Assisted Suicide - A Recipe for Elder Abuse

Next November, Massachusetts voters will decide via ballot initiative whether to allow physician-assisted suicide. The Death with Dignity Act is modeled closely on an initiative passed by Washington State voters in 2008. In states that have taken up these laws, pro-life groups, religious groups, and advocates for the disabled have fought them. Massachusetts is a heavily Catholic state, and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston called the act “a corruption of the medical profession that violates the Hippocratic Oath.”

National Right to Life calls the proposed Massachusetts act “a recipe for elder abuse.” Key provisions of the act include that an heir, who will benefit financially from a patient’s death, is allowed to actively help sign the patient up for the lethal dose.

In the United States, assisted suicide is legal only in Washington and Oregon. In both states, the law was enacted through a ballot initiative. In 2010, the Montana Supreme Court’s Baxter decision did not legalize assisted suicide but gave physicians, if prosecuted, a potential defense. A law that would have allowed assisted suicide in Montana went down to defeat in February.

In addition to Massachusetts, pro-euthanasia activists are currently mobilizing in Hawaii and Vermont.

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Assisted Suicide - A Recipe for Elder Abuse