Dutch court approves family assisted suicide.

This article was originally published on May 13 by Wesley Smith on his blog.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Any media story about Dutch euthanasia is generally accompanied by the blithe and false assurance of medicalized killing being governed by “strict guidelines.” What a joke, given that death doctors kill disabled babies in their cribs, the elderly “tired of life” and the mentally ill, along with the dying and disabled. 

One of the guidelines that has actually been enforced is the requirement that doctors do the deed and be present for the homicide/suicide.  

But euthanasia activists always want more. In recent years, there has been political agitation to allow families to help kill their relatives. And now a court has apparently okeyed the practice. From the New York Times story: 

A Dutch appeals court has cleared a man of any criminal responsibility for helping his 99 ­year ­old mother take her own life — a case that aimed to create precedents for assisting suicide in a country where euthanasia already is legal under certain circumstances.  

Judges in Arnhem said Albert Heringa should not be prosecuted for helping his mother die in 2008. They said Wednesday he had to make a decision between obeying the law against assisting suicide and his “unwritten moral duty” to help his mother achieve her wish for “a painless, peaceful and dignified death.” 

Oh, and here’s the mandatory baloney media assurance about strict guidelines: 

While euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands for years if carried out under strict conditions by a physician, assisted suicide by a friend or relative of the person who wants to die remains illegal.  

Media malpractice aside, this is precisely how doctor-administered death started in the Netherlands–with a court ruling allowing a doctor to disobey the law. 

As I always say: The culture of death is never satiated, it never says “enough.”

Landmark Bill to Stop Forced Dehydration Passes Texas House, Heads to Senate

By Dr Jacqueline Harvey

The Texas House of Representatives has passed House Bill 3074, which is groundbreaking legislation that would end the forced withdrawal of feeding tubes by medical facilities. HB 3074 by Representative Drew Springer proudly endorsed by Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) will stop involuntary euthanasia by dehydration and is expected to be taken up quickly by the Senate early next week. Once signed into law, HB 3074 will be the first successful reform to the Texas Advanced Directives Act since 2003.

HB 3074 was passed on second reading in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday, May 14 in under three minutes by a simple voice vote due to overwhelming support from legislators. Representative Springer’s bill boasts four joint authors and 80 co-authors - well over half of the 150 House representatives. But moreover, HB 3074 is the first end-of-life bill in 12 years that has garnered universal agreement among patient advocates, disability rights, prolife and religious organizations.

While these groups take different approaches to reforming broader aspects of Texas end-of-life law and have filed bills on those issues since 2003, Representative Springer found common ground in that all groups wish to protect patients from forced starvation and dehydration and could therefore support a bill like HB 3074 that accomplishes that singular but vital goal. In an inspiring gesture of statesmanship, Representative Patricia Harless chose to delay consideration of her end-of-life bill, House Bill 2351 (which was supported by many groups) until after HB 3074 (which was supported by all). This sacrifice ultimately cost HB 2351 the opportunity to a floor hearing and vote to allowed HB 3074 to pass just before the deadline.

The EPC wishes to congratulate and thank Representative Springer and Representative Harless, State Affairs Committee Chairman Byron Cook for their leadership and success passing HB 3074 to the Senate. Congratulations and thanks as well as the Texas Catholic Conference, Texas Alliance for Life and Texans for Life for leading the advocacy effort. EPC pledges its continued support. 

Dr. Jacqueline C. Harvey (Ph.D.) is a former faculty member at the University of North Texas, as well as the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Harvey, in conjunction with the EPC - International, has authored definitive works on the Texas Advance Directive Act.

Final Exit Network found guilty in Minnesota assisted suicide case.

By Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Members of the Final Exit Network (FEN) were found guilty of assisting the suicide death and interfering with the death scene in the death Doreen Dunn (57) in 2007. Dunn was living with chronic depression but she was not not terminally ill.

The jury returned with a guilty verdict after a 90 minute deliberation.

Sentencing is scheduled for August 24. FEN has stated that it will appeal the convictions.

According to an article in the LaCrosse Tribune:

Dakota County prosecutor Elizabeth Swank told jurors that the evidence showed that two members of Final Exit Network went to Dunn's home in Apple Valley to assist her suicide. They then removed the equipment that she used for suicide so that it appeared she had died of natural causes. 

Dunn's husband of 29 years arrived home on May 30, 2007, to find her dead on the couch. Swank said Dunn had a blanket pulled up to her neck with her hands folded on her chest.

Swank said that despite Dunn's pain and depression, she had no life-threatening illness and her family was puzzled by her death. There were good things happening in her life: Her daughter who had been in Africa for about a year was coming home the next day and her son's fiancee was scheduled to give birth that week. However, her husband was also planning to move out, the prosecutor said.

