Hawaii Senate Panel to Debate and Hear Testimony on Assisted Suicide Bill Today

Andi van der Voort, assisted suicide, diane coleman, dredf, hawaii, legislation, Marilyn Golden, Our News & Commentary Blog, Robert Yagi, scott foster

Because of the time difference between New York and Hawaii, the Senate hearing on assisted suicide hasn’t begun yet.  Here is the news from Friday’s Star Advertiser:

Hawaii would become the fourth state to legalize physician-assisted suicide under a proposal being brought back for debate in the Legislature for the first time in four years.
Senate Health Chairman Josh Green is reviving the issue with a hearing Monday afternoon in the state Capitol auditorium.
Senate Bill 803 would allow a terminally ill, competent adult to receive medication to end life. The bill specifically prohibits mercy killings, lethal injections and active euthanasia, and requires patients to receive informed consent.
Alternate doctors would be allowed to substitute for those who decline to participate, and the law also would provide immunity from civil and criminal liability for acts taken in good faith.
Green, an emergency room doctor in Kona, said he supports palliative and hospice care, but he believes the testimony is compelling on both sides of the argument.
“I’m very sensitive to the concerns of everyone involved in this issue — from those suffering with terminal conditions and their families, to those who provide them with medical care,” he said. “We need to find a way to support those dealing with end-of-life decisions with the greatest possible compassion and respect.”
An assisted-suicide proposal introduced in the House has not been scheduled for a hearing.
Versions of the doctor-assisted suicide proposal have been floated at the Legislature since 1999.
Green (D, Milolii-Waimea) was the last committee chairman to hear it in either chamber, doing so as the House health chairman in 2007 and 2005. The bill failed to make it out of his committee both years, most recently with members voting 6-1 to hold the measure.
Green has said that with so much turnover in the Legislature, he feels it is healthy to have fresh debate on difficult issues.
Hearings have been characterized by emotional testimony, bringing many to tears as they have recounted tales of loved ones suffering near the end of life.
The issue was last heard in the Senate in 2002, when it came to the chamber floor for a final vote on the final day of the session. Four senators changed their votes between second and third reading — three from “yes” to “no” — as the measure failed 14-11.

There are at least three disability rights activists in Hawaii who are offering testimony – either through written submissions or in person.   Both Marilyn Golden of the Disability Education & Defense Fund (DREDF) and NDY’s Diane Coleman have submitted written testimony.

Below is an excerpt from Diane Coleman’s testimony:

An increasingly common form of domestic violence became the subject of news coverage in Hawaii in late 2009.  Seventy-one-year-old Robert Yagi had tended daily to his terminally ill wife’s needs and kept her company since she was hospitalized in October that year.  He faced a charge of attempted murder after allegedly firing a plastic flare gun at her. 

This is fairly typical of the cases of successful or attempted murder/suicides seen in elderly people.  The perpetrators are men.  The women have significant health issues.  There is no evidence that the wives in question wanted to die.  Fortunately, she survived.

Nevertheless, that didn’t stop a spokesperson for the Hawaii Death with Dignity Society from attempting to exploit this case of domestic violence to promote his own organization’s agenda.  Scott Foster, spokesman for the Hawaii Death with Dignity Society, asserted that Yagi was trying to end his wife’s suffering:

“When I saw it (on the news), I knew exactly what I was hearing,” he said. “We hear it all the time all over the world, rich people, poor people, people in pain, people suffering.”

There is no indication that Yagi’s wife wanted to be killed.  Or does Mr. Foster believe there should be some sort of law allowing caregivers to order the euthanasia of their spouse or child?  In fact, Foster is just doing what many representatives of pro-euthanasia groups have been doing for years – exploiting cases of domestic violence in which the victim is an elderly, disabled, ill woman by falsely framing them as acts of compassion.

Note – see blog entries here and here for coverage of the exploitation of the Yagi tragedy by Hawaiian euthanasia advocates.

Any coverage of the panel hearing will be shared here when it’s available.  –Stephen Drake

Prize Given to Oregon Documentary on Assisted Suicide Tells Us More About the Judges Than the Film

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From The Oregonian:

“How to Die in Oregon,” an intimate and poignant film about the impact of Oregon’s 1994 Death With Dignity Act, won the Grand Jury Prize in the U. S. Documentary Competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival tonight, one of the most prestigious awards that can be won by a non-fiction film anywhere in the world.

Director Peter D. Richardson, an Oregon native whose debut feature, “Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon,” played to acclaim at Sundance in 2006, stood atop a field of 16 competing documentaries that were selected from a field of 841 submissions. 

I’m not exactly surprised that this film received top honors.  The memory of the 2005 “Kill the Cripple” night at the Oscars is still fresh.  Two films dealing with the euthanasia of characters with disabilities were nominees in both the Foreign Picture and Best Picture categories.  Here is part of what we wrote at the time:

To be fair, other movies dealing with disability ended up with nominations as well. The movie “Ray,” for example, received a “best picture” nomination. This only proves that Hollywood will love someone who is blind as long as the person is lucky enough to be talented, famous and musical.

