Diné Hataałii Association: Reject dangerous discriminatory assisted suicide bills

This guest column was published by the Navajo Times on March 15, 2021

The Diné Hataałii Association released the following statement on Monday, which outlines opposition to current legislation being considered that would attempt to legalize assisted suicide in the state of New Mexico.

As Diné (Navajo), we have a distinct culture and language, and time-honored norms, values, and philosophy of life that pre-dates colonial, western ways of being.

As such, the Diné Hataałii Association is firmly opposed to H.B. 47/S.B. 308, legislation to legalize assisted suicide in New Mexico, as a dangerous measure that will have adverse impact on our Diné (Navajo) people.

DHA exists to protect, preserve, and promote the Diné cultural wisdom, spiritual practice, and ceremonial knowledge for present and future generations.

DHA is certified and incorporated under the auspices of the Navajo Nation Division of Economic Development.

Continuing as the original medicine people since time immemorial, the DHA members offer public health support through ceremonial interventions, herbal therapies, storytelling, and sharing of cultural knowledge.

Diné Be’ezéé’ Ííł’íní Yee Da’ahótą’ígíí, the Diné Hataałii Association are in reality, the first responders and undeniably essential, frontline public health workers who have always assisted the Navajo Nation.

The role and responsibilities of the DHA and its members is to maintain the overall health and wellness of our people and the Nation.

DHA also provides cultural consultation and technical assistance to local and state authorities and other entities on health and safety related matters, which could not be more important to our people in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic.

HB 47/SB 308 create an untenable situation in which assisted suicide will be allowed and runs counter to our belief that every life is sacred and must be treated as such.

To disregard one’s life also runs counter to who we are as healers and directly violates the Navajo Nation Fundamental Laws and, therefore, is an act of utmost disregard and exclusion of how we view life. Life is meant to be lived, not extinguished heedlessly.

Further, HB 47/SB 308 protect medical providers who support and prescribe assisted suicide by giving them the ability to coerce the patient, pick up the lethal drugs and give them to the patient without his/her consent.

No medical professionals are required to be present at the time of death so the patient’s heir or caregiver can administer the drugs without fear of being caught.

This careless legislation, by HB 47/SB 308 will only instigate abuse of our elders – who are sacred – will likely promote more serious conflicts on life and death issues in New Mexico.

There is no requirement for prescribing physicians to ensure sound psychological/psychiatric capacity through psychological/psychiatric evaluation of patients who are depressed, experiencing a mental health diagnosis and contemplating assisted suicide.

The suicide rate among our Diné people is over 2.5 times the national average. How do we hope to curb this suicide tragedy among our people if we support legislation that provides immunity for physicians who engage in prescribed suicide?

For all of these reasons and, especially, to protect our community and elders, we urge New Mexico senators and the governor to reject this dangerous and discriminatory public policy.

The diversity of the residents of New Mexico is reflected by the unique health and life needs of all our residents. Therefore, all laws entertained by New Mexico must adhere to the uniqueness and differences inclusive of Native American beliefs, including the Diné cultural healing beliefs, healing philosophies and interventions as well as the culturally relevant teachings/stories.

It is our sovereign authority as Diné people to institute our own health solutions that meet our unique needs, and to support our culturally relevant methods and tools for healing and restoration toward Hózhó.

The Diné Hataałii Association is comprised of leaders and caretakers of Diné traditional cultural wisdom, ceremony, and herbal healing knowledge. We represent the original health care system of the Diné.

We are invoked with a special purpose in this world to ensure that the Navajo Nation continues its journey towards restoring health, Hózhó (happiness, well-being, harmony, balance) and the utmost protection of Iiná (life).

We will continue working towards this end as we have always done.

Letter to Indigenous Senators: Bill C-7 will hurt our communities.

Graydon Nicholas

Senators Daniel Christmas, Brian Francis and Lovelace Nicholas:

Bill C-7 is currently in its final stages before the Senate. MAiD will be allowed for Canadians who are not dying but who suffer from physical illness and will soon include mental illness as sole criteria for choosing death.

