We stand at a cultural crossroads, the intersection of the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death. At this critical juncture, the choices we make matter, now and forever. Therefore, the members of Life is Worth Living, a lay apostolate, have chosen to promote the Culture of Life.
Our mission is to strive to affirm -- in thought, word, and deed -- the infinite preciousness of human life; to encourage service to others rather than radical self-interest; and to promote a climate of public opinion that recognizes the right of all human beings to life, respect, compassionate care, appropriate medical treatment, and equality under the law.
Historic Symposium Focuses on Winning Strategy to Fight Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
posted by Julie Grimstad
Thursday, May 22, 2008
December 1, 2007
Over three hundred people from various nations met in Toronto, Ontario for a history-making event, The First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Current Issues, Future Directions. Hosted by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada (EPCC), the symposium was co-sponsored by diverse groups from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom as well as the Archdiocese of Toronto. With one thing in common—opposition to legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide—disability rights advocates, medical and legal professionals, pro-life activists, people of various religious faiths and atheists came together to learn from the experts, find common ground and strategize
Presenters exposed the new directions and strategies of the movement to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. According to Wesley Smith, who is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, attorney, international lecturer and author of several books on bioethics (just to name a few of his credentials), “The euthanasia movement has become much more sophisticated in the last few years.” The “crackpot element” is no longer driving the movement. It is now “a professional model” and “an elitist establishment movement” whose pitch is “just a little extra choice for people who are dying.”
The thread running through all the presentations was the urgent need to establish a common response to this world-wide threat. Many of the speakers were key participants in coalitions that defeated pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide legislation in the US and UK. They outlined the lessons they’ve learned.
Use the Right Language
One lesson learned is that “all social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering,” stated Rita Marker, attorney and executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. “The words used in a debate often determine the outcome of the debate.” Assisted suicide activists blame their failures on the use of the word “suicide” and insist on using what they call “value-neutral” terms. Marker advised symposium participants to always use the term “assisted suicide,” never terms such as “assisted dying” or “aid-in-dying.” The “s” word is powerful.
Dr. Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing Alliance in the UK, helped defeat the “Joffe” bill, an assisted suicide measure. As an example of effective use of language, he cited a disabled person’s sound bite: “We don’t want assisted dying. We want assisted living!”
Dr. Paul Byrne, a neonatologist and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Medical University of Ohio, insisted that the term “euthanasia,” which literally means “good death,” should not be used. The term “imposed death,” he said, is more accurate
Emphasize Bad Consequences
Dr. Saunders, as well as the disability rights advocates who spoke, pointed out that changing the law will put pressure on vulnerable people to choose death rather than be “a burden” on others. Also, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) will be used to contain healthcare costs. Oregon pays for PAS as “comfort care” while refusing to pay for certain types of medical care for cancer patients.
In 2007, Dr. Robert Orr helped defeat a bill that would have legalized PAS in Vermont for persons with a life-expectancy of less than six months. “Inaccuracy of diagnosis,” he said, should be emphasized. He cited Art Buchwald, who was suffering from kidney failure and refused dialysis. He entered hospice in February 2006 expecting to die, but checked himself out several months later. Buchwald lived for nearly a year and wrote a book entitled “Too Soon to Say Goodbye.”
Dr. Orr outlined how, once legalized, euthanasia in the Netherlands slowly expanded from being permitted for patients who are competent and suffering to being imposed on “patients with no free will” and even infants with disabilities. The slippery slope is real.
Cheryl Eckstein, founder of Compassionate Healthcare Network (Canada) gave a rundown of Canadian “mercy-killing” cases. She said that the notion of “‘compassionate homicide’ is about as nonsensical as ‘loving rape.’” And Dr. Bill Toffler, national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, lamented that his beautiful state of Oregon has “sadly become known for something that is deeply disordered.”
Personal Stories
As one participant said, “The shortest distance between a person and the truth is a story.”
Soft-spoken Alison Davis, representing No Less Human, a disability rights group in England, told her story. Because of her disability, she has constant pain and is dependent on morphine for relief. She told of times when she had wanted to die due to suffering and depression. If the UK had allowed assisted suicide, she expressed doubt that she would be here today. Davis emphasized the danger of legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide: “Pain control is available, but it takes time and effort. Why bother if killing the patient is equally acceptable?”
Henk Reitsema, an articulate young man from the Netherlands representing Cry for Life, told the compelling story of his grandfather’s death by involuntary euthanasia in a Dutch nursing home. He said, “The way my grandfather died might be described as ‘palliation with the side effect of death,’” which is a common way of imposed death in his country. We “seem to have made the suffering of pain the only crime worth punishing with the death penalty,” declared Reitsema.
