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Points to Remember - AB 374 - Assisted Suicide
1. Assisted Suicide is opposed by the American Medical
Association, the California Medical Association, the California Hospice
and Palliative Care Association, the California Disability Alliance,
the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, the League of United
Latin American Citizens, La Raza Roundtable of Santa Clara County,
and the Sacramento NAACP, as well as numerous other organizations
representing the poor, uninsured, and people with disabilities.
2. It is remarkable that the legislature is considering assisted suicide
at a time when millions of low-income Californians and their families
still have no access to health care. Is the legislature saying to
low-income people, "We won't provide health care, but we will make
it easier for you to commit suicide when you're at your most vulnerable
and uninsured"? Large numbers of people, particularly among those
less privileged in society, would be at significant risk of harm.
3. The six month prognosis threshold used in this bill and under the
Oregon law is generally not viewed as medically useful: Many individuals
given this prognosis frequently live longer and even recover with
appropriate treatment. People with disabilities and chronic illnesses
often live many years after a "terminal" diagnosis, yet initial depression
and temporary thoughts of suicide are common. Physicians who specialize
in end-of-life care know that these feelings are transitory, and that
patients respond to support from health care professionals, family
and hospice workers. But legalizing assisted suicide would allow anxious,
depressed patients to become trapped by their own request for death,
and die in a state of unrecognized terror, even though the depression
can be treated in most cases.
4. Most of those who died under Oregon's assisted suicide law participated
in the lethal procedure because they had psychological distress, not
because they were in pain. Statistics from Oregon confirm that pain
is not the reason most users of assisted suicide resort to it.
5. The pretense that assisted suicide will be limited to the terminally
ill is a protection only on paper that will quickly be breached, as
has already happened in Oregon. The so-called "safeguards" in the
Oregon law, touted by assisted suicide proponents, are easily avoided.
For example, if one's doctors say no, a family can shop for another
doctor who will say yes. In the Netherlands, the practice of full
blown euthanasia (lethal injections by doctors) and assisted suicide
for people with terminal illness has spread to individuals with chronic
illness, people with mental health distress, and even sick and disabled
children and newborns.
6. The Oregon approach is not something California should copy. In
Oregon, doctors who fail to report assisting in suicides face no penalty.
The Oregon law gives the state no resources or even the authority
to investigate violations or abuses. The state destroys its paperwork
after each annual report, so it's impossible to independently verify
their conclusions. The press has reported troubling cases including
examples of "doctor shopping," the medication failing, coercion, and
use with people who do not meet the eligibility criteria, but none
of this has ever appeared in the official public record. Because of
these limitations, it is impossible to know what abuses and irregularities
exist. The Oregonian, the state's major newspaper, complained in 2005
that the law's reporting system "seems rigged to avoid finding" the
answers. Yet the California bill contains these same serious flaws.
7. Assisted suicide purports to be about free choice and self-determination,
but there is significant danger that many people would take this escape
due to external pressure. For example, elderly individuals who don't
want to be a financial or caretaking burden on their families will
sometimes choose assisted death, as Oregon's own statistical reports
indicate. Furthermore, research has documented widespread elder abuse
in this country. The perpetrators are very often family members (two-thirds,
according to the California Attorney General's Office). Such abuse
could easily lead to pressures on elders to "choose" assisted suicide,
as the Oregon news media have brought to light. Despite extensive
efforts by California's legislature and law enforcement to deter elder
abuse, assisted suicide could facilitate the ultimate abuse.
8. Assisted suicide poses real danger to people with new disabilities
or chronic diseases. Research overwhelmingly shows that people with
new disabilities often initially experience despondency and even suicidal
feelings, but later adapt well and find great satisfaction in their
lives. Working through this initial despondency often takes longer
than the mere two-week waiting period in Oregon's law and the California
bill. In that early period, before one learns the truth about how
good one's quality of life can be, it would be all too easy to succumb
to this irrevocable step.
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