This will adversely impact our indigenous populations in Canada, and I am concerned that indigenous consultation did not transpire and has been trivial thus far. Imposing MAiD on our communities, which is not coherent with our beliefs about life and death, is a form of cultural colonialism. We have lived through forced sterilization and residential schooling, and do not want other practices imposed on our people. We are already experiencing a suicide epidemic and we do not need the government to help even more of our people to end their lives. If the government goes through with Bill C-7, it will inflict a new generational trauma on our communities.

Our indigenous people experience severe health inequalities compared to non-indigenous persons in many areas including chronic illness, disabilities and mental illness. This is compounded by limited access to health services. Our life expectancy is 10-15 years lower than the national average and this is caused mainly by our burden of mental illness and suicide completion. Our people also endure poverty, food insecurity, and high rates of unemployment - social determinants that negatively impact all health outcomes.

I am also alarmed given the impact of Bill C-7 on our efforts to combat the indigenous suicide crisis. Our consistent message to our community is that healing, hope and resiliance are possible, and suicide is not an option.

Bill C-7 will threaten the lives of our people. It is unacceptable that such a bill is about to be passed. I am asking for your help that some requirement or clarification that persons with untreated mental illness, who are not dying, be excluded from eligibility for MAiD if they have not received the standard of care treatment.

Sincerly
Graydon Nicholas
Wolastoqiyik Nation

Graydon Nicholas served as the appointed 30th Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick (2009-2014). He was the first Aboriginal person to hold the office of Lieutenant Governor, the first to be appointed as a provincial court judge (in 1991), and the first in Atlantic Canada to obtain a law degree.

Don’t Follow Canada… Don’t kill your disabled and depressed citizens

Dr Paul Saba

Dr Paul Saba is co-founder of Physicians for Social Justice and is the author of a book entitled “Made to Live.” 

Dr. Saba states: 

"There is no justification to kill people simply because they are faced with mental or physical health care challenges." 

Montreal, March 11th, 2020: Canada voted in Parliament to adopt a law that extends assisted suicide and euthanasia to over six million depressed and disabled Canadians; a number that represents 16% of the country's population.

Dr. Paul Saba is a healthcare advocate and family physician practicing in Montreal (Quebec). Since the euthanasia law was adopted in 2016, over 20,000 Canadians have been killed under this law. The euthanasia law was initially conceived to eliminate the terminally ill with only a few months to live. However, it is now being extended to those without any life-threatening illness and who may have years to live.

In his recently released book, Made to Live, Dr. Saba provides many examples of families, friends, and patients whose lives would have been lost had they accepted their physicians’ wrong diagnoses or prognoses and chose to be euthanized. Today those people are happy to be alive.

Based on his experiences in Canada, he argues that no country should open the door to assisted suicide and euthanasia.

"Government officials and lobbyists promote the false idea that people will suffer if they are not killed. We are not in the Dark Ages. Modern medicine can care for people and alleviate psychological and physical suffering. There is no excuse to kill people even if they ask to be killed. This goes not only against medical ethics but also against humanity."

The World Medical Association, with over 11 million physicians in over 110 countries, is firmly opposed to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. https://www.wma.net/

We must proactively care for all people regardless of age, health condition, disability, and socioeconomic status, during normal times, pandemics and flu outbreaks, catastrophes, revolutions, and wars. We must provide all the necessary resources to save lives. We must stop promoting rapid death for people with disabilities, whether physical or mental - because every life is valuable and because we humans are made to live.

Dr. Paul Saba is currently a family physician who practices in Montreal and has worked in critical care and emergency medicine. He is co-founder of Physicians for Social Justice and is the author of a book entitled “Made to Live.”

Order the book - Made to Live from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (Link). 

Netherlands group opposes termination of life for children (euthanasia).