The familiar story of Terri Schindler-Schiavo’s dehydration death in a Florida hospice was related by her brother Bobby Schindler. There was not a dry eye in the room as he described Terri’s last days and the suffering her family endured and continues to endure because of her cruel death.
Dr. Paul Byrne’s topic was “brain death.” He told of several cases that compelled him to begin evaluating whether “brain death” is true death, or not. The first was in 1975. Joseph, a premature infant, had been on a ventilator for six weeks and an EEG was interpreted as “consistent with cerebral death.” Dr. Byrne did not turn off the ventilator; rather, he continued treatment. Joseph is now married with children and works as a fireman and paramedic.
Get Involved
Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are now “medical treatment” in the Netherlands and Belgium. Switzerland does not penalize assisted suicide so long as it is not done for selfish motives, but physicians cannot be involved. In the U.S., PAS is legal only in Oregon. Opposition coalitions have defeated 89 efforts to legalize it in other states.
Compassion & Choices, the U.S. organization leading efforts to legalize PAS, has adopted the slogan “Oregon Plus One.” PAS promoters are determined to legalize assisted suicide in at least one more state in 2008. They are targeting Washington State in particular. Booth Gardner, popular former governor of Washington who now has Parkinson’s disease, is putting his popularity and considerable fortune behind the campaign to gather the 225,000 signatures needed by July to place a PAS initiative on next November’s ballot.
Rita Marker warned, “Any place that assisted suicide passes will affect the whole world.” Everyone who opposes assisted suicide, she said, “is a Washingtonian for the next year. You are important. Get involved.”
Conclusion
The sponsors and organizers, in particular Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the EPCC, deserve hearty congratulations for the shining success of this first of its kind symposium.
Over three hundred people from various nations met in Toronto, Ontario for a history-making event, The First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Current Issues, Future Directions. Hosted by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada (EPCC), the symposium was co-sponsored by diverse groups from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom as well as the Archdiocese of Toronto. With one thing in common—opposition to legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide—disability rights advocates, medical and legal professionals, pro-life activists, people of various religious faiths and atheists came together to learn from the experts, find common ground and strategize
Presenters exposed the new directions and strategies of the movement to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. According to Wesley Smith, who is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, attorney, international lecturer and author of several books on bioethics (just to name a few of his credentials), “The euthanasia movement has become much more sophisticated in the last few years.” The “crackpot element” is no longer driving the movement. It is now “a professional model” and “an elitist establishment movement” whose pitch is “just a little extra choice for people who are dying.”
The thread running through all the presentations was the urgent need to establish a common response to this world-wide threat. Many of the speakers were key participants in coalitions that defeated pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide legislation in the US and UK. They outlined the lessons they’ve learned.
Use the Right Language
One lesson learned is that “all social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering,” stated Rita Marker, attorney and executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. “The words used in a debate often determine the outcome of the debate.” Assisted suicide activists blame their failures on the use of the word “suicide” and insist on using what they call “value-neutral” terms. Marker advised symposium participants to always use the term “assisted suicide,” never terms such as “assisted dying” or “aid-in-dying.” The “s” word is powerful.
Dr. Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing Alliance in the UK, helped defeat the “Joffe” bill, an assisted suicide measure. As an example of effective use of language, he cited a disabled person’s sound bite: “We don’t want assisted dying. We want assisted living!”
Dr. Paul Byrne, a neonatologist and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Medical University of Ohio, insisted that the term “euthanasia,” which literally means “good death,” should not be used. The term “imposed death,” he said, is more accurate
Emphasize Bad Consequences
Dr. Saunders, as well as the disability rights advocates who spoke, pointed out that changing the law will put pressure on vulnerable people to choose death rather than be “a burden” on others. Also, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) will be used to contain healthcare costs. Oregon pays for PAS as “comfort care” while refusing to pay for certain types of medical care for cancer patients.
In 2007, Dr. Robert Orr helped defeat a bill that would have legalized PAS in Vermont for persons with a life-expectancy of less than six months. “Inaccuracy of diagnosis,” he said, should be emphasized. He cited Art Buchwald, who was suffering from kidney failure and refused dialysis. He entered hospice in February 2006 expecting to die, but checked himself out several months later. Buchwald lived for nearly a year and wrote a book entitled “Too Soon to Say Goodbye.”
