Compassionate choices?

Following that story below on end of life decisions, here’s a commentary highlighting another controversy in the life and death battle: What if your doctor wants to end your life?

Hospital patients undergoing treatment in California might eventually need to speculate about whether their doctor harbors homicidal intentions. A proposed law, Assembly Bill 374, the California Compassionate Choices Act, if passed, will legalize physician-assisted suicide, a practice outlawed for more than 700 years and forbidden by every state except Oregon. Proponents of the law seem disinterested that the American Medical Association has concluded “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer.” By obfuscating the line between healing and harming, society may lose faith in the medical community.

Regrettably, the poor and mentally ill are the most susceptible victims of state-sponsored doctor homicides. Those without money might resort to physician-assisted suicide as a means to spare their family the severe financial costs attendant to end-of-life health care. Likewise, AB 374 does not require hospitals to report vital statistics about patients who choose the procedure, which, if made public, could facilitate efforts to challenge the disproportionate impact of physician-assisted suicide on minorities and the poor.

Exactly. These facts – like those about the disproportionate impact of abortion on that same demographic – are generally off the public radar.

Until there’s legislation up for a vote. Time to think about details…and loopholes.

AB 374 also fails to provide effective safeguards to protect a depressed or mentally ill patient from giving into suicidal impulses. Research indicates depressed and mentally ill patients usually withdraw a physician-assisted suicide request if they are properly treated. Yet, the proposed law leaves psychiatric evaluation to the treating physician rather than require the patient to undergo a mandatory psychiatric evaluation. Having a physician assess a patient’s mental stability is ineffective because a mentally ill patient could just shop around for a physician willing to finish them off.

We have creeping euthanasia in this country. But it’s a lot worse in other places, and we only have to look at their societies to see the consequences of making dying a choice….whether it’s yours or not.