New Mexico doctors launch court case for conscience rights

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A New Mexico doctor has launched a court case to protect the conscience rights of physicians who oppose assisted suicide. New Mexico legalized assisted suicide in 2021 by passing of Bill HB 47 with the law caming into effect on June 18, 2021. The New Mexico assisted suicide law forces doctors who oppose assisted suicide to be complicit in the act.

The conscience right case was launched by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of Dr Mark Lacy and the Christian Medical Dental Society on December 13, 2022.

The legal complaint states:

The Act purports to protect physicians who object to assisted suicide for reasons of conscience, saying they will not be required to “participate.” But that promise rings hollow. The Act does not define the word “participate,” requires conscientious objectors to facilitate suicide in material ways, and expressly prohibits professional associations like CMDA from taking action to ensure that their members advance—rather than undermine—their mission and message.

The Act compels objecting physicians to speak and inform terminally ill patients about the availability of assisted suicide. N.M. STAT. ANN. § 24-7C-6.

The Act forces objecting physicians to refer their patients to physicians or organizations who are “able and willing to carry out” the patient’s assisted suicide. N.M. STAT. ANN. § 24-7C-7(C).

The State of New Mexico thus compels objecting health care professionals to speak a certain message about assisted suicide, and forces them to provide proximate, formal, and material cooperation in an unethical ...act.

If physicians refuse to inform patients about assisted suicide or refuse to refer patients to providers and entities who are able and willing to participate, they violate the Act and face substantial civil, administrative, and professional liability. They also risk losing their medical licenses.

In other words, the New Mexico assisted suicide law requires doctors to provide information and to refer patients to physicians or organizations who are willing to assist suicides. These requirements violate the conscience rights of physicians.

On February 28, 2022 a similar conscience rights court case was filed in a California court by a group of Doctors who oppose assisted suicide. The California legislature had passed assisted suicide expansion bill SB 380 which forced doctors who oppose assisted suicide to be complicit in the act.

In September 2022, U.S. District Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha from the Central District of California ruled that California SB 380 violates the First Amendment rights of doctors by requiring them to participate in assisted suicide.

Aenlle-Rocha also granted a preliminary injunction barring the state from compelling health care providers to document a patient’s request for assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and EPC-USA hope that a similar decision will be made in New Mexico to protect the conscience rights of physicians who oppose intentionally ending patients lives by assisted suicide.

Canada to delay implementing euthanasia for mental illness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Canadian Press reported on December 15 that Canada's Liberal government is seeking to delay the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone. According to the Canadian Press:

The Liberal government announced Thursday it will seek to delay the expansion of Canada’s assisted-dying regime to include people whose sole underlying conditions are mental disorders.

Justice Minister David Lametti said during a news conference that the government has heard concerns that the health-care system might not be prepared to handle those complicated cases.

“Some provinces, territories and those working in the health-care system say that more time is needed,” he said.

“That includes having the time to implement those practice standards, and to complete and disseminate key resources that are being developed for clinicians and other health-care system partners to address these more complex MAID requests.”

An update to Canada’s medical assistance in dying legislation that passed in spring 2021 included a provision to temporarily exclude those whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder from eligibility.

The provision is set to expire on March 17, 2023.

An expert panel studying the issue has heard concerns from clinicians, researchers and academics who questioned whether the proper safeguards are in place to expand the eligibility criteria without putting people with mental disorders or those living in poverty at risk.

Mental Health Minister Carolyn Bennett said the expert panel determined that the safeguards in place under the current regime are “excellent.”

“I think that there is very clear consensus this would be very rare, that the assessment may be pending over a long period of time, a number of different assessments,” she said.

Bennett ignored the fact that two expert panel members resigned because concerns were not being heard or considered. The Canadian Press article continued:

Lametti said any cases of medically assisted deaths as a result of mental illness will follow a long period of treatment and insisted the federal government has spent millions of dollars on improving mental health care.

“I want to assure Canadians that it isn’t just the case that you can walk off the street and seek MAID if you’re feeling depressed,” he said.

Lametti added that the expert panel’s chair, Dr. Mona Gupta, is among those who feel that clinicians in Canada are ready to handle the expansion.

However, he acknowledged that not everyone is ready, and he has heard from those who “would like a short delay.”