Robert Rivas, the lawyer for the assisted suicide group, did not dispute that Jerry Dincin and Larry Egbert were present at Dunn's death, but he disputes that they assisted her suicide.

The Final Exit Network has been prosecuted in several assisted suicide cases. In Georgia, John Celmer, who was depressed after recovering from cancer, died by suicide with the assistance of the Final Exit Network. Celmer's widow Susan Celmer, testified against the Final Exit Network. The Final Exit Network assists the suicide of people at the most vulnerable time of their life. Last year Larry Egbert, the medical director for the Final Exit Network, lost his medical license in Maryland.

In October 2014, William Melchert-Dinkel, of Minnesota, was convicted in the assisted suicide deaths of Canadian teenager, Nadia Kajouji, and and Mark Drybrough, from England.

• Assisted suicide group on trial for assisting depressed Minnesota woman's suicide.
• Former Minnesota nurse is going to jail in the assisted suicide death of Canadian teen.
• Who are the Final Exit Network.
• America's Dr Death loses his medical license.
• The Final Exit Network and its leaders are indicted in Minnesota.

Assisted suicide group on trial for assisting depressed Minnesota woman's suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Two members of the Final Exit Network were prosecuted and faced a trial for allegedly assisting the suicide death of Doreen Dunn. Dunn lived with chronic pain and depression.

According to the LaCrosse Tribune:

Dakota County prosecutor Elizabeth Swank told jurors in her opening statement that evidence will show two members of Final Exit Network went to Dunn's home in Apple Valley, helped her commit suicide, then removed equipment she used to inhale helium to asphyxiate herself so that it appeared she had died of natural causes. 

Dunn's husband of 29 years arrived home on May 30, 2007, to find her dead on the couch. Swank said Dunn had a blanket pulled up to her neck with her hands folded on her chest. 

Swank said despite Dunn's pain and depression, she had no life-threatening illness and her family was puzzled by her death. There were good things happening in her life: Her daughter who had been in Africa for about a year was coming home the next day and her son's fiancee was scheduled to give birth that week. However, her husband was also planning to move out, the prosecutor said.

Robert Rivas, the lawyer for the assisted suicide group, did not dispute that Jerry Dincin and Larry Egbert were present at Dunn's death, but he disputes that they assisted her suicide. The LaCrosse Tribune stated that:

To convict the group, the state must prove Dunn took her life with its help, either through Final Exit Network's speech or actions. Authorities didn't determine Dunn killed herself until a Georgia investigation linked the group to her death years later.

The Final Exit Network has been prosecuted in several controversial assisted suicide cases. In Georgia, John Celmer, who was very depressed after recovering from cancer, died by assisted suicide with the assistance of the Final Exit Network. Celmer's widow Susan Celmer, testified against the Final Exit Network. The Final Exit Network assists the suicide of people at the most vulnerable time of their life. Last year Larry Egbert, the medical director for the Final Exit Network, lost his medical license in Maryland.

• Who are the Final Exit Network.
• America's Dr Death loses his medical license.
• The Final Exit Network and its leaders are indicted in Minnesota.

Peter Singer: Don’t Care for Disabled Babies.

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on May 11.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Peter Singer is a bigot. Rather than believing in universal human equality, he would invidiously measure the capacities of human beings to determine whether they are “persons.”

Those with insufficient capacities, are to be deemed human “non-persons,” are to be viewed of lesser moral value, and hence, potentially subject to both killing and objectification for harvesting, medical experimentation, etc.

He also supports health care rationing based on quality of life. This blatant medical discrimination would victimize babies born with severe disabilities–whose care, Singer argues, should not be paid by national health insurance schemes.

The National Council on Disability is not amused. From its press release:

On Sunday April 16, contentious Princeton Professor Peter Singer, once again argued that it is “reasonable” for the government or private insurance companies to deny treatment to infants with disabilities. Singer’s remarks were made on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” which is broadcast on New York’s AM 970 and Philadelphia 990 AM. 

In the interview, which was perhaps ironically conducted as part of a press tour Singer is currently on promoting his new book about charities, “The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically,” the professor advocated the shocking claim that health care laws like the Affordable Care Act should be more overt about rationing and that we should acknowledge the necessity of “intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants.” 

“Mr. Charity” then makes an uncharitable utilitarian assertion:

Without offering any concrete measure on how quality of life could or should be determined, Singer admitted, “I don’t want my health insurance premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments.” 

The NDC makes a point about Singer that is also lost to the media slavishly pushing assisted suicide/euthanasia, which also threatens the lives and bodily integrity of people with disabilities:

Increasingly, negative predictions of quality of life have little to do with the actual life experiences of people with disabilities. People with disabilities commonly report more satisfaction with their lives than others might expect. Though it might surprise Singer and those with limited imaginations, even people with disabilities who encounter obstacles, prejudice, and discrimination, derive satisfaction and pleasure from their lives.