Press release - March 12, 2021

The network ‘Bescherm het Kinderleven’ (Protect Children’s Lives) is making a plea against the Proposal by the Dutch government for active termination of life for children age 1 to 12

On the 13th October 2020 the then minister of Health, Wellbeing and Sport, Hugo de Jonge (CDA) announced coming with regulations for active termination of life for seriously ill children ages 1-12. As a reaction on this announcement, a collective of citizens with diverse backgrounds an affiliations have join forces to initiate the network ‘Bescherm het Kinderleven’ (BHK). BHK denounces the plan to allow for regulated termination of life for children. In the coming days the network is launching a social media campaign in which they wil elaborate on the dangers associated with this plan.

Invest in good palliation
The network BHK calls on authorities to invest in better palliative care. Research has shown that inadequacies persist especially in palliation for minors. These express in the realms of communication, organization, decision making, attention for family and child and symptom relief. A deficit amongst physicians in specific knowledge of child palliation has also been indicated. 1 2 

BHK is convicted that the Dutch government makes a mistake in regulating for the termination of lives of children while palliation has yet to be optimized. This way we risk removing the incentive to improve palliation. 

“We should rather work at limiting suffering within the parameters of life” says Henk Reitsema, spokesperson for BHK.

Vulnerable and incapable of informed consent
The network would like to emphasise the vulnerable position that children have. Informed consent without external influence is very unlikely with children given their dependence on adult caregivers and limited ability to weigh medical decision making. While it is heart-breaking when a child suffers, every child deserves the best possible protection from the law irrespective of their condition. Active termination of life does not fit in with this. Terminating the life of a child that is impressionable, cannot defend itself and is incapable to express its will is problematic on all scores. Soon decisions will be being made about their lives but not by them. They should stay optimally protected in this.

Incremental extension
BHK has good reason to argue the dangers of incremental extension. The Dutch experience so far with the regulation and legalisation of euthanasia has shown that there is an ever increasing number of categories that qualify once the step has been taken. The journey from initially legalising for physical pain and then incrementally including dementia, psychological pain, psychiatric conditions, existential pain and the so called piling of complaints related to aging, has shown how rapidly this develops. We now even have the proposal for a law that would allow those 75 and older to opt for euthanasia even when physical and psychiatric suffering are not at issue.

A similar development took place with the Groningen protocol which allows for infanticide. While initially allowing for the termination of life age 0-1 on the basis of unbearable physical suffering, now potential future suffering can be included in this evaluation.

The BHK is concerned that the newly proposed regulation, will once again lead to new grey areas arising. The spokesperson for BHK, Henk Reitsema asks: 

“For who will termination of life be deemed appropriate in 2050?”

Website: beschermkinderleven.nl

1 Brouwer M, van der Heide A, Hein I, Maeckelberghe E, Verhagen E, van de Wetering V. Medische beslissingen rond het levenseinde van kinderen (1-12). Groningen, Rotterdam, Amsterdam: UMCG, Erasmus MC, AMC in opdracht van het ministerie van VWS, afdeling Ethiek, namens de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Kindergeneeskunde; 2019.
2 Rapportage patient journeys kinderpalliatieve zorg. Jb Lorenz, Kenniscentrum kinderpalliatieve zorg, PAL kinderpalliatieve expertise: 2018

Disability community worried about assisted dying expansion.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In his article published by the Epoch Times on March 10, 2021, Lee Harding interviews several disability rights activists to examine why the disability community opposes the expansion of euthanasia by Bill C-7.

Taylor Hyatt

Taylor Hyatt, a young woman with cerebral palsy tells Harding about a personal experience:

She recalls an occasion where acute breathing problems brought her to a hospital emergency room in Ottawa. When a doctor asked her if she wanted oxygen, she replied, “Of course I do.” The doctor then asked, “Are you sure?”

“I was floored,” Hyatt told The Epoch Times. “It was a real eye-opener for me about the way people trust doctors to be a guide to maybe frightening situations.”

Hyatt expressed her concern that the health care system is offering death as the preferred option for people with disabilities.

“If this bill goes through, and it probably will, I am thinking that I don’t want to be in the hospital alone ever again. Who knows what kind of judgments will be made? And unfortunately, what disabled people have to say about the value of their own minds and the support they need instead of the facilitation of their death—all of that is being pushed aside,”

Jonathan Marchand

Harding explains that during the Bill C-7 debate in Parliament and the Senate that several people with disabilities stated that they were pressured to ask for death.