We figure critics left the movie “Ray” humming. When those same critics left from seeing “Baby,” which ends with Eastwood’s character killing the now-paralyzed character played by Swank, they were in tears. This, they’ve told us all, is how pictures are supposed to be.  Now the Academy is telling us the same thing.

And, in fact, both “Million Dollar Baby” and “The Sea Inside” won in their respective categories.

So, it’s not a shocker that a bunch of folks in the film trade would go head over heels for a documentary that sounds an awful lot like a PSA for legalization of assisted suicide.  In other words, the award probably tells us more about the judges granting the award than it does about the film itself.  I doubt I’d lose any money if I bet that the judges were predisposed to approve of legalized assisted suicide, and when the film preached at them, they didn’t recognize it as a sermon.

If that seems a little harsh, I came across an interesting review by Matt Goldberg at Collider.com – Goldberg claims not to have an opinion on legalized assisted suicide.  I’m inclined to believe him, based on his somewhat skeptical review of the film:

How to Die in Oregon makes a case for “death with dignity” but that case is weakened by Richardson’s over-reliance on the emotional impact and conducting unnecessary interviews.  If the film wants to sell me on legalizing euthanasia, then I want to know more facts.  I want to know about other options for end-of-life care.  I want to know if the doctor-prescribed death drink ever fails to kill the patient and instead sends them into a persistent vegetative state.  At one point, a title card tells us that Cody is improving under “palliative care”, but it doesn’t tell us what that means or entails.  Rather than take the time to show a broader view of end-of-life care, Richardson shows tangential scenes which don’t benefit the emotional or intellectual impact of the movie.  For example, in one scene he meets with the founder of the “Hemlock Society” (a name I found dreadfully glib), an organization dedicated to legalizing euthanasia.  After the scene, we never see the society’s founder again.

On an emotional level, How to Die in Oregon is a triumph.  It pulls at your heartstrings without feeling manipulative and when we look at Cody, we see our own loved ones, and the thought of losing them slowly and painfully is absolutely gut-wrenching.  But on an intellectual level, the film is unsatisfying.  Euthanasia is a loaded issue and Richardson does his audience a disservice by not providing them with a broader view of the benefits and weaknesses of various options one has when considering their end-of-life care.

It’s funny that Goldberg asks about failed assisted suicides in Oregon, because it turns out that there were problems with that in 2010.  Oregon – perhaps to get their report out to coincide with the documentary publicity – published its annual report much earlier this year than in previous years.  I’ll share more about the report later, but here is a part relevant to Goldberg’s question (pdf):

  • Two of the patients who took the medications during 2010 did not die after ingestion, but died later from their underlying illness. Twenty of the patients who received prescriptions in 2010 did not take the medications and died of their underlying illness. Status is pending for 15 patients: two have died but we have not received the follow up questionnaire, and for 13 we have neither the death certificate nor follow up questionnaire (Figure 2).
  • One of the two patients who awoke after ingesting the medication regained consciousness within 24 hours after ingestion and died of their underlying illness five days later; the other gained consciousness 3 ½ days after ingestion and died of their underlying illness three months later. Regurgitation was reported in both instances.

Why didn’t the two individuals who didn’t die not make a second attempt at suicide?  Did the attempt make them sicker and make them unable to make another attempt.  Did the act of staring at the reality of death make them decide they’d just as soon put it off for awhile?

The report provides no answers – to these or other questions.  I’d sure like to know more about the details of the two failed suicides.  I suspect that reviewer Matt Goldberg and any other thinking reviewer might want to know more as well.  Unfortunately, thinking people were in short supply when it came to judging documentaries at Sundance this year.

France: Euthanasia Bill Defeated in Senate Vote

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From Alex Schadenberg at the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition:

(On January 25th) the Senate in France defeated a bill to legalize euthanasia by a vote of 170 to 142.

The euthanasia bill was sponsored in the French Senate by Jean-Pierre Godefroy (Parti Socialiste), Alain Fouché (UMP) and François Autain and Guy Fischer (Parti communiste-Parti de gauche).

The bill would have allowed euthanasia for people with disabilities, those with chronic conditions and people who are defined as terminal.

Interestingly, no English-speaking news source has covered this story.  As a bilingual Canadian, Alex pulled the news off of a French news source so we monolinguals could know about it.  I’d bet there would be all kinds of English language coverage if the vote had gone the other way.  Funny how that goes.

You can read the rest of Alex’s blog entry here.  –Stephen Drake

Belgium’s Bountiful Harvest – of Organs of Disabled People Killed Under Medical Supervision

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From Michael Cook at Mercatornet, comes this newest development from Belgium.  Apparently, some doctors in that country are so excited about this that they put together a powerpoint presentation about the practice at a national conference:

A group of Belgian doctors are harvesting “high quality” organs from patients who have been euthanased. This is not a secret project, but one which they described openly at a conference organised by the Belgian Royal Medical Academy in December.