In order to make that happen, the minority government would need to amend the existing legislation. Lametti said he expects there is widespread support for the move from other parties in the House of Commons and among senators.

The government has not said how long the proposed extension would be.

The House of Commons and Senate have adjourned for the holidays and are expected to resume sitting at the end of January.

Links to more stories of the euthanasia experience in Canada:

• Toronto Star: We need to put the brakes on euthanasia (Link).
• Globe and Mail: No to euthanasia for mental disorders (Link).
  
• Veterans affairs worker advocates euthanasia for PTSD (Link).
• Canadian man claims that he was pressured to request euthanasia (Link).
  
• Why did they kill my brother (Link).
  
• Manitoba woman died by euthanasia based on inadequate home care (Link).
• Quebec man seeks euthanasia based on changes to home care (Link). 
• Alberta man requests euthanasia based on poverty (Link).
• Ontario man approved for euthanasia because he can't get medical treatment (Link).
• Shopping for doctor death in Canada (Link).
• Gwen is seeking euthanasia because she can't access medical treatment (Link).
• Euthanasia for disability and poverty (Link).
• Euthanasia for Long Covid and poverty (Link).
• Canada's MAiD law is the most permissive in the world. (Link).

Québec Euthanasia deaths increase by 51% in 2021-22 annual report. A discrepancy of 289 deaths.

Amy Hasbrouck

Amy E. Hasbrouck
Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet

The seventh annual report from Québec’s Commission on end of life care was filed in Québec’s National Assembly on December 9, 2022. The report covers the 2021-2022 period (April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022), but appeared about six weeks later than usual due to Québec’s provincial election on October 3.

Article: Quebec euthanasia deaths more than double in two years (Link).

The Commission reported 3,663 euthanasia deaths declared by doctors during the fiscal year (p. 13), while the number of euthanasia deaths reported by facilities (3,629) and the Collège des Médecins du Québec (323) totalled 3,952 (p. 25 at note 25); a discrepancy of 289 deaths. 

Article: Québec Annual 2020 - 21 euthanasia report. Euthanasia deaths increased by 37% unreported euthanasia deaths are a problem (Link).

Counting two streams of euthanasia data is supposed to ensure that all euthanasia deaths are counted, but the totals have never come out even. In every annual report there has been a sizeable discrepancy between the figures for the two data streams. While the Commission on end-of-life care acknowledges the inconsistency, it makes no effort to explain it, except to say that some of the excess is due to duplicate reports.

The annual report uses the figure of 3,663 from the doctors’ reports as the total of euthanasia performed during the fiscal year. This marks an increase of 51% (1,236 more MAiD deaths) over last year and accounted for 5.1% of all deaths in Québec. 

On page 28 of the report, the Commission points out that, added to the 2.6% of Québecois who died from Continuous Palliative Sedation, nearly 8% of deaths in Québec were due to life-ending acts. This year, the number of people who have been euthanized in Québec since the MAiD law went into effect in 2015 surpassed the 10,000 mark, at 10,786 deaths. In its “Findings and Concerns” section, (p. 30) the Commission points out that Québec’s euthanasia rate is “more per million population than Ontario, Canada and Belgium.”

Information about the number of MAiD requests that resulted in euthanasia comes from the institutional data stream (reports from hospitals, hospices, long-term care facilities, and the College of physicians). The Commission said that 5,321 requests for MAiD were received, 3,629 (68%) of which resulted in euthanasia and 1,614 (30%) which did not end in euthanasia (p. 25). Astute readers will note that 5,321 (MAiD requests) minus 3,629 (euthanasia) minus 1,614 (MAiD not administered) leaves 78 people whose MAiD requests are not accounted for. 

Table C6 on page 47 “Reported number of MAiD requests formulated, MAiD granted and MAiD not administered according to the institution and the Collège des médecins du Québec between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022” shows five facilities that reported fewer than 10 MAiD, which nevertheless does not account for the discrepancy. As well, on page 28 in notes for table 4.1, we learn that “The total number of MAiD requests not administered (by reason for non-administration) declared by the facilities (n=1,525) does not correspond with the number of requests that did not end in euthanasia (n=1614) reported by institutions,” (a difference of 89 people). The Commission explains that “the reasons for non-administration were not available for certain institutions.” The Commission also reminds us (in note 25 and in the notes for table C6) of the 323 euthanasia reported by the College of physicians, which don’t appear to enter into these calculations.

