The Massachusetts Joint Public Health Committee recently reported out of committee the controversial bill (S.2745) that would legalize assisted suicide. This puts bill S.2745 one step closer to a vote. Some residents have asked: Other states have passed it, why not us? It is important to...
After at least five legislative sessions without advancing beyond the committee stage, bills that would open the door to doctors prescribing lethal doses for terminally ill patients got favorable reports from the Committee on Public Health...
Recently the Joint Committee on Public Health approved a Physician Assisted Suicide bill (HB 1926 and SB 1208). If it reaches final approval, state sanctioned suicide will be the law of the land in Massachusetts. This is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer. The...
Second Thoughts Massachusetts issues the following statement in opposition to the favorable report given by the state legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health to Bill S.1208/H.1926, legislation that would legalize assisted suicide in Massachusetts. John Kelly “I’m amazed and disappointed that as a deadly virus is stalking...
“It is unthinkable at the outset of our tenuous Covid reopening that the MA public health committee would devote time to regressive, discriminatory assisted suicide legislation, which is fatally flawed and ripe for abuse, coercion, and mistakes. When care is expensive and suicide is cheap,...
One person dies of suicide every eleven minutes in our country. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans between 10 and 34 years of age. The fight against suicide is in many ways, the rallying cry of the next generation. While the broad...
An elderly or disabled person will not be billed extra or be blocked from receiving health care because of high costs in Oklahoma, after passage of anti-discrimination legislation. On Friday, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, approved the “Nondiscrimination in Health Care Coverage” Act, which would prevent...
Arguments in support of assisted suicide often focus on patient choice. Proponents argue that no one has to commit assisted suicide if they do not want to, and its legalization only expands patient choice. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that assisted suicide impacts everyone's health...
In today’s episode, we discuss assisted suicide and how the COVID-19 pandemic is shedding new light on the way patients are treated. We speak with Matt Vallière the Executive Director of the Patients' Rights Action Fund whose mission is to protect patients’ civil rights and...
Legalizing assisted suicide in a society with unequal access to affordable health care, let alone end of life care, creates an unintended and unspoken pressure on terminally ill patients, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities to not to be a burden that constrains freedom of...