Category: United States

Willowbrook, the institution that shocked a nation into changing its laws


Patients needing “tenderness and affection” got the opposite

Timeline

Matt Reimann

When World War II ended, a large Staten Island facility on 375 acres of land faced an uncertain future. Some believed that Willowbrook should be used for the care of disabled veterans, but ultimately the preferences of New York governor Thomas Dewey won out. Dewey argued that there were thousands of children in the state who were “mentally and physically defective and feeble minded, who never can become members of society,” who needed to be cared for with a “high degree of tenderness and affection.” On this last matter, the institution would utterly fail: In the coming decades, Willowbrook would become synonymous for social injustice, moral abhorrence, and the glaring failures of the state psychiatric system. . . [Full text]

Death Row Doctoring: The Dicey Medical Ethics of Prison Executions

Medscape

Seema Yasmin

I had seen people die, but I had never watched a person be killed—until I moved to Texas. It was a warm day in September 2014 when my editor sent me to death row in Huntsville. I had joined the Dallas Morning News as a reporter that summer, never expecting my job to land me in a small, musty room overlooking an execution chamber.

Through green metal bars and a window, I watched Lisa Ann Coleman lying on a crucifix-shaped gurney, yellow leather straps wrapped around her arms and legs. Coleman, a 38-year-old African American woman, was scheduled to die at 6 PM for the murder of a 9-year-old boy in 2004. A microphone hung from the ceiling of the execution chamber and hovered an inch or two above her round brown face. . . [Full text]

 

Arizona Strengthens Conscience Protections for Health Care Providers

New law aims to ensure doctors and nurses aren’t fired for their beliefs if assisted suicide is ever legalized in the state.

National Catholic Register

PHOENIX — Health care providers and institutions opposed to assisted suicide gained more legal protections under a new Arizona law that aims to help ensure doctors and nurses aren’t fired for their beliefs if the practice is ever legalized.

Senate Bill 1439 was “an important rights-of-conscience bill,” according to the bishops of the Arizona Catholic Conference.

“S.B. 1439 will help protect health care providers not wanting to participate in services causing the death of their patients,” the state’s four bishops said March 24, adding they were grateful that it has become law. . . [Full text]

 

On Medical Conscience and Assisted Suicide, Good News from Vermont and Maine

Evolution News & Science Today

Wesley J. Smith

With the attacks on medical conscience increasing, here’s some fine news. Alliance Defending Freedom has successfully obtained a consent decree that protects doctors in Vermont from having to counsel about assisted suicide to legally qualified patients if they are morally or religiously opposed. From the decree:

Plaintiffs and similarly situated medical providers do not have a legal or professional obligation to counsel and refer patients for the Patient Choice at End of Life process [e.g., assisted suicide].

That’s good. . . [Full text]

 

Victory for Vermont health professionals after pro-suicide group drops appeal

Compassion & Choices withdraws appeal of court decision that affirmed pro-life physician groups aren’t mandated to counsel, refer for assisted suicide

News Release

Alliance Defending Freedom

RUTLAND, Vt. – A pro-suicide group has dropped its appeal of a federal court’s decision which affirmed that a Vermont law can’t be interpreted to require pro-life health professionals to counsel or refer patients for assisted suicide. As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit officially dismissed the appeal Monday, thus ending the case.

The withdrawal of the appeal by Compassion & Choices leaves in place a consent agreement between physician groups and the Vermont Attorney General’s office, which agreed that the court was correct in deciding that the state’s Act 39 does not force conscientious professionals to ensure all “terminal” patients are informed about the availability of doctor-prescribed death.

“Vermont health care workers just want to act consistently with their reasonable and time-honored convictions without fear of government punishment,” said ADF Senior Counsel Steven H Aden, who argued before the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont in November of last year in Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare v. Hoser. “Conscientious Vermont healthcare professionals are in agreement with the state that the law doesn’t force them to participate in this heinous process, and they are pleased that the nation’s foremost advocate of assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, has abandoned its effort to force them to do so.”

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys and ADF-allied attorney Michael Tierney represent the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare and the Christian Medical and Dental Association, groups of medical professionals who wish to abide by their oath to “do no harm.”

Act 39, Vermont’s assisted suicide bill, passed with a very limited protection for attending physicians who don’t wish to dispense death-inducing drugs themselves, but state medical licensing authorities construed a separate, existing mandate to counsel and refer for “all options” for palliative care to include a mandate that all patients hear about the “option” of assisted suicide. For that reason, the groups representing pro-life health professionals filed suit.

The court ruled that the groups lacked a legal right to bring the lawsuit because the law actually doesn’t force them to act contrary to their conscience—a finding that Compassion & Choices initially opposed. The dismissal of the appeal leaves Vermont healthcare professionals free to “do no harm” without fear of retaliation for their pro-life views.

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

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Additional resources: Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare v. Hoser

Scroll down to view additional resources pertaining to this case and its surrounding issue.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Previous news releases:

  • 2017-04-05: Vt. health professionals planning next legal steps after decision on conscientious objection to providing suicide info
  • 2016-11-07: Health professionals to court: Don’t allow Vermont to force us to help kill patients
  • 2016-09-26: Health professionals ask court to stop Vermont from forcing them to help kill patients
  • 2016-07-20: Vermont health professionals: Don’t force us to help kill our patients