The Pressure “Assisted Suicide” Bills
Place on Patients To Die -- Part Three of Three

In your March issue of National Right to Life News you will read about an on-the-offensive euthanasia movement. In these stories California and Vermont are the states under siege. They are, for different reasons, very inviting targets.

If you go to www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/16808885.htm you will find a thoughtful piece written for the Mercury News by Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst for the, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund in Berkeley, California.

The coalition she lists opposing the latest effort to legalize assisted suicide in California includes some members you wouldn’t necessarily expect, and does not include the names of others, such as NRLC’s California affiliate (the California Pro-Life Council) that you would expect. All are working against the proposed law. But this illustrates a hugely important  point: you can be adamantly set against this kind of lethal legislation for any number of reasons.

Let me quote just one paragraph and make one observation. Golden writes,

“One major reason for the diverse opposition is the deadly mix between assisted suicide and profit-driven managed health care. The cost of the lethal prescription generally used for assisted suicide is about $100. That's far cheaper than the cost of treatment for most prolonged illnesses. The incentive to save money by denying treatment already poses a significant danger. Again and again, HMOs and managed care bureaucrats have overruled doctors' treatment decisions, sometimes hastening patients' deaths. This danger would be far greater if assisted suicide were legal. Denying patients access to life-sustaining treatments while offering them the ``choice'' of assisted suicide would subtly but coercively steer them toward death. While the proponents of legalization argue that it would guarantee choice, assisted suicide would actually result in deaths due to a lack of choice.”

It can NOT be stressed enough how subtle and effective “choice” is in effectively eliminating all choices other than the “choice” to be “assisted” to die. And, as Golden points out in her conclusion, the logic of “choice” is inexorably expansionary:

“Over the past 25 years, the Dutch approach to ``death with dignity'' for people with terminal illness has expanded into full-blown euthanasia (lethal injections administered by doctors) for people with chronic illness, people with mental health distress, and even depressed teenagers and infants with disabilities.”

If you get a chance, be sure to read the entire essay.

If you have any comments or questions, please write Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part One
Part Two