In light of the discrepancy (289 deaths) between the number of euthanasia reported in doctors’ declaration forms (3,663) and the facilities’/CMQ reports (3,952), and the unaccounted MAiD requests that didn’t end in euthanasia, (78 people) it’s hard to take seriously the Commission’s claim that 99.6% of euthanasia complied with the requirement of the MAiD law. 

Following its review of the doctors’ declarations, the Commission found 15 euthanasia that did not conform to the law. Ten people who were euthanized were ineligible; six because they did not have a “serious and incurable” medical condition, three because they were not capable to consent, and one person who was not insured under Québec’s assurance maladie. The commission found procedural violations in five cases; four people whose request form was signed by a non-medical or social service professional, and one request which was not approved by a second doctor. Half of the people were euthanized within ten days of making the request, and more than half (54%) of euthanasia were performed in hospitals.

Finally, the Commission volunteers its opinions (p. 32) on a bill before Québec’s legislature to allow people to make advance requests for euthanasia in case of incapacity. The Commission supports a proposal in the bill that hospices may only exclude MAID from the care they provide if authorized by the Minister.

Dutch court rejects expansion of who can assist a suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Ximena died by assisted suicide in 2018.

A Dutch court rejected a challenge to the Netherlands euthanasia law by the group - Coöperatie Laatste Wil. The group launched the cout case in October challenging the Dutch euthanasia law because it restricts killing to doctors. The group wants anyone to be able to assist a suicide with legal immunity.

As reported by Reuters news:

In their written decision, the judges ruled that the Dutch law strikes a "fair balance between the societal interests of a ban on assisting a suicide - protection of life and preventing abuse of vulnerable persons - and the interests of an individual to have access to physician-assisted suicide in the case of unbearable suffering without the prospect it will get better".

Coöperatie Laatste Wil promotes access and assistance to suicide for anyone. Reuters explained what the case concerned:

Right-to-die organisation Cooperative Last Will brought the case with the aim of widening existing laws. It argued the ban on assisting suicide not overseen by medical professionals violated the right to self-determination and respect for private life enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

A Reuters news article on October 10 reported that Cooperative Last Will - is also involved in another court case concerning the distribution of a suicide substance:

Cooperative Last Will has been promoting a suicide powder it calls "Substance X" since 2018. There is a separate ongoing case before the Dutch courts against a member of the cooperative who is suspected of illegally assisting suicide by selling "Substance X" to at least 33 people.

A ruling is expected on Dec. 14, the judges said.

On September 30 I published an article by Randy Knol, concerning the arrest of Jos van Wijk, chairman of the Coöperatie Laatste Wil, euthanasia group. van Wijk was arrested for allegedly participating in a criminal organization. Randy is the father of Ximena, a 19-year-old who died in February 2018 by ingesting the suicide powder known as "Substance X."

More articles on this topic:

• Netherlands man arrested for selling suicide powder resulting in at least 4 suicide deaths (Link).
• Netherlands assisted suicide group member admits to breaking the law in at least 100 suicides (Link).
• Dutch assisted suicide group leader arrested for participating in an alleged criminal organization (Link). 

Québec Euthanasia deaths more than double in two years.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Québec's Seventh Annual Euthanasia Report was released on Friday December 9 indicating that the number of euthanasia deaths more than doubled in two years and the percentage of deaths attributed to euthanasia has already surpassed the Netherlands.

According to the euthanasia report from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022, there were 3663 reported euthanasia deaths representing 5.1% of all deaths in Québec. The number of euthanasia deaths were up from 2426 in 2020/21 and 1774 in 2019/20. Therefore the number of reported euthanasia deaths was up by more than 50% in the last year and it more than doubled over the past two years.

A CBC news Montreal report stated that:

Since the start of the pandemic, requests for the procedure have more than doubled — from 1,774 in 2019-2020 to 3,663 in 2021-22.

The increase means the percentage of people who chose MAID in Quebec is greater than in Belgium and the Netherlands, where it has been legal for decades. It has been legal in Quebec since 2015.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, 5.1 per cent of deaths in the province were medically assisted. In the Netherlands, 4.8 per cent of deaths were due to MAID and in Belgium, it was 2.3, according to Dr. Michel Bureau, the chair of Quebec's commission on end-of-life care.

