission, says the IEB, has ‘decided not to carry out its mission ‐ so central to the law ‐ of verifying the unbearable and unrelievable nature of the suffering’. 

• The ambit of ‘psychological suffering’ is ever-expanding. 

• Doctor-assisted suicide is not authorised by 2002 legislation. However, the Commission has ignored this and regularly signs off on such cases. 

• If a patient is to be euthanised at home, the doctor himself is supposed to fetch the lethal medications at a pharmacy from a registered pharmacist and to return left-over drugs. In practice, family members often get the drugs; unqualified personnel hand them over; and no checks have ever been made about surplus drugs.’ 

To learn more about the current practice and abuses of the Belgian and Netherlands euthanasia laws, by ordering the book, by Alex Schadenberg ($20 includes shipping): Exposing Vulnerable People to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. Exposing Vulnerable People will help you to oppose the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) hopes that Belgian legislators will open their eyes to the reality of their euthanasia experiment and reverse their direction. If not, we hope that the rest of the world will recognize how dangerous legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide is and how it threatens the lives of their citizens.

If you think Suicide in the Elderly is Courageous? Think Again!

By Jean Echlin

In February of this year, a national paper printed an extraordinary posthumous letter from a 91 year old woman who died by suicide because she was tired of living. She wanted to end her life with dignity. Though most of the (published) responses thought she was courageous, I disagree. I believe there is more to the issue when anyone contemplates suicide.

Ultimately suicide in the elderly is a failure. We must ask ourselves, is it because pain and suffering were not addressed? Did individuals thinking of suicide, and their families, not have access to help and support? Is it because of societal ambivalence about mental health issues or stigma about the elderly? Is it due to encouragement and even pressure by pro-suicide groups like Dying with Dignity? What is the future of this legacy?

Rory Butler

Rory Butler, founder of award winning agency Your Life Counts (www.yourlifecounts.org), and a suicide survivor himself, asks: 

“what message do the elderly convey to our youth if they advocate suicide? Adversity and physical discomfort are not the sole preserve of the elderly. So often I hear their family will ‘get over (their suicide)…’ but my experience has shown that families often struggle with this loss for the rest of their lives.” 

Rory notes that individuals in families who have lost a loved one to suicide are at a 30% increased risk of suicide.

Further Butler says: 

“instead we should give our youth the message that adversity, pain and struggle are part of the life cycle…that’s what it means to be human…so persevere, press on, don’t give up!  Yet we hear some grandparents say it’s okay to give up. Ultimately suicide is the triumph of pain, fear and loss over hope.”

World renowned Dr. Antoon Leenaars (Windsor, ON), preeminent psychologist on suicide says: 

“it is a myth to think that courage motivates suicide. Genuine courage is to change what we can. Underlying suicidal feelings of the elderly are hopelessness, discouragement, illness but always and especially despair. They see no alternatives. They see their lives as meaningless. They think ‘I might as well be dead.’”

He notes 

“it takes a community to help individuals find meaning when they feel they have no meaning. Their pain is immense. We must find a way to give them hope. Medication, therapy, hospice, family, community – all can help.”

Tim Wall, executive director, Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention (CASP) in the report Not to be Forgotten: Care of Vulnerable Canadians, from the Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care stated:

“What is especially tragic is that suicide can be prevented with compassion and access to appropriate services 

In fact most people who are suffering and at risk for suicide can recover and experience a meaningful and hopeful life.”

Aging brings challenges. These may include loss of independence, chronic discomfort/ pain, even chronic illness. Do these problems mean our lives are no longer of value?

As someone advanced in years living with chronic pain, and who has been with hundreds of people at the end of their lives, I know that aging is a daily struggle with its own share of joy and hope. I believe advancing in years does not diminish the value of our contributions.

   

Jean Echlin, RN, MSN

Nurse Consultant-Palliative Care & Gerontology

Jean Echlin was the founding Vice President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

For more information link to: Ruth Goodman died by suicide, not assisted suicide.

Amour and Fear: Assisted Suicide at the Oscars

By Amy E. Hasbrouck

Once again, a film about “euthanasia” has won an Oscar. Back in the ‘70s the tear-jerker movies were about people dying of cancer. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was people dying of AIDS. For the 21st century, the new chic is euthanasia/assisted suicide/”mercy killing” movies.  Million Dollar Baby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The English Patient, The Sea Inside, Un Dimanche à Kigali, Le Temps qui Reste, The Barbarian Invasion (Les Invasions Barbares), Magnus – all have taken on euthanasia/assisted suicide/”mercy killing” from the point of view of non-disabled white people and come to the same conclusion; great idea!

