What Is Physician-Assisted Suicide?  

Micaiah Bilger, Education Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Lie Federation

“It is important to distinguish between physician-assisted suicide and refusing medical treatment.  Physician-assisted suicide involves a physician prescribing lethal drugs for a patient with the knowledge that the patient intends to use the drugs to commit suicide. Refusing medical treatment is turning down treatment expected to prolong life. The intent of refusing medical treatment is not to end life, but to allow nature to take its course. With physician-assisted suicide, the intent is the kill the patient.”  (From “Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Experience,” Oregon Right to Life)

On November 1, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard planned to commit suicide in her Oregon home. She asked her husband, mother and best friend to join her at her bedside. They agreed. The media didn’t mourn her decision as a tragic suicide. Many news outlets didn’t call it a suicide at all. Some people even celebrated the young woman’s decision to take her own life. 

The reason? Brittany Maynard planned to die using Oregon’s assisted suicide law. Tragically, Maynard was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given about six months to live. Even more tragically, Maynard chose to end her life prematurely through physician-prescribed suicide. 

The pro-euthanasia group Compassion and Choices, formerly the Hemlock Society, sickeningly took advantage ofMaynard’s desperate plan to commit suicide and turned it into a public relations stunt to push more people to kill themselves. The group wants to legalize assisted suicide nationwide, a plan that would put pressure on the vulnerable elderly, infirm and disabled to end their lives prematurely. Physician-prescribed suicide is legal in five states, and euthanasia advocates currently are working in several others, including Pennsylvania, to legalize it. 

The advocates of these dangerous bills shy away from the term “suicide.” They prefer the deceptive term “death with dignity”; but suicide, the act of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally, is exactly what they are pushing. Advocates claim assisted suicide laws help people who are in pain and dying, but the facts show otherwise. When Dr. Linda Ganzini, professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University, surveyed families of Oregon patients requesting assisted suicide, she found that people feared the possibility of unbearable pain, but they weren’t experiencing it. 

Since Oregon passed its assisted suicide law in 1994, no cases of assisted suicide for unbearable pain have been documented, according to Oregon Right to Life. “National studies show that among patients requesting assisted suicide, depression is the only factor that significantly predicts the request for death,” according to Oregon Right to Life. 

Despite that fact, only two out of 77 assisted suicide victims in 2012 received psychiatric counseling, according to Oregon Right to Life. The National Right to Life Committee points out that assisted suicide laws don’t have the safeguards that euthanasia advocates claim they do, and coercion often goes undetected. The American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians and many disability rights groups also oppose physician-prescribed suicide because of potential coercion and abuse. 

When Brittany Maynard announced her planned suicide; Lani Candelora, of Rhode Island Right to Life, penned these poignant words in response: “Embroiling a deathly sick young woman in a political fight is not compassionate. True compassion requires providing Ms. Maynard with high-quality care and supportive pain management, and shining light and love on every remaining day that she has, rather than assuming that her days are not worth living and exploiting her vulnerability for political gain.”

Let us never forget to cherish the people around us and encourage them with the fact that their lives are always worth living-- from conception to natural death.

For additional writing from members and associates of the St. Gabriel Respect Life group, see below:

https://angela-smith-08lj.squarespace.com/our-pro-life-views-1/