*Oregon has had a safe, peaceful and painless experience with physician-assisted suicide.
*Oregon's law gives the state no resources or authority to investigate violations or abuses. It does not penalize doctors who fail to report assisting suicides and the state destroys the records and its paperwork after each annual report, making it impossible to verify those reports' conclusions independently. California’s proposed law is written the same way and remains unchanged. While prominent Democratic legislators have asked for amendments to help address these problems – their requests go unanswered.
In Oregon, the public must rely on independent investigations and the news media to report complications. For example, the British House of Lords report on assisted suicide in Oregon quoted numerous complications have been reported through the media. According to a report pro-assisted-suicide attorney Cynthia Barrett described a botched assisted-suicide death in Oregon. “The man was at home. There was no doctor there,” she said. “After he took it [the lethal dose], he began to have some physical symptoms. The symptoms were hard for his wife to handle. Well, she called 911. The guy ended up being taken by 911 to a local Portland hospital. Revived. In the middle of it. And taken to a local nursing facility. I don’t know if he went back home. He died shortly - some...period of time after that….”
Commenting on this botched assisted-suicide case, The Oregonian editorial columnist David Reinhard observed, “The Health Division knows nothing [about this case], though through no fault of its own. Why? Because the doctor who wrote the [assisted-suicide] prescription, the emergency medical technicians and the hospital reported nothing. Why? Because [the assisted-suicide law] reporting requirements are a sham.” NEXT>>
More Myths:
-Oregon data proves patients are of sound mind and given a psychological evaluation.
- Legalized assisted suicide only applies to terminally ill patients.
- This law would strengthen the doctor patient bond and open up discussions about end of life care.