California Assisted Suicide Bill SB 128 Placed on Senate Suspense File

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact: Californians Against Assisted Suicide - 916.475.4900

Australia: Another story, another push for euthanasia.

This article was originally published on the HOPE Australia website.

Paul Russell

By Paul Russell, the Director of HOPE Australia

Yesterday the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers ramped up its editorial support for euthanasia laws by publishing yet another story about a person with a difficult diagnosis who wants the ‘option’ of killing himself. Predictably they also editorialised on the same issue at a time when every other newspaper is covering such pressing matters as the national budget, dealing with the threat of terrorism, social disadvantage etc.

This new story feature’s Victoria’s own ‘doctor death’, Dr Rodney Syme, vice president of the Victorian pro-euthanasia lobby, and records in words, images and video Syme handing the person a bottle identified as containing Nembutal. Syme has admitted providing Nembutal to others. In 2014, he admitted, in the same newspaper, that he gave Steve Guest Nembutal in the weeks before Guest killed himself in 2005. Syme was effectively goading the Victorian Police into action; the article reporting his thoughts as follows:

“Dr Syme, 78, said after watching state Parliaments reject 16 euthanasia bills over the past 20 years he was ready to "out" himself and be charged over Mr Guest's death because a court case could set a useful legal precedent for doctors who are too scared to help terminally ill people end their own lives.”

According to reports, the police did investigate; but the issue went quiet and no charges have apparently been brought in that regard. This is hardly surprising at one level. Nine years after the event what proof would there be to confirm what, after all, was essentially media grandstanding by Syme.

This current situation is different. The Age article quotes from Syme as he hands over the Nembutal and the event is also recorded in still images and video:

“He hands the bottle over. "That's medication for you – some Nembutal," he says. "You need to take that by mouth, and you will have total control of that. It's not my intention that you take it. I hope you don't need to take it. But if you run into a brick wall, then that is what I sometimes call the key to the fire escape."

And

"If you take it," says Dr Syme, "you will go to sleep relatively quickly and peacefully, and you will not wake up."

Delivery, prescription, advice; it’s all there – and in front of witnesses.

Again, it seems that Syme is keen to push the envelope; to goad the police into action. Time will tell whether or not he gets his wish.

So what’s the take-away message from all of this? Syme and The Age clearly want us to think of Syme as some sort of modern day martyr for a cause. The gentleman concerned and his medical issues are simply a vehicle for that; a tug at the emotions. We’ve seen it all before.

The assisted suicide political con game.

This article was published on Wesley Smith's blog on May 9, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Once a society accepts killing as an answer to human suffering, the caste of killables never stops expanding. Thus, in the Netherlands and Belgium, doctors not only euthanize the terminally ill, but also the elderly “tired of life,” the disabled, and the mentally ill.

American advocates respond to these facts on the ground–not a slippery slope argument–by arguing that we are different in the USA. After all, they note, those things are not happening in Oregon. 

To which I always append the word, “yet.” 

You see, the American euthanasia movement is running a well thought out political con game.

Compassion and Choices and other assisted suicide advocacy groups are involved in the great majority of Oregon assisted suicides. Since the Oregon oversight system relies almost wholly on doctor self-reporting, we only see what they want us to see. And one thing they don’t want us to see–or to be put into law for now–is an expansion of killable categories. That would give away the game.

But, as the old saying goes, loose lips sink ships. One assisted suicide advocate almost blew this cover in an interview about an unsuccessful Oregon proposal to expand eligibility for legal assisted suicide in Oregon to Alzheimer’s patients. Note why an advocate opposed the proposal. From the Oregonian story:

The national Death with Dignity advocacy group joined the opposition. Steve Telfer, president of the board of the Portland-based Death with Dignity National Center, which helped create the original law, said politicians in Oregon shouldn’t try to expand the law because that effort could jeopardize attempts to introduce physician-assisted suicide to other states. 

In other words, these suicide advocates don’t oppose expanding the law beyond the current limitations for principled reasons. Rather, restraint is a political tactic, a necessary temporary expedient deemed necessary to gain the trust of a very wary public.

It is still right to oppose euthanasia.

Ian Dowbiggin

This article was published by the Prince Arthur Herald on May 7, 2015.

By Professor Ian Dowbiggin

I applaud the Prince Arthur Herald for publishing Stuart Chambers’s attack on me and all others who oppose the legalization of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) or mercy-killing. The PAH’s commitment to open debate is admirable and should serve as a beacon to other media outlets in a day and age when it is more important than ever to speak clearly and concretely about the circumstances surrounding end-of-life care in today’s society.

Too often, the debate has been dominated by heart-rending, human-interest stories in the mainstream media about people in pain. What has been missing is plain talk and clear language.