Bureau said he was surprised by the rapid increase in the number of requests for MAID in Quebec. In his opinion, the increase could be explained by the fact that MAID is being presented to patients as care, not euthanasia.

The fact that the number of euthanasia deaths continues to increase exponentially is related to the normalization of killing and the change in the law permitting people who are not dying to be killed by euthanasia.

For instance in October a man in Lachine QC who lives with quadriplegia was seeking euthanasia (MAiD) because of the failure of his home care service to provide his basic needs.

The report also indicated that the euthanasia rate differed throughout Québec. According to CBC news:

The proportion of deaths due to MAID varies greatly from one region to another in Quebec. In the Lanaudière and Lower St. Lawrence regions, nearly nine per cent of people who died in 2021-2022 received MAID. In Montreal, it was less than four per cent.

The acceptance rate for requests for medical assistance in dying also varies greatly from one region to another. For example, in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, 98 per cent of patients who applied for MAID were granted it. In Quebec City, the proportion dropped to 75 per cent and in Montreal, it was only 54 per cent.

A further analysis of the Quebec report will be published soon.

• Quebec 2021 euthanasia report. Euthanasia deaths increased by 37% (Link).
  

Canada’s assisted dying catastrophe is a warning to Britain

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sam Ashford-Hayes

An article by Sam Ashworth-Hayes that was published by the Spectator (UK) on December 11, 2022 arguing that Canada's assisted dying catastrophe is a warning for the UK. This is an important article because assisted dying (euthanasia) is being heavily debated in the UK.

Ashworth-Hayes writes:

There is a reason people have warned against legalising euthanasia time and time again. The incentives for individuals and the state to behave in diabolical ways are simply too strong to be ignored. Once the essential moral safeguard that murder is wrong is abandoned, the creeping normalisation of death by doctor inevitably expands.

This is again visible in Canada, where 10,000 people were killed by their doctors in 2021 alone. The scope of the law has shifted now from people facing imminent death to those simply experiencing ‘intolerable’ symptoms in the view of the patient or doctor. And – buoyed by these successful outcomes – legislators are now expanding coverage to the mentally ill, who will be offered the option of ending it all. Move fast, break things, and ask questions later.

The extent of this normalisation is astonishing. One clothing brand ran an advertising campaign centred on a young woman who had chosen to die; that she chose this in response to the failure of the Canadian healthcare system to treat her was left off-screen. ‘If I’m not able to access health care, am I then able to access death care?’ she asked in June; the answer, apparently, was yes.

This case speaks to a fundamental problem with assisted dying. There are people in Canada who will have begged, time and time again, to be put into suitable housing, or to have other accommodations made for them. But these things are expensive, and involve significant effort on the part of the state bureaucracy. Assisted dying only requires two signatures and the depression of a syringe. And while it might be a terrible outcome for those whose lives could have been saved, euthanasia is a tremendous fiscal boost to the state. The mentally ill are costly, the disabled are costly, the sick are costly. They take up hospital space, they take up doctors’ time, they impose a burden on state services, they require state workers to work.

As Yuan Yi Zhu has noted in these pages, all this was never intended to happen. The door to Canada’s dystopia was opened in 2015 when the Supreme Court declared that fears of ‘a descent down a slippery slope into homicide’ were just that: fears founded on nothing more than speculation and scaremongering.

In other words, the slippery slope continues to be the best practical description of how social change actually works: once there is momentum behind a cause, once the essential principled safeguards that a course of action is utterly wrong are abandoned, once we agree in theory that the arguments which compel the first step apply equally to the second. Once, in short, we begin, it is very hard to find a stable place to stop. British policymakers considering following Canada’s lead should consider where it ends.

These same arguements are equally important for the many US States that will be debating the legalization of assisted suicide in 2022. Don't go there. Assisted suicide, once normalized, is expansive.

Links to more stories of the euthanasia experience in Canada:

• Food bank clients asking for euthanasia based on poverty (Link).
• Man changed his mind about euthanasia after receiving a wheelchair lift (Link)
• Veterans affairs offers euthanasia to former paralympian (Link).
• Veterans affairs worker advocates euthanasia for PTSD (Link).
• Canadian man claims that he was pressured to request euthanasia (Link).
  
