Election Day, USA

Don't forget to vote. Please.

And I want to mention that I am voting NO on our assisted suicide bill.

One big reason is that in Oregon, virtually the same bill has in some cases become more the "duty to die" law than anything about a "right to death with dignity". Some people with terminal illnesses are now getting letters from the state health plan saying that their treatment (basically any treatment that has less than a 5% chance patient survival after 5 years) will not be covered by health insurance, but that the state WILL cover their assisted suicide. Hint, hint.

Nobody should be forced or pressured to make that choice.

Even if you think assisted suicide should be legal, the law up for vote right now has little to no safeguard against abuse as currently written, and has other major problems.

######################

Here's a page with quite a few links from reputable sources pointing out problems that Oregon has had with their assisted suicide law.

There are no real effective safeguards in place in this law. For instance, doctors are only required to recommend counseling for depressed or mentally ill patients ONLY if the doctor feels that the person's condition is causing "impaired judgement". There is no safeguard in place and no evaluation required to try to make sure that the person's depression isn't causing their desire for suicide.

Another thing worth pointing out is that the law up for vote in our state on this issue actually requires physicians to lie about the cause of death on the death certificate. For instance, if a person with cancer takes an overdose of barbituate, with a doctor's help, to kill themselves, the doctor is required by this law to write on the death certificate that cancer was the cause of death.

Page 7:

24 (2) The attending physician may sign the patient's death
25 certificate which shall list the underlying terminal disease as the
2 6 cause of death.

Please check out this website if you want to know more about why to vote NO on this law.