A recent NPR radio summary of an angry protest in Belgium over a controversial euthanasia incident likely disturbed any number of unwitting US listeners. The broadcast explained that a Belgian doctor had just resigned in anger and disgust from the country’s euthanasia commission after a dementia patient who never specifically asked to die was euthanized at the family’s request.
On January 31, 2018 to the surprise and delight of many, an Alaska House Health Committee approved 5-2 a measure to enact MAID in Alaska, HB 54.
One of the more confounding reasons cited by opponents of MAID is the notion, that the timeline called for under the statutory enactments that two doctors believe the applicant is likely to pass within six months due to a terminal condition, is at best an unreliable, if not impossible guesstimate.
Opponents of MAID are quick to mischaracterize the exercise as Physician Assisted Suicide. It serves their narrative that a terminal patient seeking release from suffering, lack of autonomy, utter helplessness and futility in the face of the medically proclaimed inevitable should be viewed in the same prism as a vigorous young individual in excellent health who succumbs to a moment’s despair over a temporary setback.
Among the many hoary predictions of MAID opponents is the notion that enacting Death with Dignity legislation will usher in a culture of suicide. During the debate in the late 1990s in Oregon and Washington, one often read dire predictions that passage of the legislation would make those states suicide meccas and that soon the local medical communities would be swamped by folks availing themselves.
Our two Board members have recently been published arguing the logic and compassion underpinning Death with Dignity legislation, such as HB789. Dr William Hazzard had his Letter to the Editor of the Winston Salem Journal published in early June in which he discusses the case of his sister Ra, who used the law in Oregon because of its unavailability here in NC.
On June 9, 2016 California’s version of Death with Dignity legislation (a/k/a Medical Aid in Dying), the End of Life Option Act, went into effect, following a contorted enactment over the course of several years.
Our own Lisa Roach made news recently as she finishes her third year of Law School at Wake Forest University. For more, read here
With the introduction of HB 789 on April 11, Rep Pricey Harrison and her colleagues Hon Fisher, Hon Meyer and Hon Insko, have done their part to advance the legislation.
North Carolina has now become the latest state considering enactment of Death with Dignity legislation. On April 11, 2017, four State Representatives, Harrison (D-57), Fisher (D-114), Meyer (D-50) and Insko (D-56), introduced HB789, almost exactly two years after the introduction of HB611.
It is not hard to identify the high water mark for the opposition to Death with Dignity legislation: it was June 26, 1997, the day Justice Rehnquist announced a unanimous Supreme Court’s judgment in Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997).
