Sheridan: End-of-life law needs veto, further consideration

When the health care provider becomes a willing accomplice to suicide, a line has been crossed that may never be reversed.”

Moira Sheridan is the president of Delaware Right to Life.

House Bill 140, The Ron Silverio/Heather Block End of Life Options Law, threatens to undermine compassionate health care in Delaware by allowing patients to kill themselves in response to a terminal diagnosis. The bill passed both chambers of the Delaware General Assembly and awaits Gov. John Carney’s signature to become law. Delawareans who support life urge him to veto this bill, to protect patients from becoming its unwilling victims.

By offering someone to kill himself as a medical “option,” a health care provider becomes an adversary instead of a healer, one who now treats the sick person as an undesirable, who is better off dead. How long before providers see certain patients as ideal candidates for this “option” because of the expense of their care? What will be the subtle and not-so-subtle methods of persuasion? How long before older adults in nursing homes, often without advocates, are coerced into choosing to end their lives, so a bed may more quickly become available? And what of the disabled, pressured to die because of “quality-of-life” issues? “We think you should die” is the unspoken message given when end-of-life “options” are presented. When the health care provider becomes a willing accomplice to suicide, a line has been crossed that may never be reversed.

Many will argue that those scenarios will never happen. But they have happened, and they will continue to happen wherever these laws are passed. Most of the “safeguards” in the bill will fall like dominoes, as they have done in several U.S. states and, most notoriously, in Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium. While the line in the sand is supposed to be a six-month terminal diagnosis (ever have a doctor give you an incorrect diagnosis?), mental health issues are now fair game for accessing medical aid in dying in Canada and Belgium. In Colorado, lethal drugs were prescribed to patients with anorexia, a curable condition. And already, in 7 of the 10 states with such laws, waiting periods, residency requirements and the definition of a terminal illness have all been relaxed so that more may “access” a deadly medication. “Access” becomes the key approach to changing these laws, and “access” is furthered by getting rid of safeguards.

Many questions were left unanswered: What medications will be given and how will they be administered? Why is no one required to be with the dying person after medication is ingested, to make sure nothing goes wrong? Why are health care providers immune from prosecution in these cases?

If Gov. Carney had been present during the hearings on this bill, he would have seen many of his fellow Democrats deeply conflicted in their testimonies; it passed by just one vote. Testimony was emotional on both sides, but the senators who opposed this bill went to the heart of its main flaw: The potential for its abuse is frightening. It incentivizes the entire health care industry to see patients as burdens or financial liabilities instead of human beings who deserve to be cared for tenderly and professionally. It allows for the possibility that unscrupulous caretakers and family members may unduly coerce patients to choose to die rather than be a “burden” or to collect on an inheritance. Many spoke from personal experiences of being denied lifesaving treatment; others spoke of incorrect “terminal” diagnoses; and some spoke of the destruction of the relationship between a patient and a doctor. Many feared that the “option” to die will become a duty to die before too long.

Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.