Hawaii House Bill 650 to expand assisted suicide law.

Hawaii is the best example of how the assisted suicide lobby will support a "tight" bill to legalize assisted suicide and the next year introduce a bill to eliminate "restrictions."

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Hawaii legislature

Hawaii House Bill 650 (HB 650) would expand Hawaii's assisted suicide law by reducing the waiting period, allowing non-physicians to approve assisted suicide and expanding who can counsel someone for assisted suicide.

HB 650 is not a surprise since a similar bill was debated but not passed in Hawaii last year.

Hawaii debated and defeated assisted suicide bills almost every year. In 2018, the sponsor of the Hawaii assisted suicide bill included more restrictions than the Oregon law and sadly, the bill passed.

The very first Hawaii's assisted suicide report (2019) included a push to remove certain restrictions in the law. I stated in my commentary that:

Even though assisted suicide was legal for less than one year, the assisted suicide lobby is promoting two options for expanding the assisted suicide law.

Hawaii is the best example of how the assisted suicide lobby will support a "tight" bill to legalize assisted suicide and next year introduce a bill to eliminate "restrictions."

Today I read Rhode Island assisted suicide bill (H 5210) which is similar to the New York State assisted suicide bill. The assisted suicide lobby has introduced a tradition style assisted suicide bill, with the hope of it passing, and then they will push to widen the bill in the following years.

Last week I wrote about New York State's assisted suicide Assembly Bill 995 (A00995) and Senate Bill S2445 that are based on the original Oregon assisted suicide law. The New York assisted suicide lobby failed to legalize assisted suicide in the past so they are attempting to legalize assisted suicide with tighter restrictions and in the near future they will push for expansions of the law.

There is only one line in the sand. It is either legal to kill by assisted suicide or not. Once assisted suicide is legal we are only debating the reasons to kill and who can do the killing.

Rhode Island assisted suicide bill will create the perfect crime.

Margaret Dore

Contact: Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA, President (206) 697-1217

Providence, RI -- Attorney Margaret Dore, president of Choice is an Illusion, which has fought assisted suicide legalization efforts in many states, including Rhode Island, made the following statement in connection with the hearing on bill H 7297 seeking to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in that state.

"There is a bill pending before the Rhode Island House of Representatives, which seeks to legalize physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia as those terms are traditionally defined," said Dore. “The bill seeks to legalize these practices for people with years, even decades, to live.”

“The bill is sold as assuring patient choice and control. But when you look at what the bill actually says and does, the bill is a recipe for elder abuse.” Dore explained, "The patient's heir, who will financially benefit from the patient’s death, is allowed to actively participate in signing the patient up for the lethal dose. After that, no doctor, not even a witness, is required to be present at the death. If the patient objected or even struggled, who would know? The bill will create the perfect crime.”

"Other states are pushing back against assisted suicide,” said Dore. “This year, Utah passed a bill clarifying that assisted suicide is a crime. Last year, Alabama passed a bill banning assisted suicide. Two years ago, the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned assisted suicide: Physician-assisted suicide is no longer legal in New Mexico.”

“The Rhode Island bill seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia for people who are ‘terminal,’ which is defined as a doctor’s prediction of less than six months to live.“ Dore added, “In real life, such persons can have years, even decades, to live.”

“Doctors can be wrong about life expectancy, sometimes way wrong." Dore explained, "This is due to actual mistakes and the fact that predicting life expectancy is not an exact science. A few years ago, I was met at the airport by a man who at age 18 had been diagnosed with ALS and given 3 to 5 years to live, at which time he was predicted to die by paralysis. His diagnosis had been confirmed by the Mayo Clinic. When he met me at the airport, he was 74 years old. The disease progression had stopped on its own.”

“If the Rhode Island bill becomes law, there will be new lethal paths of elder abuse, which will be legally sanctioned,” said Dore. “People with years, even decades to live, will be encouraged to throw away their lives or have their lives thrown away for them. Even if you like the concept of assisted suicide and suicide and euthanasia, the proposed bill has it all wrong.”

For more information:

1. Margaret Dore, Legal/Policy Analysis of H 7297, Rhode Island House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare, memo available here: Attachments available here: 

2. Margaret K. Dore, “Death with Dignity’: What Do We Advise Our Clients?,” King County Bar Association, Bar Bulletin, May 2009,  (available here).

Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation working against assisted suicide and euthanasia, worldwide

www.choiceillusion.org
1001 4th Avenue, Suite 4400
Seattle WA USA 98154

Nancy Elliott: People who qualify for Assisted Suicide are not necessarily dying.

The following testimony was submitted by Nancy Elliott Chair, EPC-USA to each Rhode Island committee member and the committee clerk on behalf of EPC USA.

Dear Health, Welfare and Human Services Committee Member,

Nancy Elliott

Please reject H7297. Proponents say that this is about autonomy and choice. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are no safeguards that ensure that the choice is yours and not someone else's. As a matter of fact all the “so called” safeguards can be gone around. Proponents claim there is no “slippery slope” yet we see as soon as something is passed they go in to expand their death policies. Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, just passed legislation that will allow for the starvation and dehydration of incompetent people. Belgium’s law has expanded to euthanize children, those who are incompetent and people who are not dying at all. And Canada who recently passed it is has already expanded it to prisoners.

I would like to point out a few of the people who will be hurt. Three groups that are the target for Assisted Suicide are the sick, the elderly and the disabled. While there are many other problems with this kind of law, I want to focus in on them.

It is said this is only for the sick and dying. One of the biggest problems is people who qualify for Assisted Suicide are not necessarily dying. Think of a 21-year-old otherwise healthy insulin dependent diabetic. He qualifies if he rejects his insulin. This would be the same for many other people with serious conditions, who take prescription medications. What about all the curable cancers? They qualify. What about incorrect medical diagnosis? With Assisted Suicide on the table these mistakes can be deadly.

I was at an oral submission on Assisted Suicide in Massachusetts a few years back when a gentleman named John Norton gave evidence, that as a young man he was diagnosed with ALS. He stated that had Assisted Suicide been legal at that time he would have used it. A few years in, the disease’s progression just stopped. Now in his late 70’s he stated he has had a great life with children and a grandchild. With Assisted Suicide on the table he would have lost all of that.

Steering is a big deal with all three of the groups that I mentioned. At that same Massachusetts proceeding, a doctor stated that Assisted Suicide laws were something he was in favor of. He continued with his points and ended by saying that He felt it was the responsibility for a good doctor “to guide people to make the right choice”. I do not think he intended to say that, but is there any doubt that this pro suicide doctor would try to persuade his patients to follow his wishes concerning their Assisted Suicide.

These laws are abusive in their very nature. To suggest to someone that they should kill themselves is abuse. My husband was terminally ill and I went to a lot of doctor appointments with him. If medical personnel were to suggest Assisted Suicide to him, he would have been devastated. While he never would have done that, it would be like saying to him, “You are worthless and should die. That is abuse! The proponents say that would never happen, but that did happen to an Oregon woman named Kathryn Judson. She had gone to a doctor’s appointment with her seriously ill husband and exhaustedly sunk into a chair where she overheard the doctor pitching Assisted Suicide to her husband with the clincher, “Think of your wife.” They left and never came back. The husband went on to live another five years.

Next seniors are at risk and very easily fall victim to coercion as the process is very open to that. In most states, heirs can be there for the request and even speak. Anyone can pick up the lethal dose. Once in the house all oversight is gone, there is no witness required at the death. Even if they struggled who would know. If that is not enough, the death certificate is falsified to reflect a natural death. All the information is sealed and unavailable to the public. Even if someone suspected foul play, the death certificate says no crime here. Taking advantage of seniors is epidemic in the States. Look at the case of Thomas Middleton. He made Tami Sawyer his trustee and moved into her home. Within a month he was dead by Oregon’s Assisted Suicide law. Two day after his death Ms. Sawyer listed his house and sold it and deposited the money into three companies she owned with her husband. We will never know if or how much coercion or foul play took place in this case.

Finally those with a disability are at risk. Most people that “qualify” for Assisted Suicide at that point in their life have a disability. Many with long term disabilities have been labeled terminal all their lives. Without meds, treatments, and assistance they would not survive. This is about disability. If you have a disability you are encouraged to give up, commit suicide. If, on the other hand, you are young and healthy, you are given suicide counseling. This is discrimination against people with disabilities. Why should they trust that they will not be coerced into Assisted Suicide, when they are already discouraged to seek treatments and are not treated fairly? When you think about it this is a law that is written just for them. It is a “special” carve out, for the sick, elderly and disabled.

In closing, I just want to add that Assisted Suicide has been rejected in over 100 legislative, ballot initiative and judicial attempts in the USA, including my state New Hampshire. The more it is studied the more uncomfortable people become with it.