I should know. I have spent the last fifteen years studying and publishing on the history of the euthanasia movement. That history includes the story of now-defunct organizations which paved the way for today’s Compassion and Choices, the leading North American group in favor of permitting assisted suicide. So Chambers’s attack on me is something I’m used to.

He is right about one thing: Based on my empirical studies, I have occasionally warned that, if our courts and other interest groups get their way, Canada will soon embrace the belief that some lives are not as valuable as others. Put another way: that some lives are more worthy of death than others.

One thing I have learned is that, historically speaking, the most vocal advocates of assisted suicide and other forms of euthanasia would not be happy until they could get society to accept the killing of people with a wide range of disabilities, with or without their consent.

Jack Kevorkian was not alone in saying this. He was only more candid.

Now that the Canadian Supreme Court has struck down the Criminal Code ban on assisted suicide, I think most thoughtful people would agree that, regardless of their moral preferences, we have taken a big step in a fateful direction.

But not Chambers, a sociology professor at the University of Ottawa. To him, the practice of PAS is yesterday’s news. The mercy-killing of infants through lethal injection, and the hastening of deaths in other circumstances, is the new frontier.

Thus, it is all the more curious why he dismisses my “slippery slope” argument. In fact, he concedes that “it is reasonable to assume” that decriminalizing PAS will lead to the euthanasia of “terminally ill minors and incompetent patients.” That “causal premise,” he admits, “is potentially valid.”

As for the “normative” side of the slippery slope theory, he insists that “the horror stories professed by Dowbiggin” aren’t horror stories at all because they are now part of “standard medical practice.” He solemnly quotes Supreme Court Justice Lynn Smith who wrote that, in Chambers’s own words, “mercy-killing” was “not a breach of medical protocol or an erosion of fundamental values.” As a community, we have moved on from “absolute moral distinctions” (as if that was what the debate about end-of-life care were all about). Presumably nothing about death and dying is off the table as we go forward.

Brother was pressured to assisted suicide in Washington state.

This article was published by Californians Against Assisted Suicide.

A few years ago, 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 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. Other doctors and staff members also lost interest in helping him once they learned that he had asked about assisted suicide.

With legal assisted suicide, by brother's choice was not enhanced; he was instead written off and pressured to die. Assisted suicide should not be legal.

Marlene Deakins, RN Tuscon Arizona

The Life-Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care will protect you.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I received a phone call this morning from a woman who is the legal power of attorney for personal care for her Aunt, who is living with medical conditions. 

The woman called seeking advice after a doctor placed a DNR order on her Aunt, without consulting her, and the hospital is refusing to provide oxygen assistance. The niece, who is Power of Attorney, stated that a doctor claims that her Aunt, who is currently incompetent, agreed to have treatment withdrawn, even though her Aunt clearly stated in the past that she wanted treatment.

Whether or not a DNR order is applicable in this circumstance, this story exposes the importance of having a Power of Attorney document that will protect you.

EPC sells the Life Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care for $10 + taxes. Order the Life Protecting Power of Attorney at: 1-877-439-3348 or info@epcc.ca

The Life Protecting Power of Attorney ensures that your power of attorney will have the power to uphold values, it protects you from euthanasia and assisted suicide and it defines the treatment decisions that you would want and how those decisions are to be made.

The Life Protecting Power of Attorney also gives you the piece of mind that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will help you if your expressed wishes are ignored or if a hospital or doctor decides to impose decisions upon you.

EPC also works with Compassionate Community Care (CCC) to offer practical advice and support when you or a loved one is faced with difficult medical care decisions, or if you are concerned that a friend or a loved one is being denied basic care or has died by euthanasia.

Contact CCC at: 1-855-675-8749.

Scottish assisted suicide bill must be rejected by Parliament.

This article was published by Dr Peter Saunders on his blog.

By Dr Peter Saunders

A report by MSPs criticising the proposed assisted suicide Bill before Holyrood has been welcomed by campaigners opposing the legislation. 

The Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill, introduced by Green Party MSP Patrick Harvie, is due to have its first stage debate in the Scottish Parliament by the end of May.

On a raft of crucial matters the committee has revealed the Bill to be lacking and deeply flawed.

And while stopping short of recommending MSPs to throw out the Bill they have made their view clear that the majority of the Health and Sport Committee, which has been scrutinising the Bill, oppose it.

Dr Gordon Macdonald

Dr Gordon Macdonald of Care Not Killing  said,

‘This report confirms what we have said along. The Bill is poorly thought out, ill-conceived, badly-drafted and effectively not fit for purpose. We are delighted that the committee agrees with us that the Bill contains significant flaws which are likely to prevent it from being enacted. It is gratifying to note a majority of the committee is against the Bill although they have not made a formal recommendation to the Parliament to reject the Bill.’

