Please take a few minutes to send a message today to your legislator asking them to oppose assisted suicide using the form to your right!
We are asking them to vote NO on assisted suicide (Bills H.2381 and S.1384) because suicide is not medical care.
Massachusans deserve better access to quality care, such as in-home hospice and palliative care, not an ill-conceived public policy that puts patients at risk of mistakes, coercion, and abuse.
Here are some of the reasons why they must vote NO to assisted suicide:
- Patients have been denied coverage for lifesaving treatment and offered assisted suicide instead.
- Pain and suffering, or even concern about it, never make it into the top 5 reasons why patients die by assisted suicide in Oregon. Rather, the most commonly cited reasons are disability related concerns, which is why the National Council on Disability rejects assisted suicide.
- Mental conditions are ignored and depressed patients receive the lethal medications.
- Doctors make mistakes and patients who are not dying receive the prescription drugs.
- We have a suicide epidemic in this country and overall general suicide rates have increased in Oregon since it’s been legalized.
Assisted suicide laws abandon vulnerable patients and they impact everyone’s end of life care. Lawmakers must focus their efforts on improving multidisciplinary care for terminal patients, which truly addresses patients’ concerns at the end of life instead of removing society’s care at a time when it’s needed most.
Please fill out the form to your right and urge your representative to reject this dangerous public policy (H.2381 and S.1384) and vote NO on assisted suicide.