Tag: Compassion and Choices (USA)

Oklahoma Officials Endorse Nitrogen Executions As ‘Humane,’ But Some Medical Experts Aren’t Sure

Stateimpact Oklahoma

Quinton Chandler

Oklahoma wants to go where no state has gone before: Executing death row inmates with nitrogen gas. Officials say nitrogen will bring quick, painless deaths, but the research is slim — and it has never been used in U.S. executions.

The case for nitrogen hypoxia sounds simple. Nitrogen is already in the air we breathe, but, as long as humans get the right mix, nitrogen is safe. The state wants to make death row inmates breathe pure nitrogen.

State Sen. Ervin Yen, R-Oklahoma City, is a cardiac anesthesiologist who signed his name to the bill that made nitrogen hypoxia a legal execution method in 2015. He says the inmates would die from “lack of oxygen,” not exposure to nitrogen. . . [Full text]

Assisted-Suicide Pushers Want Forced MD Participation

National Review
Reproduced with permission

Wesley J. Smith*

Assisted-suicide advocates pretend they want assisted suicide limited to the terminally ill.

They pretend that they favor strict guidelines.

And they pretend they would never want doctors forced to participate in intentionally ending the life of a patient. Indeed, the laws they have passed all contain conscience protections.

Except, sometimes they show their true hands. For example, when the Canadian Supreme Court imposed a broad right to lethal-injection euthanasia — certainly not limited to the dying — Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) issued a laudatory press release — later scrubbed because it told the truth about the movement’s true goals.

And now, Compassion and Choices — again, which has included conscience protections in laws it sponsored as a necessary predicate to passage — has come out strongly against a proposed Trump-administration office in HHS to protect medical professionals from forced participation in procedures against their consciences and/or religious beliefs. From an email sent to its supporters (my emphasis):

The new division marks one of the greatest threats we’re facing to the future of the end-of-life choice movement and patient-centered care.

Under the HHS proposed rules, providers who object to various procedures could impose their own religious beliefs on their patients by withholding vital information about treatment options from them — including options such as voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, palliative sedation or medical aid in dying. And your federal tax dollars will be used to protect physicians who make the unconscionable decision to willfully hold back information from a patient and abandon them when they are at their most vulnerable.

This is unacceptable and needs to be stopped.

Note the warning that conscience protections threaten “the future” of the assisted-suicide movement. It is abundantly clear that these suicide advocates believe forcing doctors to participate in suicide is essential to implementing their lethal agenda.

C & C already tried to impose such a duty on doctors in Vermont in support of a regulation that sought to force doctors to share information on assisted suicide with patients. That violated the assisted-suicide law’s conscience protections. Dissenting doctors sued and forced the bureaucrats to retreat. C & C tried to intervene legally to (unsuccessfully) thwart that settlement.

So, this is the truth: If C & C prevails in legalizing assisted suicide (and eventually, euthanasia) across the country, pressure will soon begin to force dissenting MDs, nurses, and pharmacists to either get on the death train or get out of medicine.

For those with eyes to see, let them see.

 

Accessed 2018-03-28

 

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.

# # # | Ref. 50739

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

 

Docs In Northwest Tweak Aid-In-Dying Drugs To Prevent Prolonged Deaths

Kaiser Health News

JoNel Aleccia

Two years after an abrupt price hike for a lethal drug used by terminally ill patients to end their lives, doctors in the Northwest are once again rethinking aid-in-dying medications — this time because they’re taking too long to work.

The concerned physicians say they’ve come up with yet another alternative to Seconal, the powerful sedative that was the drug of choice under Death with Dignity laws until prices charged by a Canadian company doubled to more than $3,000 per dose.

It’s the third drug mixture recommended by the doctors whose medication protocols help guide decisions for prescribers in the six U.S. states where aid-in-dying is allowed. . . [Full text]