Jonathan Marchand, who has muscular dystrophy, testified that “several doctors pressured me to adopt euthanasia, ‘comfort care’ as they called it,” after severe pneumonia put him in intensive care. “I never asked for this. I spent the next few weeks thinking and crying my eyes out. My life is really over? The thought had never crossed my mind.”

Disability leader, Gabrielle Peters, told Harding:

“Decades of dire warnings about how old and disabled people are going to burden our health care and society has been matched by marketing MAiD as a heroic, brave, self-sacrificing, and honourable death. You would be shocked at the number of times I have been called selfish by health-care professionals for wanting health care.”

Harding explains that there have been at least 15 media accounts of people being pressured to die by euthanasia. Roger Foley of London Ontario launched a lawsuit after being offered assisted death rather than assisted home care.

Senator Don Plett

Harding interviewed Senator Don Plett, who attempted to amend Bill C-7 to make it illegal for a physician to introduce the topic of assisted death with patients. Plett stated:

“I just think it is a sad, sad reflection on our society when we do not offer people the help that they need. … We should spend our time making living with dignity a higher priority than having dying with dignity the priority.”

Harding reports on how Senator Plett responded when the Senate passed the amendment allowing euthanasia for mental illness.

Plett called it a “brutal” amendment to “horrible legislation.”

“I believe that making mental illness as a sole reason for asking for assisted suicide is just, it’s just absolutely going way too far,”

Alex Schadenberg

Harding then interviewes Alex Schadenberg (myself) about the euthanasia for mental illness amendment to Bill C-7. I stated that in the Netherlands and Belgium euthanasia for mental illness requires one year of treatment whereas Bill C-7 would allow euthanasia for mental illness in 90 days without requiring treatment.

“In that one year, you must try all effective known treatments, Canada’s Bill C-7 does not require that you at least try effective treatments, so if you’re not terminally ill you can die within 90 days if you’ve been approved.”

I then explain to Harding how the Bill C-7 uses undefined terms which enables a wider use of the law. I said:

Bill C-7 says that if someone’s death is “reasonably foreseeable,” he or she can request MAiD and receive it the same day, whereas such a request would require a 90-day wait in other circumstances. Schadenberg says the bill leaves itself vulnerable to legal challenges to further expand euthanasia because the phrase “reasonably foreseeable” has never been defined, and some conditions require a wait while others don’t.

Except for its exclusion of minors, C-7 is the most liberal euthanasia legislation in the world, he said.

I told Harding about the many calls that EPC receives from family members who are distraught by the euthanasia death of a family member.

“It leaves a lot of people behind who have great, great pain related to the fact that a family member whom they dearly loved died in a way that they thought was absolutely wrong,”

“They’re not happy about it, but they’re also emotionally distraught by the situation, and they don’t want their stories told.”

Very few journalists have dug into the issues as Lee Harding has done. Thank you.

Irish "Dying with Dignity" Bill legalizes euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Irish Dying with Dignity Bill (Bill 24 of 2020) bill is an example of how imprecise language enables a wider interpretation of a law. Bill 24 uses imprecise language making it appear to legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill people, but in fact the bill also legalizes euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill.

Euthanasia is when one person (usually a physician) directly and intentionally causes the death of another person, usually by lethal injection. Euthanasia is a form of homicide. Assisted suicide is when one person (usually a physician) provides the means (usually by prescription) to another person to assist them in their suicide.

The bill appears to limit the act to terminally ill people, but the definition of terminal illness is imprecise. Bill 24 defines a terminally ill person in this way:

has been diagnosed by a registered medical practitioner as having an incurable and progressive illness which cannot be reversed by treatment, and the person is likely to die as a result of that illness or complications relating thereto (“a terminal illness”)

There are many people with an incurable and progressive illness which cannot be reversed by treatment, such as many people with disabilities, but they are not terminally ill. 

The bill permits both euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Under the heading "Assistance in dying" the bill permits death by lethal prescription, ingested orally or administered by the attending medical practitioner.

