Catholic advocates tame ‘stealth’ assisted-suicide
For the fourth time in as many years, Catholic bishops and health-care providers have staved off an end-of-life bill proposed by advocates of physician-assisted suicide.
The bill, AB 2747, narrowly passed the Senate Health and Judiciary Committees in June after language unacceptable to Catholic advocates was removed, according to the California Catholic Conference.
The bill's sponsor, Assemblywoman Patty Berg, agreed to the compromise June 25 in order to secure enough votes for the measure to pass the Health Committee, the CCC said on its website. Additional changes were made the next day by the Judiciary Committee as the bill advanced to the Senate floor, where a vote is pending.
The bill in its original form alarmed Catholic lobbyists, the Northern California Oncologists Association, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund and Californians Against Assisted Suicide. Advocates said the bill was intended to give terminal patients more say in end-of-life decisions, but opponents feared the measure would steer patients and their doctors toward euthanasia.
"The event was an important win for us,” the CCC said. “The amendments the author accepted now make the bill a hospice/information bill only – not a stealth bill setting up a mechanism for hastened death. We remain committed to quality end-of-life care including ensuring that patients are aware of the benefits of hospice and the availability of adequate palliative care and pain medication. We will continue to work with others to secure that reality."
Catholic teaching stresses that blurring the distinction between palliative care and assisted suicide is not only morally wrong but also harmful to patients who require proper treatment for pain at the end of life.
“Physician-assisted suicide is bad medicine, bad morals and bad public policy,” the Franciscan clinician and ethicist Dr. Daniel Sulmasy said during a recent talk at the University of San Francisco. “We can do so much more to relieve the physical suffering of patients.”
He said he also opposes assisted suicide for “slippery slope kinds of reasons.” A case in point is the Netherlands, he said, where assisted suicide is now being done with people with dementia and chronic depression.
“It’s not pain. It’s often existential angst over the fact that they’re just not dead yet,” he said. “Pardon me, no medical textbook I’ve ever read says ‘I’m not dead yet’ is a symptom we should treat. We may feel badly – ‘I’ll make believe I have something in my bag of tricks that can make it go away’—but making it go away short-circuits the human problem.”
By Rick DelVecchio