• Why did they kill my brother (Link).
  
• Manitoba woman died by euthanasia based on inadequate home care (Link).
• Quebec man seeks euthanasia based on changes to home care (Link). 
• Alberta man requests euthanasia based on poverty (Link).
• Ontario man approved for euthanasia because he can't get medical treatment (Link).
• Shopping for doctor death in Canada (Link).
• Gwen is seeking euthanasia because she can't access medical treatment (Link).
• Euthanasia for disability and poverty (Link).
• Euthanasia for Long Covid and poverty (Link).
• Canada's MAiD law is the most permissive in the world. (Link).

Infant euthanasia. Is history repeating itself?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The presentation by Dr Louis Roy for the Québec College of Physicians to The Special Joint Committee on MAiD on September 7 urging Canada's Federal government to adopt a protocol to permit infant euthanasia I wondered if our society has forgotten its history? Have we forgotten how eugenic attitudes led to the destruction of the lives of thousands of people with disabilities?

Many people believe that the German T4 Euthanasia Program was based on a unique evil Nazi ideology. However,the eugenic ideology was a socially and politically successful movement that existed throughout Europe and North America beginning in the nineteenth century. Books, such as "The Right to Death" (1895) promoted by the eugenics movement led to the writing of "The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life" (1920) by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche. Binding and Hoche justified the killing of people who were "incurably sick, feeble minded, retarded, deformed, etc." and became the handbook for the eugenics movement in Germany.

The Nazi euthanasia program was launched in 1939 after Adolf Hitler received a letter from Richard Kretschmar, the father of an infant (referred to as "Case K" or the 'Knauer child'). Historians now know that the child was Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar.

The letter stated that Gerhard was born on February 20, 1939, that he was blind, had one leg and part of one arm was missing and was described as "an idiot". Hitler sent his personal physician, Karl Brant, to see the child in a hospital in Leipzig. Brant testified at the Nurembourg trial that he had been instructed that if the father's letter was correct that the physicians at the hospital would be told that euthanasia could be carried out - in Hitler's name. Gerhard was euthanized on July 25, 1939.

History indicates that the German T4 euthanasia program began with a parent's request for euthanasia and in the end resulted in the deaths of 250,000 to 275,000 people with disabilities.

Further to that, the technique killing large numbers of people by gassing them to death was first developed in the psychiatric hospitals for the euthanasia program and later installed in the death camps for killing millions of people. According to the Holocaust Museum, T-4 staff were redeployed to the death camps.

The holocaust museum states the following:

Hitler's authorization

In October 1939, after Adolf Hitler authorized “mercy deaths” for patients deemed “incurable,” the murder program expanded from children to adults. Operation T-4—referring to the address of the secret program’s headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin—mostly targeted adult patients in private, state, and church-run institutions. Individuals judged unproductive were particularly vulnerable. From January 1940 to August 1941, more than 70,000 men and women were transported to one of six specially staffed facilities in Germany and Austria and killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in gas chambers disguised as showers. Growing public awareness and unrest over the killings influenced Hitler to halt the gassing program. Euthanasia murders resumed in other guises; patients were killed by means of starvation diets and overdoses of medication in hospitals and mental institutions throughout the country. From 1939 to 1945, an estimated 250,000 persons were killed in the various euthanasia programs.

The eugenics archive provides some data on the T-4 euthanasia deaths.

The numbers killed in the initial phase, code-named “T4” (after the administrative office at Tiergartenstrasse 4), amount to (according to one set of records) 70,273 persons. The killings were ordered on the basis of medical records sent to the clandestine panel of adjudicating psychiatrists at the central office in Berlin. So-called schizophrenics made up 58% of the victims, and there was a slightly higher proportion of women killed. There were 6 gassing facilities in Germany and former Austria (Brandenburg – replaced by Bernburg, Grafeneck, Hartheim, Pirna-Sonnenstein, and Hadamar).

A New York Times article by Kenny Fries attempting to identify the first date for the mass killing states that the exact date of the "test killing" was not recorded and no records were kept for the first mass killing by gassing. This is an historical concern but Fries makes an interesting comment that:

Unlike the Holocaust, there are no T4 survivors. We know about T4 and its aftermath mainly through medical records and from the perpetrators. Aktion T4 does not have its Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi.