When an act is administered by the attending medical practitioner, the act becomes euthanasia. Adminstration is usually done by lethal injection.

There are many problems with the Irish "Dying with Dignity" bill but the primary problem is that it gives medical practitioners the right in law to kill their patients. No amount of safeguards can ever protect people from a medical practitioner who is convinced that a person is better off dead, when the law allows them to kill.

The push for assisted suicide means more suicide.

The Suicide Contagion is real.

This video story was produced by the Patients Rights Action Fund (Link).

I knocked on the door but I didn't hear anything so I opened up the door and she was on the floor beside the bed. So I screamed, I went down to her, I was looking, all I saw was, she was so blue, blue, it was horrifying. Like I still can't get the images out of my head.

My daughter Shawn Alexandra Shatto died on May 22, 2019. She was 25 years old. She died by suicide with the help of a website that assisted her and encouraged her.

There is like a menu and it gives you the list of how you want to die and you choose your method. They provided her with the recipe, the method and instructions.

Shawn was a very sweet, funny, unique, lovable girl. We were just two peas in a pod. She was always smiling, always laughing, always making people laugh.

Talking about assisted suicide is very dangerous, especially when you have the younger kids on there and the vulnerable that feel lost and are in pain.

I believe that when she went on that website, and saw the way that they were talking about ending their lives, you know saying well you know its OK to kill yourself over a terminal illness, she probably thought well ya, I'm in pain and I'm dealing with this, why can't I die like that too?

Her phone was on her bed. The last thing she ever said to anyone on this earth was "I'm fing terrified."

Suicide contagion is real. Tell your legislators to say NO on assisted suicide laws.

Euthanasia activists want to force caregivers to starve dementia patients to death

This article was published by National Review online on March 6, 2021

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

As I have warned here before, euthanasia activists are pushing for laws that permit people to write advance directives ordering themselves starved to death if they become mentally incapacitated. That effort is apparently gaining steam.

The assisted suicide supporting organization Final Exit Network published a poll that supposedly found only 15 percent of respondents would oppose. Here’s how the question was worded as quoted in the pro-euthanasia crusading bioethicist Thaddeus Mason Pope’s blog:

Some people also propose that individuals with early stage dementia, who are still competent, should be able to stipulate for their future incompetent selves, that they want food and drink withdrawn and for doctors to keep them comfortable so they can die peacefully.

Notice the passive language. If I threw you in a room and locked the door until you starved and dehydrated to death, would you consider that dying “peacefully?” Would you consider it “peaceful” if a doctor drugged you so deeply that you could not ask for food?

But Wesley, you may say, that’s what they want!

No! It’s what they may have wanted in the past out of understandable fear. But we are talking about starving people who willingly eat and drink. We are saying that people can become incompetent to ask for the basics of life. We are pondering a circumstance in which vulnerable patients may ask for food only to have it refused because of something they may have written years previously. (That awfulness happened at least once in a feeding tube case.)

And these are people who may not be suffering or whose symptoms can be palliated effectively. In a sense, we are making dementia patients slaves to the thoughts and fears of their younger selves.

We are also talking about forcing caregivers to starve their patients to death at risk of lawsuits for “wrongful life” or other legal sanction.

Moreover, advance directives are supposed to be about accepting or refusing medical treatment. Oral sustenance is not medical treatment, but humane care akin to keeping warm or turning to prevent bed sores. I mean, if someone directed that they be left without a blanket in front of an open window so they die of hypothermia–which can be a ‘peaceful’ death–would we ever say that should be done? Of course not!

There are some things that no one should have the right to force others to do. Killing them — by whatever means — is one of them.

Pope says these advance directives are legal in several states. He is very knowledgeable about these issues — he really keeps track — but I know of only one where the permission is somewhat explicit: Nevada. If I find out otherwise, I will add an update to this post.

Editor’s note. Wesley’s columns appear at National Review Online and are reposted with his permission.

Assisted suicide lobby spreads falsehoods to promote systemic ableism

The following article was published by CT Mirror on March 8, 2021.