Catherine Garrod

Catherine Garrod, Edinburgh Disability Rights Campaigner speaking on behalf of Not Dead Yet, another campaign group opposing the Bill, said: 

‘Disabled people oppose assisted suicide because it gives the message that our lives are not worth living. Disabled people want assistance to live, investment in health and social care, good palliative care, support for independent living and the right to equality not assisted suicide.’

Care Not Killing is strongly opposed to legalising assisted suicide and firmly believes life should be protected and palliative care prioritised. It represents more than 40 professional groups, faith groups, human rights groups, medical professionals, palliative care specialists and legal experts who are convinced it would be dangerous and unnecessary to decriminalise the existing law on homicide.

Dr Macdonald said. 

‘We do not want the state-sanctioned killing of old, ill and disabled people of all impairment. 

‘We want support for people to live - not to die. In recent weeks as the Bill has been scrutinised we have witnessed repeated and sustained criticism  from a variety of sources and for a range of reasons because it is so badly drafted - leading experts in medicine and palliative care, senior lawyers and experienced ethicists who all express serious and genuine concerns. And more than 15,000 members of the public have signed our petition. 

‘We have always maintained that assisted suicide is unnecessary, unethical and uncontrollable. This is compounded by the fact that this is a weakly thought-out and poorly-written Bill. The numbers of people who have criticised whole parts of it, quite aside from any moral or ethical objections, highlight the problems with the legislation.’

The Bill calls for the creation of  ‘licensed facilitators’ - aged as young as 16 - who would assist individuals end their life and would remain close by until such times and even film the scene as the individual dies or decides not to proceed with the assisted suicide.

In effect, the Scottish Government is being asked to fund and train licensed killers to preside over the suicide deaths of teenagers as young as 16.

Euthanasia 'off the table' in Victorian Australia Parliament - for now

Paul Russell

This article was originally published on the HOPE Australia website.

By Paul Russell - The Director of HOPE Australia

The Upper House of the Victorian Parliament debated a government motion introduced today in respect of end-of-life issues. This follows a lapsing of a debate yesterday by Colleen Hartland MLC to refer the matter of euthanasia to the Victorian Law Reform Committee and another pending motion by Fiona Patten MLC along similar lines.

The government motion, by contrast, is for a broad look at all end-of-life issues and does not even mention euthanasia. It passed today by a significant majority.

Not withstanding debate about whether or not the reference is to the appropriate committee (many MLCs preferred a committee of both chambers rather than simply the upper house), there was broad support for the principle behind the motion for a thorough review.

It has been many years since an inquiry of this nature - not relating to a specific euthanasia bill, but looking at associated issues generally - has been considered by any Australian Parliament. As the President of the chamber and other MLCs noted in contribution, this will be a very large inquiry requiring significant resources. The report date of the 31st of May 2016 would seem to be quite ambitious.

So, what are we to think about this motion? There is a degree of cynicism that would suggest that the government is perhaps wanting to be rid of a controversial issue from the chamber so as to get on with other matters. I make no judgement on that but simply observe that, even in that respect, the dismissal of the constant uncertainty about the various other motions and potential for euthanasia legislation at any time has now been put aside until mid-2016 at the earliest.

But more than that, such a broad reference enables a full consideration of end-of-life issues and how real dignity and choice is enabled by quality care available to all; not just an option to be made dead by euthanasia for an elitist few.

This is a great opportunity to promote good care instead of killing. We have always said that the longer and more detailed the inquiry, the better chance that the voices of reason prevail.

The motion:

That pursuant to Sessional Order 6 this House requires the Legal and Social Issues Committee to inquire into, consider and report, no later than 31 May 2016, on the need for laws in Victoria to allow citizens to make informed decisions regarding their own end of life choices and, in particular, the Committee should — 

(1) assess the practices currently being utilised within the medical community to assist a person to exercise their preferences for the way they want to manage their end of life, including the role of palliative care; 

(2) review the current framework of legislation, proposed legislation and other relevant reports and materials in other Australian states and territories and overseas jurisdictions; and 

(3) consider what type of legislative change may be required, including an examination of any federal laws that may impact such legislation

We will advise readers when the committee calls for submissions.

South African Health Minister determined to stop assisted suicide

This article was published on the HOPE Australia website on May 4, 2015.

Paul Russell

By Paul Russell - Director of Hope Australia

In welcome news today from South Africa's News 24, the Health Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, signalled an appeal to a recent court ruling that allowed for Assisted Suicide in the African nation.

The recent court ruling on an appeal by Pretorian Lawyer, Robin Stransham-Ford, that he be allowed to die by assisted suicide or euthanasia effectively struck a broad blow to the protection of human persons in South Africa because, contrary to the assertions of the judge, his decision was not limited to the person in question. Effectively, Judge Fabricius legislated from the bench.