The eugenic T4 euthanasia program that began in 1939 was based on the same ideology as the Quebec College of Physicians justificed to The Special Joint Committee on MAiD.

To further my concerns, an article written by Michael Higgins and published by the National Post on November 22 clarifies the position of the Quebec College of Physicians concerning infant euthanasia. Higgins wrote:

The president of the Quebec College of Physicians wants to explore the prospect of euthanizing suffering babies and believes it’s nobody’s business but doctors’. 

To be fair, Dr. Mauril Gaudreault would let parents have a say as well, so he’s not being totally arrogant.

Gaudreault’s rather obscene suggestion illustrates just how far down the slippery slope we have plunged when it comes to mercy killing, euthanasia, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), call it what you will.

The concept of eugenics is sadly, alive and well. Peter Singer and Udo Schukelenk, for instance, are popular philosophers who promote a eugenic ideology.

It takes one bad case to approve a bad law. It takes a bad law to change a culture.

Once a culture decides that there are some lives that are not worth living and decides to kill those people, then everything changes.

Infants cannot request or consent to being killed. If infant euthanasia is approved it may lead to the approval of euthanasia for other people who cannot request or consent to being killed. People with dementia who never requested or indicated an interest in euthanasia could also be approved to be killed.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition opposes all forms of euthanasia and assisted suicide, nonetheless, it is clear that expanding killing to babies (infanticide) negates the "safeguard" that only people who can capably request to die can be approved for death.

The question we ask in society changes from - Is it right for one person to be given the right to kill another? - to When is it right for one person to be given the right to kill another?

This is a eugenic ideology that can only lead to the destruction of many lives which are deemed life unworthy of life. 

Is history repeating itself?

Learn more, visit the websites: United States Holocaust Museum, The eugenics archive, and the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team which shows that the propaganda portrayed support the same eugenic ideas and goals as the eugenic movement in the late 19th and early 20th Century promoted and led to the Nazi Euthanasia Program.

Boston Globe articles promote the legalization of assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Boston Globe published two articles by Robert Weisman on December 11, 2022 promoting the legalization of assisted suicide in Massachusetts. The articles, which are free advertising for the assisted suicide lobby, are oriented to helping the assisted suicide lobby urge legislators to legalize assisted suicide in the upcoming legislative session. (Article 1) (Article 2).

Based on the tone of the articles, it appears that the Boston Globe plans to strongly support the legalization of assisted suicide in Massachusetts.

The first article begins by quoting Rep James O'Day, a Worcester Democrat and the lead sponsor of the assisted suicide bill, who says that he hopes that the assisted suicide bill can pass in 2022.

The article then quotes Governor Maura Healey who states that she would support the bill under certain conditions.

In the last legislature, the assisted suicide bill passed in the Joint Committee on Public Health but failed to advance in the Joint Committee on Healthcare Financing.

The article does state that opposition to the bill continues. Weisman writes:

House Speaker Ronald Mariano last spring said representatives in his chamber remained “very divided” on the issue. Mariano, through a spokesman, declined a request for an interview for this story. Senate President Karen Spilka similarly declined to discuss the matter. In separate statements, both promised to continue reviewing the bill in conversations with their colleagues in the upcoming session.

But the article continues with promoting assisted suicide by quoting State Senator Joanne Comerford, the Senate sponsor of the past assisted suicide bill as stating:

The idea of government restricting the end-of-life options of people in pain “becomes dangerous,”

The reality is that legalizing assisted suicide is dangerous.

The second article interviews several people who had family members die a difficult death and a few people with terminal and chronic conditions who "want the option."

John Kelly

Nonetheless the second article does create some balance by interviewing John Kelly, the Director of Second Thoughts Massachusetts. Weisman writes:

Disability-rights advocate John Kelly, who lives in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, is director of Second Thoughts Massachusetts, a group opposing what it calls “assisted suicide.” He’s also a quadriplegic who injured his spinal cord in a sledding accident 38 years ago.

Kelly, 64, has testified against medical aid-in-dying legislation and organized a rally against the appeal to legalize it through the Supreme Judicial Court. He condemns a “better dead than disabled” mindset he sees in those distressed about loss of control at the end of their lives.

