Support SB 1070
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last night I was asked to write a letter to the Idaho Senate in support of SB 1070 written by David Ripley of Idaho Chooses Life. Below is the letter I wrote in support of the bill. To summarize; SB 1070 makes it a felony to assist in a suicide, plus revokes the licenses of physicians who do so. It also authorizes court injunctions against anyone “reasonably believed to be about to violate” the new law. Part two of my series, “Progressives know how to get it done,” will be published next week.
I encourage each of you to contact your State Senator in support of this bill.
I wholeheartedly support the passage of SB 1070.
Physicians should not be allowed to intentionally kill their patients, either by providing the means of death or ending the patient’s life by their doctor’s hands. There is a tremendous distinction between allowing someone to die naturally when medical technology cannot stop the dying process and causing someone to die through assisted suicide or euthanasia.
By definition, the act of physician-assisted suicide involves a medical doctor who provides a patient the means to kill him or herself, usually by an overdose of prescription medication.
Do we really want to go there in Idaho?
The current policy debate in the Idaho legislature involves physician-assisted suicide; not euthanasia. However, the best data available on the subject comes from the Netherlands where the two practices go hand-in-hand. By the way, in the Netherlands, both are illegal but when conducted under certain guidelines the courts turn their heads.
In the Netherlands, physicians engage in both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Dutch studies document that the practice of euthanasia is 10 times more common than physician-assisted suicide. What is even more disturbing in the Dutch studies is that among all euthanasia deaths, in 1990, approximately one quarter involved patients who did not give their explicit consent to be killed.
On September 10, 1991, the results of the first official government study of the practice of Dutch euthanasia were released. The two volume report is referred to as the Remmelink Report.
For the sake of clarity; in this report, the direct and intentional termination of a patient’s life, performed with the patient’s consent is termed “voluntary euthanasia”; without the patient’s consent, is termed “involuntary euthanasia.”
According to the report, in 1990, 2,300 people died as the result of doctors killing them upon request or after receiving the person’s voluntary consent. However, 1,040 people (an average of 3 per day) died from involuntary euthanasia, meaning that doctors actively killed these patients without the patients’ knowledge or consent.
According to the Report of the Royal Dutch Society of Medicine, the main argument in favor of euthanasia in Holland has always been the need for more patient autonomy; that patients have the right to make their own end-of-life decisions. Yet, as the studies show, Dutch euthanasia practice has ultimately given doctors, not patients, more and more power. The question of whether a patient should live or die is often decided exclusively by a doctor or a team of physicians.
[H. Jochemsen, trans., "Report of the Royal Dutch Society of Medicine on 'Life-Terminating Actions with Incompetent Patients, Part 1: Severely Handicapped Newborns.'" Issues in Law & Medicine, vol. 7, no.3 (1991), p. 366.]
In Holland, the slope has indeed gotten very slippery. According to the report, some Dutch doctors have gone as far as to provide “self-help programs” for adolescents to end their lives. Also, cost containment has arisen as one of the main aims of Dutch health care policy creating concerns that the “right to die” has become the “duty to die.”
Could the abuses witnessed in Holland be repeated in Idaho? Do we want to create a climate in our state where doctors make end of life decisions for us? What’s next; adolescent “self help programs” to assist teens to end their lives in our state? And as health care costs continue to rise, could the “right to die” become the “duty to die?”
I wholeheartedly support the passage of SB 1070.
Note: A summary on the Remmelink Report, published by the Patience Rights Council’s International Task Force, Steubenville, Ohio, is attached to this letter. Link to the website http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/fctholl.htm
Sincerely Yours,
Gary N. Brown, President
Idaho Values Alliance