Aaron Motsoaledi

In the article, Motsoaledi presented a cogent defence of the opposition to both assisted suicide and euthanasia:

“This judgment has the potential to give rise to fraud and unethical behaviour among doctors,” Motsoaledi said. 

“Very soon we will start hearing stories of families colluding with doctors to end the life of their loved ones because they wanted to cash in on insurance policies. Some people may even start planning their deaths because they know that their policies are maturing. 

“We can’t have that situation in South Africa because it would be difficult to police and deal with. To prevent it, we must stop it before it goes any further,” he said.

The article said that, 'So determined is the health minister to stop the decriminalisation of assisted suicide that he is prepared to go to the Constitutional Court to fight the ruling passed in favour of Advocate Robin Stransham-Ford, who wanted to be helped to die.'

It went on: 

Let’s have a big conversation on assisted suicide in Ireland – open, honest and balanced.

By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick - Director of EPC - International and HOPE Ireland.

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick

Brendan O’Connor has thought about Bernadette Forde’s death more deeply than most. (Ireland’s Sunday Independent May 3 2015), though his conclusions are still wrong.

Forde was failed, miserably. But not by the lack of a euthanasia/ assisted suicide law. That is still the wrong answer to the right questions.

For a ‘big conversation’ about the complex subject of euthanasia/assisted suicide to work, it must be open, honest and balanced at all turns, not just in rare articles by more intelligent journalists - who still go badly wrong.

O’Connor chose to reinforce the dreadful idea that ‘this, or any disabled life is not worth living’. The vast majority of people with multiple sclerosis do not commit suicide or even want to (never mind the rest of us disabled people). It is not just because Forde was battling multiple sclerosis that she fell into despair, enough to want to commit suicide. By all reports, she had no real nursing care let alone very good palliative care; and she was isolated from her family apart from one niece.

Disabled people are a minority amongst those who come to suicide. Tragically, it is mostly younger, non-disabled men who find themselves in what is surely the loneliest place on the planet. But when we can we try to help them, prevent the ultimate act of despair.

So again and again, why is our reaction to disabled people so different from when an otherwise ‘healthy’ person says ‘I am going to commit suicide’? The insidious notion that obviously a disabled life is not worth living is so, so dangerous and damaging. It is actually rank disability discrimination. And it is the other side of the terrible coin of treating disabled people as ‘useless mouths’. Look what cashing that coin led to in Germany. nd that is where the ‘big’ conversation needs to be honest.

Bernadette Forde deserved better. But the better she deserved was absent.

The rest of us, disabled people especially, also deserve better, but the easy acceptance that our disabled lives are not worth living is not it. Nor is the easy jump to the false notion that the only, right answer to suffering is to end the life of the sufferer, and to give all those involved legal immunity.

We all wish for the ‘velvet cushion death’ O’Connor describes - but we must not romanticise it. Not every relative gathered at every bedside is there out of pure love. Not everyone gets to have a home death – in our time, not even many do.

Dr Ira Byock

The ‘dying role’ is extremely important. I commend O’Connor for having read Ira Byock; would that more journalists took his lead. But our rituals are not merely some shallow attempt to comfort ourselves. The shallow idea is that we are more sophisticated in our time. That is the mistake Frazer famously made in the Golden Bough. Beware the ‘god’ of science. We do not become better people by developing more science. These rituals reflect something that can be described as the ‘majesty’ of death, its role in our lives. Today, we too often treat death as though it were like stepping off a bus. In a Kleenex generation everything is disposable.

To his credit, O’Connor speaks about some of these ‘higher-level’ concerns: how dying in our own clothes, at home, and done well, can be a profound and intimate death, for the loving living, maybe even for the person dying. That is where the majesty of death can lie.

Forde committed suicide. That she was left in such a state, where she came to believe suicide was her only option, is terrible. That is ‘our’ failure. Not that she should have committed suicide in a foreign death clinic at ten grand a pop, or that a law, endangering so many others to death should be absent.

New York Bill S4794 Promotes Involuntary Euthanasia by Dehydration

By Dr Jacqueline C. Harvey

Dr Jacqueline Harvey

While the battle rages over assisted suicide, many forget that in 1990, the United States Supreme Court allowed involuntary euthanasia by dehydration and starvation. First, by declaring artificially-administered food and water (ANH) as a form of “life support” and then, granting third parties the ability to remove ANH (feeding tubes) from persons with disabilities, it became effectively legal to deny a human being food and water against their will in the United States. While the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) International’s efforts in the U.S. to reform this issue at the state-level are proceeding with encouraging momentum (Texas House Bill 3074, passed unanimously out of committee up for a floor vote in coming days), Senator Kemp Hannon in New York has launched an effort to make it easier to remove a feeding tube against the patient’s will and cause a death by dehydration. It appears that the euthanasia lobby, who want to kill by dehydration and starvation, are marching forward.