“Proponents say it’s about pain and suffering,” Kelly said. “But it’s relatively privileged people’s response to their own disability and dependence on others.”

Folks with disabilities often grapple with a lack of access to health care and home care services, he said. “Everyone should receive effective palliative care,” he said. “But we also believe people should be able to stay in their home and have adequate care there. This is really a values discussion masquerading as a medical issue.”

Kelly is also highly skeptical of treating a physician’s six-month prognosis as an exact science.

“People have to remember that doctors are often wrong about predicting when someone will die,” he said.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court is deliberating on the Kligler case that asked the court to find a right to assisted suicide in Massachusetts. That decision is expected soon.

Portugal's Parliament passes euthanasia bill. President de Sousa rejected two previous euthanasia bills.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Portugal's Parliament

Alison Roberts reported for BBC News on December 9, 2022 that Portugal's parliament passed a bill that would legalize euthanasia if an adult's wish to die is "current and reiterated, serious, free and informed". Roberts reported:

MPs voted 126 to 84 in favour, with all but seven members of Portugal's governing Socialist Party, which has a majority in parliament, backing the bill, as did some opposition members.

But other opposition politicians called on Portugal's conservative president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to send the text for constitutional review, as he did with a previous version. They allege there are still problems with the bill.

This is the third euthanasia bill passed Portugal's parliament with the previous two bills being reviewed by the Constitutional court or rejected by President de Souza. Roberts reports:

Once the president receives the final text, he can sign it into law, send it to the Constitutional Court within eight days, or exercise his veto within 20 days. A veto can, however, be overturned by a majority of members of parliament.

He has already said he will be quick to announce his decision.

This is the third time that a bill to allow euthanasia has made it through all parliamentary stages. The first was in early 2020, when the president sent it to the Constitutional Court, which upheld some of his concerns.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

On January 29, 2021, Portugal's parliament passed its first euthanasia bill. On February 19, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa did not to sign the bill into law but referred the bill to Portugal's Constitutional court for evaluation. President de Sousa stated that he thought that the bill was: 

"excessively imprecise," potentially creating a situation of "legal uncertainty."

On March 15, the Portuguese American Journal reported that the Constitutional court rejected the bill and stated:

“the law is imprecise in identifying the circumstances under which those procedures can occur.” The court stated the law must be “clear, precise, clearly envisioned and controllable.” The law lacks the “indispensable rigor."

On November 30, 2021, President de Sousa vetoed the second euthanasia bill because of contradictions in the language of the bill. The Associated Press article reported:

This time, the president is returning the reworded law to the national assembly, according to a statement posted on the Portuguese presidency’s website late on Monday, arguing that further clarification is needed in “what appear to be contradictions” regarding the causes that justify resorting to death with medical assistance.

Whereas the original bill required “fatal disease” as a pre-requisite, the president’s argument followed, the renewed version mentions “incurable” or “serious” disease in some of its formulation. No longer considering that patients need to be terminally ill means, in De Sousa’s opinion, “a considerable change of weighing the values ​​of life and free self-determination in the context of Portuguese society.”

The Associated Press article reported in June 2022 that the new bills do not fulfill President De Sousa's concerns. According to the article:

But none of the four new bills addresses Rebelo de Sousa’s specific concerns. Instead, they attempt to simplify circumstances where euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are justified by referring to “a situation of intolerable suffering, with a definitive injury of extreme seriousness or a serious and incurable disease.”

That omission is unlikely to please the president.

I hope that President De Sousa sends the bill back to the Constitutional Court for review. Sadly, the previous election resulted in the election of a stronger contingent of pro-euthanasia legislators.

Ontario man asks for MAiD based on Long Term Care access.

A long time friend and supporter sent me the following email and gave me permission to publish it without names. (Alex Schadenberg).

--------------------------------------------------

A colleague's parent is in hospital awaiting a spot in a Long Term Care (LTC) home.

He does not have any cognitive impairment, but he lost his eyesight and the use of left side of body and control over "washroom functions", thus he needs more care than can be provided at home.

He is a very bright man and he had a long career as a university professor in Philosphy and Theology (UK, US and Canada).

