September 2017

Euthanasia: a failure of memory and imagination
MercatorNet 28 September 2017
Family First Comment: Part of a larger article on the problems of euthanasia – but shows the clear evidence that the slippery slope is well and truly greased by passing assisted suicide laws
Pro-euthanasia advocates also deny the reality of the slippery slopes it’s opened up in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The “logical slippery slope” – the expansion of the situations where euthanasia is allowed – has constantly enlarged. In the Netherlands, euthanasia is no longer restricted to competent adults with unbearable suffering able to provide informed consent. It’s now available to children, newborn babies with serious disabilities, and people with dementia and mental illness, such as depression, without physical illness. There are movements to legalise access to inflicted death for people “over 70 and tired of life” or who feel they have a “completed life”. Likewise, after just over a year of legalised euthanasia in Quebec, there are calls for it to be extended to “euthanasia on demand”, that is, that there should be no requirements for access by a competent person.
Instances of the “practical slippery slope” – euthanasia not in compliance with the law allowing it – are legion.
Safeguards are ineffective to prevent slippery slopes. As British moral philosopher Dame Mary Warnock has put it in another context, “you cannot successfully block a slippery slope except by a fixed and invariable obstacle”. In governing dying and death that obstacle is the rule that we must not intentionally kill another human being.
In short, once euthanasia becomes normalised slippery slopes are unavoidable and the number of deaths resulting from euthanasia constantly substantially increases. Belgium has had a 41 percent increase in four years 2011 to 2015. In 2002, when euthanasia was legalized in Belgium, there were 24 cases, in 2015 there were 2022. In Flanders in 2013, 4.6 percent of all deaths were by euthanasia and an additional 1.7 percent (approximately 1000 deaths) were without request. Unreported deaths were not included in these statistics. In the Netherlands, the number of deaths from euthanasia has increased by at least 10 percent per year since 2007 and is now 1 in 25 of all deaths, not including unreported deaths, probably at least 1000 deaths per year.
READ MORE: https://www.mercatornet.com/careful/view/euthanasia-a-failure-of-memory-and-imagination/20485?utm_source=MercatorNet&utm_campaign=2a114f22a7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e581d204e2-2a114f22a7-124861319

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Media Release – American College of Pediatricians 20 September 2017
Family First Comment: A superb response from medical professionals in the USA.
“Physicians recognize that every attempted suicide is a desperate cry for help. Depression, even suicidal depression, is eminently treatable. Depression in the context of terminal illness is likewise treatable. It is absurd to carve out “terminal” as a special class for which physicians must suspend their ethical standards of medical care.”
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) and the American Association of Prolife Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) applaud our 150,000 colleagues in the American College of Physicians (ACP) for boldly opposing the contradictory practice of physician-assisted suicide in their recently released position statement, Ethics and the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide. 
Assisting in or directly causing the death of our patients violates the long standing medical ethics principle of “first do no harm.” Killing is diametrically opposed to the given role of physicians as healers.  Disguised as promoting “patient autonomy,” these laws permit physicians a very active role in ending lives. 
Assisted suicide laws presume the novel possibility of a benevolent role for physicians in “carrying out a patient’s wishes” to be killed. Physicians are not mere vending machines or indentured servants obligated to provide whatever is requested regardless of the ethics involved. Doctors are obligated to make an independent judgment of the propriety of their every act. Only a very twisted form of logic would argue that physicians’ duty of beneficence makes them appropriate agents of suicide.  
Dr. Donna Harrison, Executive Director of AAPLOG noted that physician-assisted suicide fractures the trust between a doctor and her patient, and facilitates the exploitation of our most vulnerable patients. 
“When the physician tasked with healing also carries a license to kill, how can any patient trust her physician to place her health and best interests first?” She continued, “Also, the potential for abuse of our elderly and disabled patients increases since assisted suicide laws allow abusive caregivers to legally obtain lethal drugs.”  
Physicians recognize that every attempted suicide is a desperate cry for help. Depression, even suicidal depression, is eminently treatable. Depression in the context of terminal illness is likewise treatable. It is absurd to carve out “terminal” as a special class for which physicians must suspend their ethical standards of medical care. 
Dr. Cretella, President of ACPeds stated, 
“As physicians, we are privileged to accompany our patients through joyful times of vigorous health, as well as times of sorrow and illness. We cure sometimes, but provide care and comfort always. Physicians are healers not killers.” 
The physicians of the ACPeds, AAPLOG, and the ACP stand firmly united in opposition to the practice of physician-assisted suicide.
 
 

One of the main reasons that politicians have rejected previous attempts to decriminalise assisted suicide / euthanasia is that they realised that ‘safeguards’, while sounding good, would not guarantee the protection required for vulnerable people including the disabled, elderly, depressed or anxious, and those who feel themselves to be a burden or are under financial pressure. The international evidence backs up these concerns, and explains why so few countries have made any changes to the law around this issue. There are contradictory messages when society rightly wants to take a zero-tolerance approach to suicide, yet at the same time wants to approve a person taking their life. The potential for abuse and flouting of procedural safeguards is a further strong argument against assisted suicide. The solution is to ensure a palliative care regime that is fully funded and world class. That’s where the politicians’ focus should be. The recent inquiry into assisted suicide / euthanasia had 16,000+ submissions (80% of all submissions) opposing assisted suicide / euthanasia.
READ MORE: www.RejectAssistedSuicide.nz

(click on image/s to download PDF)

