For legal analysis and back up documentation, click here and here. For a pdf handout version of this post, click here.
Highlights:
• LD 347 & LD 1066 apply to people with years or decades to live.
• Enacting either bill will encourage people with years or decades to live to throw away their lives.
• The bills are sold as providing a voluntary patient choice, but don’t even have a requirement of voluntariness or consent when the lethal dose is administered.
• Assisting persons can have their own agendas: an adult child wanting an inheritance; a financial predator seeking financial gain; or a doctor wanting to hide malpractice.
• Administration of the lethal dose is allowed to occur in private without a doctor or witness present. If the patient objected or even struggled, who would know?
• Enactment will create the perfect crime to put older people in the cross hairs of their heirs and other predators.
• Elder abuse is already a not well controlled problem. Passing either bill will make the situation worse.
• Physician-assisted suicide, even where voluntary, can be traumatic for patients and families.
Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA
Law Offices of Margaret K.Dore
Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation
www.margaretdore.com
www.choiceillusion.org
1001 4th Avenue, Suite 4400
Seattle, WA 98154
206 697 1217