You don’t discourage suicide by assisting suicide. These laws, no matter how you try, will pose a dangerous and frightening cultural shift in our views of suicide. Last June, California enacted an assisted-suicide law. It is now legal in that state to plan and execute your...
A bill that would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives failed to earn majority support from lawmakers on the Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday and now faces an uphill battle in the full Legislature. Gov. Paul LePage said this week...
Gov. LePage said Tuesday he will veto a bill moving through the Legislature that would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients hasten their deaths. LePage’s promised veto casts significant doubt on the prospects for the proposal, which is similar to one narrowly defeated in 2015....
“First do no harm.” That is part of the oath that all physicians take as we graduate medical school. I graduated in 1995, and I went off to Oregon to start my residency. Oregon had just passed a death with dignity law. As a result,...
CARSON CITY — Opponents of physician-assisted suicide denounced a Nevada legislative proposal Wednesday to allow doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients. Doctors, patients and lawyers, many wearing buttons that read “Kill the Pain not the Patient,” said the measure was dangerous and a...
Last year, Betty Brown, my elderly Aunt Izzy’s best “friend,” was sentenced to up to 10 years in a West Virginia prison for financial exploitation of an elderly person. As my aunt’s heart failed, Ms. Brown had insinuated herself into every aspect of her life....
Dozens of people turned out Wednesday to argue for and against a pair of bills that would allow Maine doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to those suffering from terminal illness. One proposal, sponsored by Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, and announced in a news conference Tuesday at...
Hanson is a U.S. Marine war veteran, husband, and father, who went to the hospital in 2004 after experiencing a grand mal seizure. After being cleared by doctors after a CAT Scan, he told the committee, his wife insisted an MRI. That’s when they found...
Vermont’s law permitting physician-assisted suicide will stay in place, now that a federal court has dismissed a lawsuit that Christian groups brought in July challenging the law. Judge Geoffrey Crawford, for U.S. District Court of Vermont in Rutland, dismissed the case Wednesday on the grounds that the...
Doctors in Maine are divided on state legislation that would allow them to prescribe medication that a patient may self-administer to hasten death. The Legislature's health and human services committee on Wednesday held public hearings on bills sponsored by Republican Sen. Roger Katz and Democratic Rep....