Nancy Elliott 
Former three term NH State Representative 
Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition - USA

Rhode Island debates assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Rhode Island State House Health, Education and Welfare Committee had a public hearing on an assisted suicide bill on Wednesday March 23.

Nancy Elliott testifies against assisted suicide in Rhode Island.

Jennifer Bogden reported for the Providence Journal on the hearings. According to the report, Margaret Dore, an attorney from Washington State, where assisted suicide is legal, urged lawmakers to:

"consider the details of the bill. In some cases, a person who has insulin-dependent diabetes can be considered to have a terminal illness, she said."

"This bill encourages people to throw away their lives,"

John Kelly (picture) testifying,
last year, in Connecticut.

Linda Borg, reported in the Providence Journal, on the testimony by John Kelly, the New England regional coordinator for Not Dead Yet, who stated:

"Mistakes are so common when it comes to diagnoses, much less terminal diagnoses," 

"This is about putting the state's imprimatur on a program in which someone agrees that some people are better off dead."

Borg also reported that Thomas Nerney, director of the Institute for Health Quality and Ethics in Rhode Island testified that:

this bill makes "suicide a medical option (that) changes the very nature of medicine," adding that it would reverse centuries of trust between doctors and patients. 

"We have a terrible history in this country of segregating people with disabilities and pushing them into second-class citizenship," he said. Nerney worries that this bill might lead insurance companies and Medicaid to withhold treatment for terminally ill patients or withdraw coverage for expensive medications.

Bogden, in her report, also focused on Julie Lamin, the daughter of Susanna Brown. Brown couldn't make it to the State House Wednesday night to testify against the bill. The article reported:

The 75-year-old North Scituate resident has breast cancer that has spread to her bones, and she's struggling with her latest chemotherapy treatment. So she sent her daughter, Julie Lamin, to tell lawmakers this: 

"She insisted that I come and speak on her behalf because this bill insults the dignity of her life," 

"She wanted to tell you that her life is valuable until that last breath and that this bill really scares her ... because someone could say, 'Well you're going to be suffering, and we don't want you to suffer. You can end it early.'" 

Brown was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2008. Her family expected she might live a year, but with treatment she has experienced the "many joys and sorrows and everything that goes along with life since 2008," Lamin said. "If you take hope away, you get despair. And if you get despair, you just get more suffering."

Rhode Island is one of a dozen states that have debated assisted suicide in 2016. Currently, every state legislature that debated assisted suicide also rejected assisted suicide.

Nancy Elliott testifies against assisted suicide.

Nancy Elliott

This is the testimony by Nancy Elliott, a former three term state representative from New Hampshire and a member of the EPC- International team. Nancy was given two minutes to testify in Rhode Island.

Rhode Island debates assisted suicide.

---------
Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia opens a huge avenue for elder abuse, from gentle coercion from medical personal to things much more sinister, particularly when the senior has money. It also discriminates against people with disabilities as most people that would qualify for this act are at that time disabled. Healthy people are protected from suicide while disabled people are steered to it. (Link to an article about some of the abuses in Washington and Oregon). It also encourages suicide in the general population. If grandma and grandpa kill themselves, when life gets hard, so will their children and grandchildren. It is a bad public policy. 

When suicide is a "treatment" for certain illnesses, it creates a lower standard in our overall healthcare. When doctors end the life of their patients for having certain diseases, that discourages looking for new cures or treatments. This encourages the mentality to just give up and die. This bill as with the others I have read, is not about people that are necessarily dying. A young person with insulin dependent diabetes would qualify.

There are financial winners with Assisted Suicide. Where this is legal, state insurance has denied treatment to some patients, while offering to pay for their suicide. We all know someone that got an incorrect diagnosis from their doctor. With assisted suicide on the table, that diagnosis can lead to a deadly mistake, having the patient throw away their lives. At a recent Massachusetts hearing a doctor that was for assisted suicide was talking about what a good doctor was. He said that doctors need to "guide people to the right choice." As he is a proponent for assisted suicide is there any doubt what he or other doctors like him will steer their patients toward. For these reasons and many more we in the New Hampshire house have rejected assisted suicide/euthanasia. The last time was in 2014 where it was defeated on the floor of the House by 219 to 66. Liberals, Conservatives and Libertarians joined together to protect our citizens from this form of exploitation. I urge the Rhode Island House of Representatives to reject it too.

Nancy Elliott
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition - International - USA