Oregon Ping
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Posted on 10/17/2006 4:39:47 PM PDT by wagglebee
The Oregon Department of Human Services has determined that it will begin referring to "physician assisted suicide" as "physician assisted death" on official reports.
The change comes as backers of the assisted suicide law claim the original term is offensive to those who kill themselves under the statute. In fact, Compassion & Choices, a national group that backs euthanasia and assisted suicide, pressured state officials to make the change.
Gayle Atteberry, the executive director of Oregon Right to Life called the wording difference "outrageous" in comments to the Statesman Journal newspaper.
"They have changed it to a euphemism to make it more palatable," she said. "Do they think it is going to make it easier for people to kill themselves?"
The change may make it easier for those people who kill themselves with a doctor's help to feel good about their actions.
Before she took her own life in August, the newspaper reports that Charlene Andrews of Salem told the National Press Club, "Please do not call it suicide. That is an insult to my fight against cancer. With cancer, we know when there are no treatment options."
But Mike Gander of Salem, who took care of his son and mother in law while they were dying, told the Statesman Journal the phrase is just a euphemism put forward by those who don't want to confront the reality of what they're doing.
"It's like using the terminology 'choice' when it comes to abortion," he said. "No one wants to use the word 'abortion'; they want to use the word 'choice.' But the terminology -- whether accurate or inaccurate -- still results in the same thing. 'Physician-assisted death' is the same as suicide."
In May, the Senate held a hearing on problems associated with the state's assisted suicide law.
Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, a leading disability rights group said that the longer the Oregon law stays around the more disabled patients are feeling obligated to end their lives when they become a so-called "burden" to their families.
"What looks to some like a choice to die begins to look more like a duty to die to many disability activists," she said.
Meanwhile, Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, who is a leading monitor of end of life issues, said the state is poorly monitoring assisted suicide and problems associated with it because it relies on doctors to self-report about the deaths.
So far, some 246 people have used the Oregon assisted suicide law to end their lives since it went into effect in 1998.
In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that patients had a right to refuse lifesaving medical treatment and, in 1997, the court ruled unanimously that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide but that states may ban or allow the practice.
Related web sites:
Oregon Right to Life - http://www.ortl.org
Instruments of darkness - good one.
Oregon Ping
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"How the he*l can people that commit suicide be offended by anything!"
I'm sure that they aren't offended.
They are no longer among the living.
Gayle Atteberry is a true PRO LIFE warrior.
She's a GREAT gal.
"What's wrong with just saying homocide?"
Apparently...A LOT!
"physician assisted death"
Would HAVE to be a homicide!"
Not in Oregon...
it's legal.
Bump!
Shirley you jest. ;o)
Thank you!
My sister did so of her own free will.
Your thoughts?
"How the he*l can people that commit suicide be offended by anything!
Political correctness run amok..."
"I think that it violates their Hippocratic Oath..."
That's very confusing...
This topic is confusing... it is political correctness run amok.
A doctor takes an oath to do no harm.
"Physician Assisted Death" sounds like the doctor decided the patient needed to just die. No reference to patient choice there!
This is probably the case in many instances.
"it's legal."
Well that's the problem isn't it?
You have correctly identified step two of this particular slippery slope. Thus it has already evolved in Europe, where doctors are already euthanizing people. Step three will be to take the doctors out of the decision loop, and make it a governmental bureaucratic decision, based on "quality of life" and costs to the socialized medical system.
QUESTION: Don't most life insurance policies refuse to pay up on "suicides"? So if they remove the word suicide, will that change any requirements on the part of insurance carriers?
You may have a point, but probably not. Most insurance policies only have the suicide clause for a fixed period of time (I think it's usually five years). Most people who are being killed by doctors probably have policies older than that (a very sick or elderly person cannot even get a new policy except at a rate that is so high it's not even worth doing).
Thanks for the answer. I had no idea of the requirements and was just curious. Very insurance language challenged here - I just pay the premiums. :o)
There are reasons why Jews and Christians think that suicide is simply wrong, because it rejects God's gift of life and is based on the sin of despair.
But you can't very well stop people with different ideas from committing suicide if they choose to do so. For one thing, it would not be practical.
What we find objectionable is that those, for instance, in the Hemlock Society don't just advocate the right to commit suicide, which perhaps they are free to do except in the case of minors, but that they wish to implicate all of society in their destructive dreams, and in particular to compromise the medical profession.
If you want to commit suicide, there are painless ways to do it without implicating hospitals and doctors in your decision. The problem with doing that is that it undermines the entire health profession. Doctors traditionally swear to do no harm. Their role is to save lives, not to take them.
Once you start having doctors kill their patients, you are at that famous slippery slope. Maybe they might kill a patient because someone else needs an organ. Or maybe they might kill a patient because the patient is inconvenient, and they want to go on vacation--something that happened in Holland.
Or maybe they will kill a patient contrary to their expressed wishes and the wishes of their family--which has also happened often in Holland. Or maybe the state will encourage doctors to kill the old or the handicapped, to cut back on welfare benefits and make more money available for the latest politically correct cause. So doctors might be encouraged to kill old people to make more room for illegal immigrants, let's say. There is no end to what will happen once this is set loose. Holland has already demonstrated that such fears are justified.
So, people can commit suicide if they choose, and it's difficult or impossible to stop them, but they should do it themselves. Most people think it's wrong, and terrible, but they can't stop it. But don't twist and distort all of society and pervert the medical profession in the process of killing yourself.
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