In spite of the Nancy Cruzan case, which granted authority to third-parties to remove food and water, ANH is pervasively considered such ordinary care that states have explicitly written into their law strict safeguards against unilateral removal. The Cruzan standard was that, in the absence of a written advance directive, the healthcare decision maker can remove life support, including food and water if they present “clear and convincing evidence” that this was the will of the patient. This was used to kill Nancy by dehydration over 12 days. In New York, Senator Hannon is attempting to flout this standard by striking the section of the law that demands an agent be aware of the patient’s desire to die by starvation and dehydration before condemning them to die that long, lingering death. Senate Bill 4794 would grant an agent decision-making authority to dehydrate a patient even when the patient’s wishes are not known and cannot be determined:

Section 3. Subdivision 2 of section 2982 of the public health law, as amended by chapter 230 of the laws of 2004, is amended to read as follows: 

2. Decision making standard. After consultation with a licensed physician, registered nurse, licensed psychologist, licensed master social worker, the agent shall make health care decisions: (a) in accordance with the principal's wishes, including the principal's religious and moral beliefs; or (b) if the principal's wishes are not reasonably known and cannot with reasonable diligence be ascertained, in accordance with the principal's best interests; provided, however, that if the principal's wishes regarding the administration of artificial nutrition and hydration are not reasonably known and cannot  with reasonable diligence be ascertained, the agent shall not have the authority to make decisions regarding these measures.

S4794 would amend the law to clarify that oral feeding is not applicable, a surprising addition. EPC has been involved with legal efforts to ensure patients with dementia are given food and water by mouth when family members object and perhaps see the person as better off dead. But it is important to note that an inability to swallow is an arbitrary standard. Several scenarios can inhibit a patient’s ability to swallow. Anyone requiring only a feeding tube is not brain dead, but often brain injured, like this man whose wife was encouraged to discontinue his feeding tube, but awakened from his coma and is recovering from his brain injury day-by-day. Even fully-conscious people may require tube feeding. In Britain, for example, a man named Leslie Burke with cerebral ataxia petitioned the court to prevent the removal of feeding tube after he lost the ability to request it, fearing an agonizing death that in another famous tragic case, Terri Schindler Schiavo, died after 13 days.

While conscious people and Mr. Burke could make their wishes known, those who do not explicitly declare their wish not to be denied food and water could be legally denied food and water. Instead of erring on the side of life, S4794 grants full life-and-death decision making capability into the hands of someone who may not know what the patient would want nor have any way to determine that information.

If S4794 passes, New York will usher in dehydration by default and all people will be at risk. Please contact Senator Kemp and declare your opposition to S4794 at: hannon@nysenate.gov

Level-headed assisted suicide debate based on real evidence, not misplaced emotion.

By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick - Director of EPC - International and HOPE Ireland.

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick

Emer O’Kelly writes emotionally in the Irish Sunday Independent about Marie Fleming.

Marie was my friend and colleague in Swansea University for several years. At times we ‘colluded’ – the Northern Irish Two against the world – in the nicest and fun way of course.

I had already been disabled for twenty years when we met. My catastrophic change to wheelchair user came in an instant, collateral damage in a war I had no hand in. We did not know Marie was to become a wheelchair user herself, through progressive multiple sclerosis.

I joined Not Dead Yet UK, a loose coalition of disabled people, at the request of its founder Baroness Jane Campbell, friend, fellow Disability Rights Commissioner, and herself a lifelong disabled activist. I had visited the idea of suicide myself seriously, so I was unsure how I felt about euthanasia/assisted suicide. I began researching. When I uncovered for myself what exactly is going on where the act of taking another’s life is legal, I was horrified.

I have since appeared in front of many highly emotionally-charged audiences, extremely hostile to my opposition to legalisation. I am not usually afforded the courtesy of time to explain my position, constantly shouted down by angry people, including supposedly impartial journalists.

What most audiences, and what Emer O’Kelly fails to understand is that opposition to legalising euthanasia/assisted suicide is not about some cruel desire to stand in Tom or Marie’s way.

Disabled people reflect the views of the people around them, just as much as a studio audience, for example. So it is understandable that some disabled people think they should be allowed to die by euthanasia or to have someone else assist them to commit suicide. I can respect this and understand their fears of a painful death or of not wishing to be a burden on others. But I can still oppose such legislation for reasons of its terrible consequences.

Euthanasia/assisted suicide is an act that affects not just the individuals involved. The threats and awful consequences arrive once any third party is legally allowed to enter into the end-of-life decisions of another human being, whether spouse or close family member, doctor or carer or total stranger. Why is reaction to disabled people saying I want to die so different from when a healthy person says ‘I am going to commit suicide’?