Dr. Orr outlined how, once legalized, euthanasia in the Netherlands slowly expanded from being permitted for patients who are competent and suffering to being imposed on “patients with no free will” and even infants with disabilities. The slippery slope is real.
Cheryl Eckstein, founder of Compassionate Healthcare Network (Canada) gave a rundown of Canadian “mercy-killing” cases. She said that the notion of “‘compassionate homicide’ is about as nonsensical as ‘loving rape.’” And Dr. Bill Toffler, national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, lamented that his beautiful state of Oregon has “sadly become known for something that is deeply disordered.”
Personal Stories
As one participant said, “The shortest distance between a person and the truth is a story.”
Soft-spoken Alison Davis, representing No Less Human, a disability rights group in England, told her story. Because of her disability, she has constant pain and is dependent on morphine for relief. She told of times when she had wanted to die due to suffering and depression. If the UK had allowed assisted suicide, she expressed doubt that she would be here today. Davis emphasized the danger of legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide: “Pain control is available, but it takes time and effort. Why bother if killing the patient is equally acceptable?”
Henk Reitsema, an articulate young man from the Netherlands representing Cry for Life, told the compelling story of his grandfather’s death by involuntary euthanasia in a Dutch nursing home. He said, “The way my grandfather died might be described as ‘palliation with the side effect of death,’” which is a common way of imposed death in his country. We “seem to have made the suffering of pain the only crime worth punishing with the death penalty,” declared Reitsema.
The familiar story of Terri Schindler-Schiavo’s dehydration death in a Florida hospice was related by her brother Bobby Schindler. There was not a dry eye in the room as he described Terri’s last days and the suffering her family endured and continues to endure because of her cruel death.
Dr. Paul Byrne’s topic was “brain death.” He told of several cases that compelled him to begin evaluating whether “brain death” is true death, or not. The first was in 1975. Joseph, a premature infant, had been on a ventilator for six weeks and an EEG was interpreted as “consistent with cerebral death.” Dr. Byrne did not turn off the ventilator; rather, he continued treatment. Joseph is now married with children and works as a fireman and paramedic.
Get Involved
Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are now “medical treatment” in the Netherlands and Belgium. Switzerland does not penalize assisted suicide so long as it is not done for selfish motives, but physicians cannot be involved. In the U.S., PAS is legal only in Oregon. Opposition coalitions have defeated 89 efforts to legalize it in other states.
Compassion & Choices, the U.S. organization leading efforts to legalize PAS, has adopted the slogan “Oregon Plus One.” PAS promoters are determined to legalize assisted suicide in at least one more state in 2008. They are targeting Washington State in particular. Booth Gardner, popular former governor of Washington who now has Parkinson’s disease, is putting his popularity and considerable fortune behind the campaign to gather the 225,000 signatures needed by July to place a PAS initiative on next November’s ballot.
Rita Marker warned, “Any place that assisted suicide passes will affect the whole world.” Everyone who opposes assisted suicide, she said, “is a Washingtonian for the next year. You are important. Get involved.”
Conclusion
The sponsors and organizers, in particular Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the EPCC, deserve hearty congratulations for the shining success of this first of its kind symposium.
Labels: Euthanasia, Physician-Assisted Suicide
The Death Marketers' Spin
posted by Julie Grimstad
A euphemism is language that softens or masks an unpleasant truth. In City of God, St. Augustine wrote, “God’s command, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is to be taken as forbidding self-destruction — anyone who kills a human being, himself or another, is guilty of murder.” That is a plain, hard truth. Promoters of euthanasia and assisted suicide call killing a human being who is sick or disabled “death with dignity.” That is a euphemism.
Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, the only law of its kind in the nation, permits a physician to prescribe a fatal drug dose upon the request of a person who is expected to die within six months. Willfully taking a mouthful of pills in order to end one’s life is suicide, but “right to die” activists dislike such honest and direct language. Their polling data revealed that when a softer term such as “physician-aid-in-dying” was used instead of “physician-assisted suicide” to describe exactly the same proposal, the proposal garnered significantly more support. So, they demanded a change in language, believing that not calling suicide what it is would help legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in other states.
