The Autism Action Network believes that the trends around the world in countries and states that allow physician-assisted suicide make A136/S138 a great threat to disabled people, especially people impacted by severe developmental disabilities. The threat would increase with age as disabled people become less healthy, supporting them becomes more expensive, and family members with a vested interest in their loved ones’ survival age and die.
"Autism" is already allowed as a pretext for physician-assisted suicide in Belgium and the Netherlands, and will be in Canada in 2017. Minors are allowed to choose suicide in Belgium, the Netherlands and Columbia. In some instances without parental consent.
This law would be the first, and most important step, to allow institutions to kill inconvenient people.
TAKE ACTION
Please use the panel to the right to send a message to Gov. Hochul stating your opposition to A136/S138.
Please call Gov. Hochul today and ask her to veto A136/S138.
518 474-8390
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TALKING POINTS
Do we really want to permit doctors to assist in killing patients?
Do we as a society want to dispense with the Hippocratic oath requirement that doctors, “First, do no harm?” Do we want to remove the barrier preventing physicians from deliberately assisting or causing the death of patients?
This has happened before, and it did not end well. The Nazis' first extermination campaign began with doctors and nurses “mercy killing” developmentally disabled children in a program called Aktion T4. Aktion T4 was expanded to include adults with developmental disabilities, and adults and children with physical disabilities. Eventually, 300,000 were killed. This doctor-led program worked out the techniques of mass murder later used at the death camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor.
For once, we actually agree with the American Medical Association, who oppose A136/S138, stating in their Code of Medical Ethics, “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks. Instead of engaging in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life.”
How accurate are physicians’ predictions of expected life?
People with “terminal” diseases often live far longer than originally estimated. People unexpectedly recover. Physicians do not have crystal balls.
Legalizing assisted suicide sends the message that suicide is acceptable.
New York State rightly spends millions of dollars each year on preventing suicide. It makes no sense to recognize suicide as a statewide public health concern while simultaneously promoting it as “Death with Dignity” for certain populations.
Assisted suicide creates financial incentives to limit care
Assisted suicide is far less expensive than palliative and supportive care at the end of life. In Oregon, some patients noted that lethal doses of drugs were covered by their insurers while cancer treatments were not. While advocates call assisted suicide a matter of free choice, what kind of choice is it when life is expensive, but death is free? Canadian veterans were offered assisted suicide instead of services .
Assisted suicide discriminates against people with disabilities.
Persons with serious chronic or terminal illnesses often become disabled as their diseases progress. Health professionals and others may incorrectly perceive that those patients have a lower “quality of life” than healthier people do. While the rest of society receives suicide prevention education and services from the state, this bill would direct suicide assistance towards certain disabled individuals. This double standard is a form of discrimination against people with disabilities.
Significant pain is not required by A136/S138
A136/AS138 does not require that a patient is in pain or suffering, just that they have a condition two doctors, or their employers, think might be terminal within six months. Life is a terminal condition.
Some states and countries that allow physician-assisted suicide also require that a prospective suicide candidate also suffer from significant pain that cannot be relieved with palliative care, but physical pain is not a requirement under A136/S138.
Family members, including spouses, have no right to know
A136/S138 prohibits informing family members, including spouses, that the assisted death process has been requested, initiated or is underway.
There is no requirement to inform a patient’s guardian
No language in the bill requires informing a patient’s guardian or medical proxy that the assisted death process has been initiated or is underway.
Giant healthcare companies will be making the decisions, not doctors
The bill is written as if physicians are still independent professionals exercising their own judgement about treatment when the vast majority of doctors are now employees of giant medical services and procedure providers like Northwell, NYU Langone, United Health, etc. Doctors follow algorithms created by their employers.
Nothing in the bill prohibits health providers from trying to persuade patients to kill themselves
Who decides, and how, if a patient has “decision-making capacity” to choose suicide
The decision of who has “decision-making capacity” and how to define “decision-making capacity” is left to institutions and people who may have financial and professional interests in the outcome.
Protections for workers who refuse to participate are narrow and flimsy
A136/A138 says that workers are not required to participate in the “provision of medication to a patient under this article.” But what exactly does “provision of medication” mean? Inevitably, that will be decided by a court at some point. There is no protection from discipline or retaliation by employers against workers who do not want to participate in assisted suicide.
Protections for religious healthcare providers to refuse to participate are designed to fail
A136/S138 allows religious healthcare providers, such as Roman Catholic and Jewish hospitals, to refuse to participate if the institution has “a formally adopted policy of the facility that is expressly based on sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions central to the facility's operating principles.” This exception is conditional on how the state wants to define “sincerely” and “central” When New York had a religious exemption from vaccine mandates for “sincerely” held religious beliefs, “sincerely” was defined in such away that most people did not get an exemption who applied one. And who defines what constitutes what is “central?”
Likewise, recent New York laws have been used to barrage religious hospitals with a range of legal challenges to practicing medicine according to their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” The authors of A136/S138, Sen. Brad Hoylman and Asm. Amy Paulin, are leaders in the effort in New York to eliminate the right of religious healthcare providers to practice their beliefs and moral values.
Suicide as a “choice” is a coercive form of pressure
Assisted suicide poses a threat to those living with disabilities or who are in vulnerable circumstances. When assisted suicide becomes an option, pressure can be placed on these individuals to take that option. People can feel obligated to choose suicide to avoid being a “burden” which will disproportionately fall on those with fewer resources.
A136/S138 denies that people will be choosing suicide
A136/S138 is obviously about people requesting and committing suicide but denies that obvious reality in an Orwellian perversion of language. “A patient who requests medication under this article shall not, because of that request, be considered to be a person who is suicidal, and self-administering medication under this article shall not be deemed to be suicide for any purpose.”
So, if the Governor passes this bill, suicide will no longer be suicide, and people thinking and desiring suicide will no longer be suicidal.
Assisted suicide requires lying on death certificates
The proposal would require doctors to lie on patients’ death certificates by falsely stating that a patient’s death was caused by his or her terminal illness, not by the ingestion of lethal drugs. Therefore, no accurate reporting to state officials would be possible.
This is the beginning of a slide down a slippery slope
Paulin and Hoylman are “progressives.” Progressives wisely understand that you get further over time with multiple little steps to change law and policy rather than trying to make one huge leap. We have seen this strategy used in many policy areas. Progressives are masters at continually moving the goal posts until they end up where they want to be.
Other countries that allow physician-assisted suicide, such as Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, have continually lowered the ages of those who can be killed, and broadened the range of disorders that can trigger assisted suicide.
In Belgium, minors of any age are allowed to request physician-assisted suicide. Initially, only minors older than 14 were allowed to be killed, but the age limit was lifted in 2014. Similarly, in the Netherlands, initially only minors 12 and older were allowed to be killed, but the age limit was repealed in 2023 to include children of all ages.
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