Incompetent woman euthanized in the Netherlands.

This article was written Jeanne Smits and published by LifeSiteNews on April 30, 2015 

An 80 year-old woman in the Netherlands was euthanized last week after her family obtained a court order obliging the care facility for the elderly where she was living to let her leave in order to fulfill her “death wish.” The woman was incapable of expressing her will. She was legally killed one day after having left the Clinic “Ter Reede” in Flushing. The management, medical staff, and the woman’s general practitioner were all opposed to the euthanasia.

The case marks a milestone in the slippery slope of legal euthanasia in the Netherlands. For the first time, a court has overridden a doctor’s decision not to euthanize a patient because of his or her mental incapacitation, ordering measures to be taken for euthanasia to take place anyway. The “End of Life Clinic” took over at the family’s request to perform the act – whether in her former home or in that of her relatives is not clear. It was also involved in the euthanasia request itself.

Little is known about the woman’s condition. She was not staying in a hospital, but in one of the establishments of “WVO” (Werkt voor Ouderen : “works for the elderly”). The Clinic “Ter Reede” caters for the demented, offering them individual studios, a supermarket, a library, a café, a hairdresser’s, and even a shop selling old-fashioned Dutch sweets, as well as catering, help with domestic chores and entertainment.

Some sources say the woman was very ill. But the nature of her illness has not been revealed: it seems safe to assume that she was at least suffering from some form of dementia. Campaigns led by the “Right to die” association in Holland, NVVE, encourage elderly people in the Netherlands to make their wishes known beforehand in the event of losing their mental capacity, especially in the case of their becoming demented. The fear of losing the ability to recognize family members or of being placed in a specialized center are among the reasons given by the elderly who leave advance directives in view of euthanasia.

Most doctors in the Netherlands refuse to act on advance directives when patients have lost their ability to express their own will.

In this woman’s case, an emergency proceeding was initiated by her family in Middelburg, near Vlissingen in the south-west, once the clinic “Ter Reede” had refused to let her be euthanized there or anywhere else. The clinic’s management and the association WVO argued that the woman’s personal doctor as well as the house psychologist had found her incapable of expressing her will, and asked for an independent enquiry to be made into the woman’s condition. The judge refused, and ordered the clinic to hand her over to her family.

The clinic appealed the decision. But on learning that the woman was to be killed within a very short time, “Ter Reede” and WVO initiated a second emergency procedure in Utrecht in order to issue a stay of execution of the first court order until the affair would come before the appeals court in May, arguing that an “emergency situation” had arisen.

Judge Sap in Utrecht decided against their request on April 21. The woman was removed from the clinic and her euthanasia took place the next day.

The judge told the clinic’s representative: “It’s not a question of incapacity. You do not want to accept the decision. You are putting yourselves in this situation on your own. I’m going out from the principle that you are going to respect this woman’s wishes. It’s the last thing you can do for her.”

In her case, two judges were prepared to follow the opinion of the End of Life Clinic, over and above that of her doctor and a number of other medical staff and helpers who saw her every day and were familiar with her daily life.

The End of Life Clinic, which specializes in counseling patients and “helping” them when their own doctors are unwilling to perform euthanasia for conscientious or other reasons, carried out its own enquiry into the victim’s condition. It commissioned a doctor to examine her, and then by a “SCEN” doctor (a member of an official network of counseling doctors who help family doctors form an opinion on euthanasia requests and give them advice on performing euthanasia), and finally by a psychiatrist. All three decided she was able to express her will, at least as far as euthanasia was concerned.

The Clinic “Ter Reede,” on the other hand, took her general cognitive abilities into account, relying on the findings of the woman’s personal doctor, the house psychologist, and all members of the establishment’s personnel. The judge in Utrecht was not satisfied, deciding they did not have the “specialized knowledge” that is necessary in order to assess euthanasia requests. The End of Life Clinic explained that one hour’s targeted conversation with a patient is more revealing than months or even years of a personal care relationship. Its director, Steven Pleiter, argues that you can enjoy having chocolate with whipped cream, singing in a choral group and even make jokes, and still have a death wish.

And so the End of Life Clinic won the day against professional caregivers who explained that they were acting on behalf of the woman because they wanted to protect a vulnerable old lady. It must be added that the Clinic Ter Reede is not opposed to euthanasia in principle or for conscientious reasons.

In this watershed case, the End of Life Clinic that openly campaigns for euthanasia and is more and more involved in performing the act was deemed more competent to assess a euthanasia request than personal caregivers.

Critics fear this case feels dangerously like a step towards the recognition of a sort of independent authority who would take life and death decisions for the mentally incapacitated.