Now we have the film Amour, directed by Michael Haneke, whose leading actors took the Palm d’Or at Cannes in 2012. The story concerns Anna and George, an elderly couple, former music teachers who live in a nice apartment in Paris. After a series of strokes, Anna is partially paralyzed and her memory begins to fail. The couple withdraws, refusing contact and the help of friends, relatives and neighbours, while George cares for Anna as her mental and physical abilities decline. In the end he suffocates her.

Given the film industry’s adoration of movies that end with a man “lovingly” killing a spouse, it was no surprise when Amour was awarded an Oscar for Best Foreign Picture.

In the real world, many studies have shown that in cases of “assisted suicide”/euthanasia/ ”mercy killing in elderly couples, the woman is generally an unwilling victim, and there is often a history of domestic violence. This fact is rarely reflected in the superficial media coverage in the immediate aftermath of such gruesome crimes. By the time the truth of the matter has been uncovered, the media spotlight has moved on, and the public is left with the same false impression; “he did it for love.”

There has been almost no discussion in the francophone media of the disability and human rights problems with the narrative of Amour, and little in the Anglophone press either. No critics questioned the film’s seemingly inevitable ending, or George’s motives for killing his wife. Not surprising, but disappointing anyway.

It’s troubling that films like this come out so often, but fail to educate the public about the real issues in assisted suicide and euthanasia. In the case of Clint Eastwood’s film, his consistent and vocal opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act suggests a possible motive for killing off his disabled protagonist. For other writers and filmmakers, the examination of the issue generally arises more from fear of disability, unresolved grief, or other feelings common to non-disabled people.

Like other media portrayals, these films usually show people with disability either as sad, tragic and incapable victims, or as inspirational over-achievers, but never as ordinary human beings. Nor do the filmmakers focus on their struggles against the external barriers and discrimination that limit their life options, focusing instead on the physical changes that are natural to the human experience.

The message is clear; the lives of those of us with disabilities are not worth living. We are better off dead, and the sooner the better. These attitudes only perpetuate fear of and discrimination against disabled people, and the more often this lie is spoken, the deeper entrenched the fear becomes. Through that discrimination, the lie becomes the truth, and pressure grows to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia for old, ill and disabled people.

Amy E. Hasbrouck is the director of Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet, a project of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities that unites people with disabilities who oppose assisted suicide, euthanasia and other discriminatory end-of-life practices.

Compassionate Care: Better Option Than Assisted Suicide.

The following article was written by Linda Campanella and published as an OP-ED in the Hartford Courant on January 18, 2013 under the title: Compassionate Care Better Option Than Suicide. I re-discovered this article while I was cleaning up my emails and I thought that this article is excellent.

Compassionate Care Better Option Than Suicide

Linda Campanella, OP ED Hartford Courant - January 18, 2013

A bill before the Connecticut General Assembly would legalize physician-assisted suicide. The legislature's debate about dying patients' rights should focus instead, or at least in addition, on their right to receive compassionate care. Assuming the underlying goal is to reduce the suffering of terminally ill people, then promoting quality-of-life care rather than passing right-to-die legislation is a better strategy. The number of people who stand to benefit is exponentially larger.

My terminally ill mother received compassionate care that made the unbearable bearable — for her and for the family that already was grieving her loss. For three months, a hospice team surrounded us with love and comfort.

Even in her final weeks, my dying mother woke up every morning looking forward to the living still to do. She fell asleep every night feeling grateful. She died with dignity and without pain — physical or emotional. Her caregivers understood that suffering is not just a physical phenomenon caused by symptoms of disease and pain; suffering is also caused by the existential distress people feel when experiencing anxiety, fear, loss of hope, loss of control.

The medications provided by our hospice nurse, in close consultation with Mom's primary care doctor, took care of the physical pain. The greater gift, however, was the relief my mother received from her emotional suffering — relief from the guilt she felt over having become, she believed, a burden to her family; relief from the fear she experienced when she imagined being without her family in whatever state or place she would be in after death; relief from the sadness and anxiety that gripped her when she realized she would not be here to take care of her beloved husband of 52 years.

When she died, she and those she left behind were at peace. We all were grateful. None of us had regrets.

Hospice provided compassionate, competent care for my mother's whole person — her body, her mind, her soul — and for her whole family. Too few people understand what hospice is, and too many believe it is something it isn't. Sometimes people — both physicians and families — wait too long to bring in hospice. A family that waits until a loved one is on the verge of his or her last breath is missing out on a wonderful experience. I never could have imagined just how wonderful, and might still struggle to believe it possible at all, had I not experienced the gift of hospice firsthand.

