Culture & Ethics Icon Culture & Ethics

Assisted Suicide Loses in Hawaii

Hawaii

Mass legalization of assisted suicide is not inevitable. It lost recently in New Mexico, and now add Hawaii to the “not inevitable” list. From the Hawaii News Now story:

A lack of specifics in the current draft of the controversial “Death with Dignity” bill is partially the reason some lawmakers decided to table the issue.

Lawmakers table controversial “death with dignity” bill following intense debate House Health Committee chair Della Au Bellati told a packed hearing the seven-member committee was killing the Medical Aid in Dying bill because it lacked specifics and didn’t do enough to balance the right to choose death with the need to protect vulnerable people.

“We’re concerned about safeguards, the record-keeping, the physician training to be able to do this prescribing for aid in dying,” Bellati said.

As readers might recall, I warned that the then-draft Hawaii measure would be substantially lacking in safeguards because, well, assisted suicide boosters only promote safeguards to mask their more radical agenda of moving toward a broad assisted suicide/euthanasia license, as seen in Canada and overseas.

But sometimes, as the trite saying goes, in their zeal, they get over their skis. That appears to have been the case in Hawaii.

Photo credit: bibianagonzalez via Pixabay.

Cross-posted at The Corner.

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.

Share

Tags

assisted suicideCanadaDeath with DignityeuthanasiaHawaiiLaw and CourtsNew Mexico