a-primer-on-assisted-suicide-laws

A Primer on Assisted Suicide Laws Presented by Patients Rights Action Fund and Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund 1 Introduction 2 National Disability Rights Organizations That Oppose Assisted Suicide Laws 3 Key Objections 6 Article: Assisted Suicide Drives Decisions Based on Cost 7 Article: Who’s Really Hurt By Assisted Suicide? 9 Who’s Behind Assisted Suicide Laws? 10 Resources Appendix A 11 Article: Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Widow, Victoria Kennedy, Explains Her Opposition to an Assisted [...] ...

When Death Is Sought

Assisted Suicide in the Medical Context From The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law The Risks of Legalization We continue to believe that the profound dangers associated with legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) outweigh any benefits such a change in law might achieve in isolated cases. Undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. Many individuals who contemplate suicide, including the terminally ill, suffer from treatable mental disorders, most commonly clinical depression. Physicians routinely fail to diagnose and treat these disorders, particularly among patients at the end of life. [...] ...

Belgian GPs “killing patients who have not asked to die”

By Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent 11 June 2015 Report says thousands have been killed despite not asking their doctor Thousands killed under GP care despite not asking to die, report says One in 60 deaths involves someone ‘who has not requested euthanasia’ Half of patients killed without giving their consent were over the age of 80 Thousands of elderly people have been killed by their own GPs without ever asking to die under Belgium’s euthanasia laws, an academic report said yesterday. Image removed Around one in every 60 deaths of a patient under GP care in Belgium involves someone who has not requested euthanasia, according to a new report published by the Journal of Medical EthicsIt said that around one in every 60 deaths of a patient under GP care [...] ...

PIIS1

PIIS1

Disability and Health Journal 3 (2010) 16e30 www.disabilityandhealthjnl.com Killing us softly: the dangers of legalizing assisted suicide Marilyn Golden*, Tyler Zoanni Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), Berkeley, CA 94710, USA Abstract This article is an overview of the problems with the legalization of assisted suicide as public policy. The disability community’s opposition to assisted suicide stems in part from factors that directly impact the disability [...] ...

Spurious Safegaurds

Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act and AB 374 Spurious Safeguard #1: Assisted suicide will be limited to patients diagnosed as terminally ill with no more than only six months to live.[1] In Fact: The number of days between an initial request for life-ending prescriptions and patients’ deaths has ranged as long as 737 days or two years. This demonstrates the inaccuracy of six-month prognoses.[2] There is extensive documentation that medical prognoses of a short life expectancy are very unreliable.[3]  [...]  Spurious Safeguard #2: Patients will not be coerced into choosing assisted suicide. In Fact: Both a psychiatrist [...] ...

Opposition to Neutrality on AB 651

H. Rex Greene, MD 1820 Ogden Dr. Suite 200 Burlingame, CA 94010 Hematology-Oncology, Palliative Medicine, and Gerontology (650) 697-720 Feb 22,2006 Council on Ethical Affairs California Medical Association Oakland, CA Re: Opposition to neutrality on AB 651 Dear Colleagues, As a board certified hematologist-oncologist, a palliative care/hospice physician and a member of the CMA Council on Ethical Affairs for the past 18 years I have been closely involved with the issue of legalization of euthanasia. [...] ...

SB 128 Would Trigger More Suicides

Letter From Ellen, who has struggled with suicidal issues for many years, to California senators Dear Senator, Please vote against SB 128 (assisted suicide). My concern is that if assisted suicide is approved in California, it will negatively affect the health and lives of persons living with mental illness, like it has in Oregon. I’ve lived with my mental illness for 25 years. During this time I’ve dealt with my own suicidality, off and on throughout the years. I almost committed suicide before. If assisted suicide became law, society would be sending a message that suicide is all [...] ...

DREDF Opposes Elimination of Fundamental Protections in California’s End of Life Options Act

April 14, 2022 Assisted suicide doesn't exist in a vacuum. It must be considered against the backdrop of the United States' tragic history of state-sanctioned discrimination against people with disabilities and chronic illnesses in health care settings. This sordid history includes nonconsensual experimentation, forced sterilization, the denial of essential medical care based on biased and/or inaccurate quality of their life assessments, issuing of "Do Not Resuscitate" orders without patient consent, and most recently, employing COVID crisis standards of care and health care rationing systems that explicitly, openly devalue disabled lives. [...]...

Is California Next in Line?

In Sacramento, backers of an assisted-suicide law say they’ve gained a lot of momentum from the court ruling. But they still face major obstacles. By Jordan Rau Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 18, 2006 SACRAMENTO — California advocates of assisted suicide said Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling erased a significant legal objection to their campaign, but the ethical qualms of wavering lawmakers remain a substantial obstacle to approval this year. “It obviously paves the way for state action,” said Dario Frommer (D-Glendale), the Assembly majority leader, who has not decided how he will vote. “I don’t think [...] ...

Flimsy Reporting, No Regulation

...they take other steps to ensure the reporting data is accurate.”[9] Editorial in The Oregonian: “a system that seems rigged to avoid finding” answers.[10] Why did the proponents promise to create a system that would bring assisted suicide out into the open and regulate it, but instead fashioned one in which it is practiced in secret and without oversight? AB 374 duplicates Oregon law’s flimsy reporting and failure to regulate assisted suicide. Endnotes [1] Oregon Department of Human Services, Seventh Annual Report on Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act (Portland, March 10, 2005), 10-11, year7.pdf.; David Reinhard, “The house that (Dr.) Jack built,” The Oregonian (May 2, 1999). [2] Oregon Death With Dignity Act. Oregon Revised Statutes 127.800-127.890, 127.895, 127.897. [3] Joseph P. Shapiro, “Casting a cold eye on ‘death with dignity’,” U.S. News & World Report (March 1, 1999). [4] [...] ...