We need to talk more about death and dying. The topic should not be so taboo. We need to raise awareness about quality-of-life medicine, for body and soul, as an essential element of end-of-life care. Doctors should not think of death as a failure. When healing and cures are not possible, we need not consider the situation "hopeless." Rather, we should redefine and redirect hope in the way hospice defines and nurtures it — hope that remaining days will be lived with as much joy and dignity, and as little physical or emotional pain, as possible.

My mother, who received her terminal diagnosis on Sept. 8, 2008, and died a year and a day later, wanted to live, love and laugh until she took her last breath. So her four children and husband did everything we could to help her live fully and joyfully (and she did, till the end), and then we gave her what a close friend of mine termed a good death. Hospice helped her, and helped us, achieve what we hoped for.

This was, one might say, assisted dying as opposed to assisted suicide.

So as assisted suicide starts grabbing headlines and our attention, can we also celebrate hospice and draw attention to the compassionate, quality-of-life care that is already and readily available for the dying? Can we shine the light on the inspiring people and organizations advocating for a sharper focus on the "care" in health care and trying to establish palliative care as an academic discipline in medical schools, as a medical subspecialty for practicing physicians and as an option available in most, if not all, our nation's hospitals?

Linda Campanella of West Hartford is author of "When All That's Left of Me Is Love: A Daughter's Story of Letting Go." More information is at: http://www.lindacampanella.tateauthor.com.

American Medical Association position on Physician-Assisted Suicide

Opinion 2.211 - Physician-Assisted Suicide

Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act (eg, the physician provides sleeping pills and information about the lethal dose, while aware that the patient may commit suicide).

It is understandable, though tragic, that some patients in extreme duress--such as those suffering from a terminal, painful, debilitating illness--may come to decide that death is preferable to life. However, allowing physicians to participate in assisted suicide would cause more harm than good. Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.

Instead of participating in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life. Patients should not be abandoned once it is determined that cure is impossible. Multidisciplinary interventions should be sought including specialty consultation, hospice care, pastoral support, family counseling, and other modalities. Patients near the end of life must continue to receive emotional support, comfort care, adequate pain control, respect for patient autonomy, and good communication. (I, IV)

Issued June 1994 based on the reports "Decisions Near the End of Life," adopted June 1991, and "Physician-Assisted Suicide," adopted December 1993 (JAMA. 1992; 267: 2229-33); Updated June 1996.

105 year old woman keeps on driving.

Edythe Kirchmaier

I was cleaning up my emails when I noticed this fascinating article about Edythe Kirchmaier, who is 105 and who recently passed her drivers test. Kirchmaier is the oldest person with a drivers license in California. This article was written by Eric Pfeiffer and published on Yahoo News on January 28, 2013 under the title: 105-year-old woman renews drivers license.

My work with the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is constantly being challenged by philosophical points of view, such as: "Tired of Living" or other attitudes that disrespect elderly people within society. I advocate for the promotion of what people can do, rather than what they cannot do. Good for you Edythe. 

105-year-old woman renews drivers license 

Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo News - January 28, 2013 

There apparently isn’t much that can slow down Edythe Kirchmaier. The 105-year-old California resident made headlines on Monday when she passed her driving test – continuing 86 years without a blemish on her driving record and maintaining her status as the state's oldest living driver. 

"I just couldn't imagine myself without a car," Kirchmaier told FoxNews.com. "It just didn't feel very good." 

And that’s far from the only bit of notoriety to crop up recently in Kirchmaier’s life. Facebook has declared her its most senior user, she's the University of Chicago's oldest living former student, last week she appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show to celebrate her birthday and she has been a volunteer with the Direct Relief International (DRI) organization for 40 years. 

To honor Kirchmaier, who says she wants to use her age milestone to help inspire volunteer efforts around the world, DRI set up a Facebook app where her fans can light a virtual candle to help celebrate her 105th birthday. The page includes a short video narrated by "Glee" actress Jane Lynch and has been making the rounds on social media circles, referenced by celebrities and other notable individuals, including Victoria Justice, Ricki Martin journalist Nick Kristof and the musical band Depeche Mode. 

Kirchmaier reportedly drives herself to DRI each week, where she leads a team of volunteers. 

"I think I’m a pretty good driver," Kirchmaier told Fox. "I feel safe about getting my driver's license renewed because I’ve never had an accident."