Connecticut: Assisted Suicide Advocates Attempt to Exploit Tragic Murder-Suicide

On Monday of this week (May 10), there was one of those all-too-familiar tragedies that appear in the news on a regular basis.  In the one of the earliest and most comprehensive articles covering the story, reporter Ann DeMatteo wrote an article titled “North Haven deaths believed to be murder-suicide“:

NORTH HAVEN — A well-known town family is suffering its second tragedy in a decade following the death of a husband and wife in what police believe was a murder-suicide.Life was never the same for Thomas and Joan Vanacore of 2 Pleasant Drive after the Sept. 11, 2001, death of their son, Edward Vanacore, 29, who worked at the World Trade Center. More recently, Thomas Vanacore was being treated for a late-stage cancer, and his wife had Alzheimer’s disease.

Police received a 911 call about 3:30 p.m. Monday when a visiting nurse known to the couple reported the shooting. The nurse had received permission to run an errand, and returned to find the scene. Her name was not released, and she declined to be interviewed.

According to Capt. James Merrithew, the Vanacores were found by authorities in an enclosed porch at the rear of the house. Joan Vanacore, 70, was found dead when paramedics and police arrived. Thomas Vanacore, 73, was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital where he died.  Early indications are that Thomas Vanacore shot his wife and then himself, police said.

(That early assumption has been pretty well upheld and is believed to be the case.)

North Haven is in Connecticut, where Compassion & Choices (C&C) – the largest and most aggressive advocacy group for legalization of assisted suicide – is currently pursuing a legal gambit to decriminalize doctors giving suicide assistance to patients diagnosed as “terminally ill” in Blick v. Division of Criminal Justice.

The spinmeisters at C&C just couldn’t let a perfectly good tragedy go unexploited.

On Wednesday, May 12th, the organization issued a press release saying that this case “highlights a need for aid in dying.”:

PORTLAND, OR – Compassion & Choices, the nation’s largest advocate for end-of-life care and choices, responded to the tragic deaths in North Haven,Connecticut, described as “a murder-suicide,” of 73 year-old Thomas Vanacoreand 70-year-old Joan Vanacore on Monday, May 10. The tragedy could andshould have been avoided. Thomas Vanacore was reportedly dying of throat cancer and his wife Joan of Alzheimer’s disease. Thomas is reported to have shothis wife and then himself to death. (Emphasis added.)

The Vanacores should have been able to turn to their physician if they found their dying processes to be unbearable and request a prescription for medication they could consume to bring about a peaceful death. This option, known as aid in dying, is openly available in Oregon, Washington and Montana. A pending lawsuit in Connecticut asks the court to find that Connecticut law does not outlaw the practice. In Blick v. Connecticut the Connecticut Superior Court is asked to recognize that when a dying patient consumes medication prescribed for the purpose of bringing about a peaceful death that this is not “suicide” and a physician who provides such a patient with that prescription is not within reach of a Connecticut law that makes a crime of assisting another person to “commit suicide.” Medical and mental health professionals recognize that suicide and the choice of a dying patient for a peaceful death are starkly and fundamentallydifferent. (Emphasis added.)

If you’re hearing a loud noise right now, it’s probably a bullshit alarm going off.  There’s more:

Kathryn Tucker, co-counsel to the physician plaintiffs in the Blick case, and Director of Legal Affairs for Compassion & Choices, said, “It is tragic to hear of dying patients resorting to the horrific violence of death by gunshot, and here it is compounded by the tragedy of the husband first shooting his wife and then himself. Dying patients in Connecticut should be able to turn to their physicians and discuss all end-of-life options, including aid in dying. If the patient feels that the burden of suffering imposed by the dying process is too great to bear, he or she should be able to choose aid in dying, and have the option to die at home, in familiar surroundings, with family present at the bedside, in a peaceful, dignified manner. (Emphasis added.)

Why is this bullshit?

Two reasons:

I’ve read all the press coverage concerning the deaths of the Vanacores.  Not one single article claims that Joan Vanacore was “dying” of Alzheimer’s disease.  Alzheimer’s can only be considered “terminal” in the final stages – a stage at which the person isn’t legally competent to request help in comitting suicide.  While she apparently wasn’t in the most advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, Joan Vanacore had apparently reached a point where she wouldn’t have been considered legally competent to make a life-and-death decision, according to her son:

John Vanacore, of North Haven said he doesn’t believe his parents conspired to end their lives, as his mother “wasn’t cognizant enough” to make such a decision, but that his father was thinking about others in the family. “My father was very private, but I feel he felt he was dying and didn’t want to have her be a burden on anyone,” he said.

So that’s the second reason: Competence. C&C pays lip service to the principle of limiting legalization of assisted suicide only to those people who are diagnosed as “terminal” (expected to live no longer than 6 months) and who are mentally competent to make the request.  Joan Vanacore wasn’t “dying” and she wasn’t regarded as “competent.”

Is C&C suggesting that legalization would somehow have made it possible for John Vanacore to discuss his wish to end his wife’s life with a doctor?

There are only two ways I can think of right now to interpret this cynical exploitation of a tragic situation:

1. C&C is testing the limits of the public’s gullibility.  They might be emboldened right now, seeing how the Final Exit Network – with its “open door” policy of suicide assistance to nonterminal old, ill and disabled people have gotten a sympathetic free ride in the press – and in many cases misreport the group as “aiding” people with “terminal illnesses.”  They might also have been pleasantly surprised at how the combined marketing efforts of HBO and CNN have repackaged Jack Kevorkian – from a lawless creepy ghoul to an eccentric champion for the terminally ill.  So maybe they’re keeping they’re fingers crossed that maybe the public really is too stupid to notice that the person who was killed wasn’t dying and didn’t ask to die.

2. It’s also possible that C&C is testing the waters with this release.  Anyone familiar with the passions of assisted suicide/euthanasia activists knows that the “terminally ill” limitation being promoted at present is just the first step in an incrementalist strategy.  Most of the supporters of assisted suicide and euthanasia want much broader “elegibility” – similar to the expansive eligibility in the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Time will tell.  I’m hoping that the public really isn’t as gullible as C&C seems to think.

In any case, after this latest gambit by the organization, C&C will now be referred to on this blog as “Conflation & Con jobs.”  They’ve earned the name.  –Stephen Drake