AB 651: Language Perversion by Promoters of Assisted Suicide
Advocates for assisted suicide know that when their agenda is described accurately and descriptively--they lose. So, they are ever about the task of trying to come up with new gooey euphemisms to describe assisted suicide--to be, if you will, the sugar that helps the hemlock go down.
Latest case in point: AB 651 in CA. The assisted suicide legalization bill has been amended to use even more perfumed language than before to describe assisted suicide. The bill used to authorize terminally ill adults to "make a request for medication for the purpose of ending his or her life in a humane and dignified manner."
But, apparently even that boilerplate of assisted suicide bills is too graphic. The bill now reads,"...make a request for medication prescribed pursuant to this bill to provide comfort with an assurance of peaceful dying if suffering becomes unbearable." Of course, unbearable suffering isn't defined so the term is rendered meaningless and becomes whatever the suicidal patient deemed it to be.
Why the change? Probably, the sponsors of this horrible bill are either trying to fool some harried legislators into believing they are just voting for improved comfort care, or they are providing cover for lawmakers who want to vote for the bill but don't want to admit they are supporting assisted suicide. Either way, it is pathetic and a classic example of why the American people have such a low regard for the legislative process.
In any event, I am testifying in front of the California Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow at an "informational" hearing on the bill. I can't discuss the particulars of AB 651, but am supposed to get into how assisted suicide might impact our perception of the value of human life. I'll post my testimony when a link becomes available.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:33 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Nope. But that's what they want you to think.
I agree, they want us to think "assisted suicide" is just another one of many viable treatment options to choose from. I question how a lethal dose of medication prescribed intentionally by the same medical professional who is supposedly trusted to provide care for the patient, ever can truly treat the patient's suffering?
What is dignified about taking a prescribed overdose of medication?
Whether assisted suicide (or whatever flowery statement used by the legislature to hide the true meaning of the words) is from a legally prescribed handful of pills or from a friends gun, how is that not someone causing or providing the agent of another human beings death?
Both as a nurse and as a person with a chronic debilitating disease, I think people should never suffer needlessly . But I see no need to kill the patient in order to kill the pain, even when the patient does not know where and how to obtain the resources to control their suffering.
Sounds more like they're just trying to make the bill more restrictive in what it permits.
They're getting the phrase “if suffering becomes unbearable” in there, making it clear that the bill only permits medication in the case of “unbearable suffering,” and not upon any whim of the patient. How much of a limiting factor that becomes is, of course, dependent on how the courts interpret “unbearable suffering,” but it does at least appear to be an attempt to create some limitation.
Of the other changes, “comfort with an assurance of peaceful dying” isn't really that much more flowery or euphemistic than “ending his or her life in a humane and dignified manner.” (Hell, the former actually contains the word “dying.”) I'm not sure what “prescribed pursuant to this bill” translates to in legalese, so it might just be extra verbiage. Or it might in some way limit the types of medication made available in response to the patient's request to those somehow identified elsewhere in this bill; I don't know.
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