Recently the Ontario government implemented new rules for people awaiting LTC in hospital. These rules state that he can no longer wait for his choice of LTC homes to have an opening. Instead, he must accept the first one available and it includes facilites hundreds of kilometers away. He considers this to be like a solitary confiment sentence! IF you dont accept the first opening, the Ontario government has implemented a fee of $400 a night for him to continue waiting in hospital.

It is important to him that he remains in close proximity to his family (including great grand babies) and his wife who lives in a local LTC home near his Church/congregation/community.

He does not have and does not believe he should have to pay for the care required and finds it insulting and a measure of his worth to the powers that be.

Last weekend, as a result of this situation, he made his wishes known for MAID. He told my client, his son, that the options in front of him are $400 a night (unaffordable) or a "living death" by being taken far from his family and home.

I can't help but think that Premier Ford and Prime Minister Trudeau, et al know that this is a reality for the elderly, the impoverished and the under serviced.

Sadly it feels's like MAID is their fiscally based solution vs spending money to fix the problems in our social service and healthcare provisions. Economics certainly dictate politics and policy and the result is cheaper than the fix.

We live in precarious, vulgar, unimaginably inhumane and repugnant times.

Thanks for reading this far...I needed to vent.

California Judge dismisses case to permit euthanasia within assisted suicide law.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On December 7, 2022 Justice Vince Chhabria, US District Judge in California approved a motion to dismiss a court case by Dr Lonny Shavelson (supported by the assisted suicide lobby group Compassion and Choices) to extend the California assisted suicide law (end-of-life options act) to include euthanasia. The case is called Shavelson v Bonta. 

Euthanasia is an act of injecting a lethal drug cocktail to cause death. Assisted suicide is an act of prescribing the same lethal drug cocktail but the person self-administers.

Shavelson's attempt to get the court to extend California's assisted suicide law to include euthanasia was rejected on June 22, 2022. The current decision was a response to Shavelson's attempt to amend the case.

Justice Chhabria approved the motion to dismiss the case and stated that any further amendment to the case would be futile. Chhabria wrote:

It seems unlikely that that the plaintiffs could adequately allege (and ultimately demonstrate) standing under this alternative reading of the requested accommodation if given another attempt. But even if they did, the Court would dismiss the lawsuit on the merits. Setting aside the assistance prohibition would cross the sharp line drawn by the California Legislature between assisted suicide and euthanasia, and thus would fundamentally alter the nature of the program for the same basic reasons discussed in the prior ruling. Shavelson, 2022 WL 2234973. And that dismissal would be with prejudice, given the number of chances the plaintiffs have now had to state a claim.

The dismissal for lack of jurisdiction is therefore without leave to amend—it is clear by now that further amendment would be futile.

On June 23, 2022, Chhabria rejected the argument by Shavelson that euthanasia needed to be an accomodation when a person is unable to self-administer. According to Maria Dinzeo who reported on June 22 for the Court House News Service:

A federal judge said he cannot allow an Americans with Disabilities Act carveout to California’s assisted suicide law that would let doctors assist people too weak or disabled to ingest end-of-life medication, finding that such a provision would “fundamentally alter” the law from conferring the ability to take your own life to having a doctor do it for you.

I published an article on August 30, 2021 explaining that Shavelson had challenged the state assisted suicide act to permit euthanasia. The case argued that some people with disabilities, when approved for assisted suicide, are unable to self-administer the lethal drugs. Shavelson argued that based on the Americans with Disabilities Act, the court must permit euthanasia (doctor administered death) in these cases.

On September 13, 2021 I wrote that the California court must reject the challenge to the state assisted suicide act based on (among other reasons): 

• The Supreme Court, in Glucksberg, recognized that there is no right to assisted suicide and it recognized that one state interests in prohibiting assisted suicide was the prevention of euthanasia. This court case specifically seeks to permit euthanasia.  
• There is no right to assisted suicide, therefore there is no obligation to amend the "perceived" inequality within the state assisted suicide law.
• Permitting euthanasia is not an extension of the state assisted suicide law but rather it required the court to legislate the legalization of euthanasia, which is a form of homicide.

Thankfully Chhabria was not willing to legislate from the bench. I predict that the attempt to expand state assisted suicide laws to include death by lethal injection (euthanasia) has only begun. It is likely that Shavelson will appeal the decision.