By Stephen Mendelsohn
Research Analyst / Social Media Coordinator for Second Thoughts Connecticut.

Proponents of assisted suicide repeatedly spread falsehoods to promote their lethal and ableist agenda. The February 8 op-ed, “Aid in dying is not assisted suicide” is no exception.

Suicide is defined as the act of taking one’s life intentionally. The person who intentionally ingests a prescribed lethal overdose more closely fits the dictionary definition of suicide than the despondent person who jumps off a bridge. The desire for suicide is a cry for help, even when redefined as a “medical treatment option.”

The Connecticut State Suicide Prevention Plan 2025 posits a clear intersection between assisted suicide and other suicide. Connecticut has the only state suicide prevention plan that includes disabled people as a high-risk population. To quote the relevant section (pp. 57-58):

Discussions about assisted suicide for those with terminal illness intersect in important ways with suicide prevention. The active disability community in Connecticut has been vocal on the need for suicide prevention services for people with disabilities… [William] Peace writes that “Many assume that disability is a fate worse than death. So we admire people with a disability who want to die, and we shake our collective heads in confusion when they want to live.”

Connecticut’s suicide prevention plan makes a number of important recommendations, including “Do not assume suicide is a ‘rational’ response to disability or chronic illness.”

In addition to attempting to redefine suicide, the assisted suicide lobby promotes other falsehoods.

Proponents claim assisted suicide is only available to people who will soon die. Yet not only do many people far outlive “terminal” prognoses, including those who have received lethal prescriptions, but many disabled people are perceived as “terminally ill” by medical professionals. Laws allow treatable medical conditions like diabetes to qualify as “terminal diseases,” and proponents have long sought to expand suicide assistance to those with non-terminal disabilities.

They claim that their legislation is only for people in “deep and dire pain,” yet nothing in HB 6425 requires those seeking lethal overdoses to be in pain. Pain or the fear of it has never been in the top five reasons people give for seeking assisted suicide, according to Oregon’s annual reports. The overwhelming reasons people ask for assisted suicide involve not wanting to live the way disabled people do.

Proponents claim that there have been no abuses in states that have legalized assisted suicide, when the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund has documented a list of abuses and complications, including cases of prolonged and agonizing deaths. Moreover, as the Oregon Department of Health and Human Services stated: “We are not given the resources to investigate [assisted suicide cases] and not only do we not have the resources to do it, but we do not have any legal authority to insert ourselves.” The only reason more abuses have not been documented is that assisted suicide laws are designed to conceal them.

Advocates claim to be about patient choice, yet there have been instances when insurance companies would pay for assisted suicide but not curative care. A Connecticut state senator and leading assisted suicide proponent authored an op-ed proposing a separate bill that would “require the completion of advanced directives in order to sign up for Medicare, Medicaid or private health insurance.” He spoke of his proposal as a way of getting people to forgo curative care, thereby reducing healthcare costs.

Finally, proponents demand legislation that mandates the falsification of death certificates. HB 6425 requires the underlying terminal illness be listed as the cause of death. If Connecticut follows the lead of Oregon and Washington, this will forbid any mention of the lethal overdose. Connecticut’s Division of Criminal Justice has twice submitted testimony in opposition to death certificate falsification, stating:

Section 9(b) effectively mandates the falsification of death certificates under certain circumstances. It states: “The person signing the qualified patient’s death certificate shall list the underlying terminal illness as the cause of death.” This is simply not the case; the actual cause of death would be the medication taken by or given to the patient… The practical problem for the criminal justice system and the courts will be confronting a potential Murder prosecution where the cause of death is not accurately reported on the death certificate.

Legislators and the public should not be fooled by a privileged lobby that seeks to sell suicide as a solution to their own disability-phobia. We should follow the recommendations of the National Council on Disability’s report, The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws, and reject codifying lethal and systemic disability discrimination into law.

Stephen Mendelsohn is a Research Analyst / Social Media Coordinator for Second Thoughts Connecticut.

Previous articles by Stephen Mendelsohn (Link).