Friday July 23, 2010
Euthanasia Lobby Setting Sights on Idaho
By Patrick B. Craine
BOISE, Idaho, July 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A prominent euthanasia opponent is warning that the lobbying group ‘Compassion and Choices’ (CC), formerly known as the Hemlock Society, has begun an effort to promote assisted suicide in Idaho.
“It appears very clear that Compassion and Choices is now focusing on Idaho, because it’s a neighbour to Oregon,” said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. “It’s also because they think it’s an easy victory, because there isn’t a specific law about assisted suicide.”
Kathryn Tucker, CC’s director of legal affairs, addressed the Idaho Medical Association last week and claimed that the lack of a specific statute allows doctors to practice assisted suicide in the state.
“In Idaho, physicians can provide aid in dying subject, as is most medical practice, to the standard of care developed by the medical profession,” she wrote in an op-ed for CDA Press at the end of June. She then argued that physicians should “look to the standard of care in Oregon, Washington, and Montana,” the three states where physician-assisted suicide has been legalized in recent years.
But Schadenberg responded that while there is no specific provision in the law regarding suicide, it does not mean that assisted suicide is legal. In Idaho assisted suicide is prohibited by common law. Moreover, Idaho’s Medical Consent and Natural Death Act states specifically: “this chapter does not make legal, and in no way condones, euthanasia, mercy killing, or assisted suicide or permit an affirmative or deliberate act or omission to end life, other than to allow the natural process of dying.”
Schadenberg emphasized the point by noting that there was a failed attempt in 1969 to legalize assisted suicide. “If there is no law, why did it need to be legalized in 1969?” he asked. “Because there is a law, it’s just in the homicide provision.”
He said this is another example of CC’s attempts to deceive the public in order to advance their goals. “If there’s nothing wrong with assisted suicide, why do you keep lying about it?” he asked rhetorically.
Schadenberg pointed to the recent case in Connecticut where CC tried to claim that “aid in dying” is not the same as assisted suicide, and thus is not illegal under the state’s assisted suicide provision. But in June a judge dismissed that claim.
“They know the public doesn’t actually support changing these laws, so it’s better to hoodwink them than to play with the truth,” said Schadenberg.
Schadenberg also said that he believes CC is looking for a doctor in Idaho who would be willing to take a chance on breaking the assisted suicide law and see how the court deals with it. “I think that they’re gambling that because there is no specific assisted suicide provision, that their lawyers could argue their way through it,” he said. “But the fact is that there is an assisted suicide-type provision in the law, it’s just dealt with in a different section of the law. And in fact a doctor would find himself probably going to jail if he did so, and so should he.”