In a PowerPoint presentation, Dirk Ysebaert, Dirk Van Raemdonck, Michel Meurisse, of the University Hospitals Of Antwerp, Leuven And Liège, showed that about 20% of the 705 people who died through euthanasia (officially) in 2008 were suffering from neuromuscular disorders whose organs are relatively high quality for transplanting to other patients. This represents a useful pool of organs which could help to remedy a shortage of organs in Belgium (as everywhere else).

Though disturbing, this really isn’t surprising.  Truly terminally ill people – at the end of a deadly disease process – tend not to have usable organs (suitable for transplant).  Younger people with disabilities – spinal cord injury and neuromuscular conditions, for example – generally have organs that are healthy and suitable for transplant.

One has to wonder what kind of pressures – subtle or otherwise – will people with disabilities experience in Belgium as they are increasingly seen as viable donors, and maybe more “useful” dead than alive when their organs are seen as more valuable than they themselves are.  –Stephen Drake

h/t to Wesley Smith at Secondhand Smoke.

Please Support Not Dead Yet With a Year-End Donation

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Not Dead Yet needs your help.  As you might have noticed, pro-euthanasia organizations are flush with cash.  They employ lobbyists, have public relations departments, pay for billboard campaigns and have even succeeded in pretty much ghost-writing some of the press coverage about assisted suicide and euthanasia.


The “right to life” organizations are also well-funded, but many intertwine anti-euthanasia advocacy with other issues of theirs, and with an eye toward bolstering one political party over another.  Pro-euthanasia activists are more than willing to exploit that tendency and it’s worked out well for our opponents.


Not Dead Yet has been the organizing voice for the disability community for over a decade when it comes to so-called “end of life” issues.  We function on a budget of about 1800 dollars per month.  That covers the cost for salary and health care for one part-time employee.  It doesn’t leave room for anything else.  Not Dead Yet hasn’t had the cash to issue press releases online, to travel to venues where we can organize and/or educate others or to engage in many forms of advocacy and activism that just can’t be done without cash.

While the debate over assisted suicide is often presented as a choice between the right to self determination on the one hand, and a strict, religious based “right to life” on the other, NDY’s analysis takes an entirely different, disability-rights based view.  NDY, and the many disability rights organizations that support us, believe that the practice of assisted suicide, euthanasia and medical killing do not take place in a vacuum, but in the real world where discrimination against disabled people leads to isolation, poor health care, insufficient or non-existent personal assistance services, chronic unemployment, poverty, and exclusion from social, civic and political life.  NDY has demonstrated that, where these practices are concerned, the axiom “better dead than disabled” is the basis of decision-making for doctors, family members, and individuals who end their lives.  NDY has documented time and again that, far from being applied exclusively to persons with “terminal” illness (less than six months to live) as advertised, people with non-terminal physical, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities, as well as chronic illnesses, are often affected by these practices.

Since 1997 NDY has drawn attention to the disability-rights implications of assisted suicide, euthanasia, and medical killing by filing friend-of-the-court briefs, organizing demonstrations at meetings of the Hemlock Society (and its successor, Compassion and Choices), participating in debates, educating legislators in jurisdictions where measures to legalize such practices are under consideration, giving media interviews, and writing articles, editorials and letters in professional and mainstream media.  All of this has been done with two part-time staff, in-kind support from a community-based disability service group, a volunteer board of directors, and hundreds of volunteer community organizers in North America and beyond.  NDY’s policy to refuse donations from “right to life” groups has meant that its funding has been minimal throughout its existence, yet has enabled us to effectively refute criticism that we are “tools” or “puppets” of the religious right.

Despite NDY’s many successful campaigns to prevent passage of assisted suicide laws in states throughout the U.S., the struggle goes on.  Each successive legislature elected, ignorant of the information and reasoning which prompted its predecessor to decline to pass such laws, must be reached and educated again.  And the disability rights-based opposition to assisted suicide is not simplistic and subject to sound bites.  Getting beyond the shouts of recrimination with the quiet voice of reason is a long and difficult task.

Please help.  We’d all like to make it possible for NDY to not only maintain but enlarge our presence and to put disability concerns front and center in these life-and-death debates.  And we can’t do that without your help.

If you are at all able, please help us out so that we can be more effective in our work.

Tax deductible contributions would need to be made payable to:

“Center for Disability Rights” (CDR), designated for “Not Dead Yet”  in the memo section of your check and mailed to 497 State Street, Rochester, NY 14608.  Donations can also be made online by going to the Network for Good donation page, and following the prompts to donate to the Center for Disability Rights  through the Network for Good (which allows credit card donations, adding a five percent charge), and designating the Not Dead Yet program.  The default setting is for a one-time donation, but if you have the money and believe our work is important, please consider giving on a monthly or quarterly basis.

If anyone has any difficulties or questions please contact me via email.  –Stephen Drake