Death Activists Oppose Limits on Virtual Access to Assisted Suicide

assisted suicide, barbiturates, controlled substances, COVID-19, Culture & Ethics, DEA, death, Death with Dignity, doctor shopping, doctors, euthanasia, house calls, lethal injection, Medicine, morphine, nurse practitioners, opiates, pandemic, patients, science, suicide, telehealth, telemedicine, terminal illness
What activists really seek is assisted suicide (and eventually, lethal-injection euthanasia) without meaningful restrictions. Source
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How Euthanasia Activists Laid the Groundwork for Overturning Roe

abortion, activists, Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, assisted suicide, common law, Constitution, courts, Culture & Ethics, Dobbs v. Jackson, Due Process Clause, euthanasia, Fourteenth Amendment, history, hubris, Law, Medicine, Patients Rights Council, Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court, Washington v. Glucksberg
Back in the ’90s, the assisted-suicide movement tried to convince the Supreme Court to impose a Roe–style decision for their cause. Source
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Darwinism and Scientific Totalitarianism: John West’s Darwin Day in America

assisted suicide, beauty, COVID-19, Creativity, Culture & Ethics, Darwin Day in America, Darwinism, death, embryo, Enlightenment, ethics, euthanasia, Evolution, free speech, ingenuity, intelligence, John West, Medicine, New York Times, physicians, racehorse, speech, Terri Shiavo, theology, totalitarian science, unborn
The afterword, on “Totalitarian Science,” published in 2015, shows John West as a prophet of things to come. Source
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Suicide by Zoom — Technology and Dehumanization

abortion, assisted suicide, California, coronavirus, Culture & Ethics, dehumanization, Humanize, Medicine, Meera Shah, New York State, oncologists, Oregon, oxymoron, pandemic, patients, Philadelphia Inquirer, Planned Parenthood, silver lining, suicide, Technology, telehealth, telemedicine, Wesley Smith, Zoom
Some have seen a silver lining in the pandemic and welcomed its encouragement of medicine practiced online, potentially freeing doctors to work across state borders, and widening access to care (or virtual care) generally. I’m not sure that’s to be celebrated in its entirety. The trend toward “telehealth” undercuts the crucial personal relationship between doctor and patient, which had already been in retreat before the virus came along. There are other downsides, too, including lethal ones. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “The pandemic is helping U.S. abortion-rights advocates achieve a long-standing goal: Make it easier for women to use pills to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks.” Get your abortion pills online — what could be more convenient? NPR approves, quoting New York physician Meera Shah with Planned Parenthood: “I…
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New Jersey’s Suicide Confusion

assisted suicide, coronavirus, COVID-19, Culture & Ethics, despair, District of Columbia, doctors, New Jersey, Phil Murphy, public policy, suicide prevention, Well Being Trust
New Jersey recently became one of the seven states (plus the District of Columbia) to legalize assisted suicide by statute. In effect, New Jersey sanctions suicide for some residents through its public policy. Now, with COVID-19, New Jersey officials are worried about a spike in suicide caused by the shutdown, so for them, suicide is bad. From the NJ.Com story:  On top of the more than 78,000 Americans who have already died from the fast-spreading virus, a new study from the Well Being Trust found conditions from the pandemic — including lost jobs, isolation, and fear over the future — could lead to 75,000 deaths in the nation from drug or alcohol abuse and suicide over the next decade.This comes as a number of critics say they’re worried lockdowns designed to save lives from COVID-19 could…
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Fewer “Deaths of Despair” Increases U.S. Life Expectancy

addiction, addictive substances, assisted suicide, cancer, Culture & Ethics, deaths of despair, despair, fentanyl, New York Times, opioid painkillers, prosperity, suicide
Good news: U.S. life expectancy has increased. From the New York Times story: Life expectancy increased for the first time in four years in 2018, the federal government said Thursday, raising hopes that a benchmark of the nation’s health may finally be stabilizing after a rare and troubling decline that was driven by a surge in drug overdoses. Part of the reason for the improvement was a decrease in what are known as “deaths of despair”: Deaths from overdoses dropped by 4.1 percent in 2018, to 67,367 from 70,237 in 2017. The decrease was largely driven by a dip in deaths from prescription opioid painkillers, which set off the opioid epidemic in the late 1990s before heroin and, later, fentanyl moved in. Provisional data suggests those deaths continued to fall…
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In Washington State, Assisted Suicide “Protections” Become “Barriers”

assisted suicide, barriers, Death with Dignity Act, guidelines, HB 2419, Medicine, protections, self-administration, University of Washington, Washington State
Razzle-dazzle them. That’s what good carney pitchmen do to sell their wares. So do assisted-suicide advocates. When pitching legalization, they solemnly promise that they have written, Oh, so “protective guidelines” into the legislation to prevent abuse. Then, once the law is safely in place, advocates grouse that the guidelines they touted are “obstacles” or “barriers” that unjustly prevent suffering people from accessing assisted suicide. Eventually, political agitation begins to amend the law to make things, shall we say, more flexible. A Slippery Slope We see this slippery slope process in action in Washington. Assisted suicide has been legal there for several years, and now a bill has been filed to require a university study into alleged “barriers facing Washington’s residents to the Death with Dignity Act,” and to have that…
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