First, Canada does not require a diagnosis of a terminal illness or condition, but only suffering that the patient finds “intolerable.” This certainly takes the physician off the hook. A spurned young lover thinks that life is over. Do we really want society to assist him to end his life?
Second, Canada does not require a physician to predict death within six months, but only that death is “reasonably foreseeable.” As subjective as the requirement in American states with aid in dying laws that death be expected within six months, Canada loosens it much more. Let’s hope that the assisting physician is prescient.
Third, there is no mandate for a physician to require treatment or palliative care. What’s next in this slope?
There are some misleading statements and omissions in the article “Sides deepen in Iowa’s death with dignity debate” [April 17]. Contrary to the article, every major national disability organization that has taken a position on the issue opposes legalizing assisted suicide. The reference to the Disability Rights Legal Center does not refute this fact. DRLC is now run by Kathryn Tucker, former in-house attorney for Compassion and Choices, the assisted suicide lobby group, for over 15 years. DRLC’s primary claim to being “national” is two assisted suicide lawsuits she has led in New Mexico and New York. For a listing of the legitimate national disability organizations that oppose legalizing assisted suicide, see http://notdeadyet.org/disability-groups-opposed-to-assisted-suicide-laws.
Why are they opposed? This is not about people’s option to commit suicide, which is not illegal. This is about how the health care system upon which we all depend responds to a person who says they want society’s agreement with their suicide and the means to do it. We are worried about health care cost-cutting pressures. Assisted suicide by doctors is a deadly mix in a profit-driven health care system.
We are also worried about putting lethal drugs in the home of a seriously ill person in a society where one in 10 elders are abused, mostly by family. The claim that there are “safeguards” doesn’t make it so.