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In the U.S., Euthanasia Steams Toward Anything Goes

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The media and many other observers continue to pretend that the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement is only about terminal illness. But events here and abroad demonstrate that isn’t true. Meanwhile, slowly the camouflage is coming off. For example, a proposed constitutional amendment in Colorado pretends to be about allowing doctors to assist suicides of the terminally ill.

But it would really permit doctors, nurses, even chiropractors, to help kill nearly anyone (with the possible exception of children) — for any reason they want to die — and would authorize active euthanasia. From “Liberty at Life’s End (Medical Sovereignty)“:

Coloradans do not currently have the liberty to pursue happiness by obtaining a medical professional’s assistance in achieving a peaceful death thru the administration of oral or intravenous drugs.

(3) The people of Colorado hereby proclaim that mentally competent adult residents of Colorado are Sovereign in the matter of personal medical decisions and have the liberty at life’s end to set the time and tone of their own deaths, asking permission of no person or organization.?

“Life’s end” clearly could mean because the person is committing suicide or being euthanized, since the “right” would include “administration” of lethal drugs. Nor would the killers have to necessary even be medical professionals:

The people of Colorado hereby further declare that any person or group assisting a Sovereign as defined in Section 3 above obtain Medical Aid In Dying is immune from prosecution upon presentation of acceptable documentation of the voluntary nature of the action.

And the person killed wouldn’t have to be competent:

The Sovereign’s right to obtain Medical Aid In Dying is not limited to the maintenance of mental competency only, but can be durable into incompetency if desired and documented.

Meanwhile, in California, the new version of the assisted suicide legalization bill gives an open license to doctors by preventing the possibility of meaningful oversight or transparency. From Assembly Bill X2-15:

The State Department of Public Health shall collect and review the information submitted pursuant to Section 443.9.

Sounds reasonable. But get this:

The information collected shall be confidential and shall be collected in a manner that protects the privacy of the patient, the patient’s family, and any medical provider or pharmacist involved with the patient under the provisions of this part. The information shall not be disclosed, discoverable, or compelled to be produced in any civil, criminal, administrative, or other proceeding.

In other words, nothing could be done with the “information” collected. It couldn’t be used in the prosecution of a doctor who, let’s say, assisted the suicide of a person who was coerced or not terminally ill.

In short, the assisted suicide movement’s ultimate goal is anything goes and death on demand. The supposed limitations and protections are merely temporary expediencies.

Image: � mediagram / Dollar Photo Club.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.

Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

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