Stuff co.nz 15 September 2017
Family First Comment: “If our fight against suicide is to be effective we simply must be able to explain why some physical suffering justifies death while the mental torture that is severe depression, or bipolar, or schizophrenia, does not. Don’t all involve horrendous, prolonged mental or physical pain? Don’t all involve loss of dignity at certain points? Don’t all involve loss of quality of life? Don’t all involve a shortened life expectancy?
When compassion means allowing some to choose death to relieve suffering, how can it also mean convincing others to live through it?
If we cannot answer these questions, then surely, we have to face the fact that what we are fighting with one hand, we are feeding with the other.”
OPINION: One week out from a general election, our politicians just can’t seem to stay away from life and death issues.
Last week, it was abortion. This week, National MP Simon O’Connor got himself into hot water over the issue of euthanasia. He criticised the Labour leader for supporting both a zero suicide rate and euthanasia laws.
His boss, Bill English, texted him to tell him he was wrong to link the two, which makes you wonder whether English actually read the report on euthanasia that O’Connor, along with politicians of other stripes, produced recently.
On page 43 the report deals explicitly with the arguments differentiating suicide from euthanasia. The section points out that one of the world’s most important health organisations recognises that it is actually very difficult to do so.
“The World Health Organization acknowledges significant definitional difficulties in its most recent publication on the issue”, we read. “In its 2014 report, ‘Preventing Suicide: A global imperative’, it defines suicide as the act of deliberately killing oneself.”
That definition describes precisely what New Zealand euthanasia laws will aid people to do.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/96866345/narelle-henson-complex-matters-of-life-and-death

TVNZ One News 15 September 2017
Two thirds of New Zealanders are in favour of euthanasia, when it comes to patients with terminal illnesses.
That’s according to data from 1 NEWS’ online election tool Vote Compass.

First Things 1 September 2017
Family First Comment: An excellent insight…..
“When some suicides are promoted in media, law, and popular culture as a social good—as assisted suicides are—that can have an unintended effect on suicidal people who do not qualify for “assistance” under the law….
“Due in part to the media’s promotion campaign, suicide has become a siren song attracting the ill, aged, and despairing, while potentially endangering the lives of suicidal people whose circumstances are—for now—outside official “death with dignity” paradigms.”
This is precisely why the media’s glamorization of assisted suicide is so harmful. Take the example of Brittany Maynard. Most readers will recall that Maynard, a beautiful young woman, attained international A-list celebrity status when she decided to commit assisted suicide after contracting terminal brain cancer. People declared her a hero in a cover story:

For the past 29 years, Brittany Maynard has lived a fearless life—running half marathons, traveling through Southeast Asia for a year and even climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. So, it’s no surprise she is facing her death the same way. On Monday, Maynard will launch an online video campaign with the nonprofit Compassion and Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy organization, to fight for expanding Death with Dignity laws nationwide.

The madness didn’t end there. CNN named her an “extraordinary person” of 2014: “Her example sparked a widespread debate about the rights of people with incurable illnesses to determine how and when they will die. Maynard followed through on her plans in November, dying on her own terms.” The message is clear: Dying naturally is for chumps. Living with significant limitations is undignified. Assisted suicide is courageous.
The most recent example of this phenomenon comes out of the Netherlands, where an elderly couple received joint euthanasia. There was a time, not so long ago, when the suicides of elderly couples were considered a tragedy. Not anymore. Notice the admiring tone of the Washington Post story describing the deaths:

Nic and Trees Elderhorst knew exactly how they wanted to die. They were both 91 years old and in declining health. Nic Elderhorst suffered a stroke in 2012 and more recently, his wife, Trees Elderhorst, was diagnosed with dementia.…Neither wanted to live without the other, or leave this world alone.

So the two, who…had been together 65 years, shared a last word, and a kiss, then died last month hand-in-hand—in a double euthanasia allowed under Dutch law, according to [the Dutch newspaper] De Gelderlander. “Dying together was their deepest wish,” their daughters told the newspaper, according to an English translation.

Such media plaudits have the potential to hurt others. Kheriaty provides an example:

The case of fourteen-year-old Valentina Maureira, a Chilean girl who suffered from cystic fibrosis, illustrates both effects while highlighting the power of social influences. Maureira made a YouTube video begging her government to legalize assisted suicide. She admitted that the idea to end her life began after she heard about the case of Brittany Maynard, the twenty-nine-year-old woman who campaigned for the legalization of assisted suicide before ending her own life.

Maureira did not have access to assisted suicide, because it was illegal in Chile and she was a minor. Good thing. She changed her mind after another patient with cystic fibrosis intervened and convinced her that her life was worth continuing. Had Maureira been able to find help committing suicide before then, she never would have known that she would later have wanted to live.
But that doesn’t resonate. Showing the media’s lack of true empathy, Kheriaty writes, “Her father complained that the media were only interested in her story when she wanted to die.”
If you doubt my thesis, compare the reportage about the death of Lauren Hill, a young woman who died naturally of the same cancer that caused Maynard to pursue and promote suicide. Hill struggled to continue playing college basketball—which garnered some coverage in the sports press—and raised money for cancer research. Yet despite promoting a far more positive life-with-dignity message than Maynard did, Hill received an obituary in People of only 196 words. People devoted 1196 laudatory words—huge for that publication—to Maynard in the wake of her suicide, clearly violating the World Health Organization’s media guidelines that outlets not glamorize suicides.
Due in part to the media’s promotion campaign, suicide has become a siren song attracting the ill, aged, and despairing, while potentially endangering the lives of suicidal people whose circumstances are—for now—outside official “death with dignity” paradigms.
READ MORE: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/09/how-the-media-promote-some-suicides

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