In 2006, each and every assisted-suicide measure failed even though PAS activists thought they were going to taste victory in many states. They blamed their failures on the media for using the word “suicide” to describe these measures. But the death marketers never give up, they just craft a new advertising campaign. Already in 2007, several states have PAS proposals before their legislatures—Vermont, for instance. Dr. David Babbott, who supports that state’s “Death With Dignity” bill, declared, “We believe that ‘S’ word is an inflammatory word and we don’t use it.” (Darren Perron, Channel 3 News, Montpelier, VT, 1/12/07)
Compassion & Choices—a group formed by the merger of End of Life Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) and Compassion In Dying—has helped facilitate the deaths of about three-quarters of the Oregonians who have requested PAS. George Eighmey, director of Compassion & Choices of Oregon, claims they often hear from people who want to avail themselves of the law, but who find the term “physician-assisted suicide” offensive. (The Oregonian, 11/11/06) Obviously, the social stigma and religious prohibitions attached to the act of killing oneself make the word “suicide” a powerful deterrent. And, just as obviously, Eighmey and his colleagues don’t want anyone to be deterred from committing suicide under the law. Therefore, last year, his group lobbied Oregon’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to adopt “value-neutral language.” Not wanting a court battle, the agency capitulated. DHS now blandly refers to patients who ask physicians to help them commit suicide as "persons who use the Oregon Death With Dignity Act."
Following suit, the American Public Health Association (APHA), which represents more than 50,000 members, has rejected the term “assisted suicide” in favor of “aid-in-dying” or “patient-directed dying.” APHA’s Governing Council adopted an interim resolution in November that advises reporters, educators, public policy makers and medical personnel to use these “value-neutral terms.” Compassion & Choices is banking on many of us being gullible enough to believe that suicide isn’t really suicide when medical professionals say it isn’t.
The plan of action of “right to die” activists is and always has been to work on society in order to bring about new attitudes favorable to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Do not be seduced by the death marketers’ spin. Even the high-sounding title of their “Death With Dignity” measures is a lie. Where is the dignity in self-destruction? Where is the honor in helping another commit suicide?
If it takes false advertising to sell a law, you can bet your life there’s something wrong with it.
Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, the only law of its kind in the nation, permits a physician to prescribe a fatal drug dose upon the request of a person who is expected to die within six months. Willfully taking a mouthful of pills in order to end one’s life is suicide, but “right to die” activists dislike such honest and direct language. Their polling data revealed that when a softer term such as “physician-aid-in-dying” was used instead of “physician-assisted suicide” to describe exactly the same proposal, the proposal garnered significantly more support. So, they demanded a change in language, believing that not calling suicide what it is would help legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in other states.
In 2006, each and every assisted-suicide measure failed even though PAS activists thought they were going to taste victory in many states. They blamed their failures on the media for using the word “suicide” to describe these measures. But the death marketers never give up, they just craft a new advertising campaign. Already in 2007, several states have PAS proposals before their legislatures—Vermont, for instance. Dr. David Babbott, who supports that state’s “Death With Dignity” bill, declared, “We believe that ‘S’ word is an inflammatory word and we don’t use it.” (Darren Perron, Channel 3 News, Montpelier, VT, 1/12/07)
Compassion & Choices—a group formed by the merger of End of Life Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) and Compassion In Dying—has helped facilitate the deaths of about three-quarters of the Oregonians who have requested PAS. George Eighmey, director of Compassion & Choices of Oregon, claims they often hear from people who want to avail themselves of the law, but who find the term “physician-assisted suicide” offensive. (The Oregonian, 11/11/06) Obviously, the social stigma and religious prohibitions attached to the act of killing oneself make the word “suicide” a powerful deterrent. And, just as obviously, Eighmey and his colleagues don’t want anyone to be deterred from committing suicide under the law. Therefore, last year, his group lobbied Oregon’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to adopt “value-neutral language.” Not wanting a court battle, the agency capitulated. DHS now blandly refers to patients who ask physicians to help them commit suicide as "persons who use the Oregon Death With Dignity Act."
Following suit, the American Public Health Association (APHA), which represents more than 50,000 members, has rejected the term “assisted suicide” in favor of “aid-in-dying” or “patient-directed dying.” APHA’s Governing Council adopted an interim resolution in November that advises reporters, educators, public policy makers and medical personnel to use these “value-neutral terms.” Compassion & Choices is banking on many of us being gullible enough to believe that suicide isn’t really suicide when medical professionals say it isn’t.
The plan of action of “right to die” activists is and always has been to work on society in order to bring about new attitudes favorable to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Do not be seduced by the death marketers’ spin. Even the high-sounding title of their “Death With Dignity” measures is a lie. Where is the dignity in self-destruction? Where is the honor in helping another commit suicide?
If it takes false advertising to sell a law, you can bet your life there’s something wrong with it.
Labels: Physician-Assisted Suicide