Not exactly a big surprise, but Compassion and Choices (aka “Conflation & Con Jobs“) has weighed in on the disappointing outcome of the trial of Final Exit Network (FEN) members in Arizona.
I am cynical enough to believe that reporters who use this press release from the organization are too shallow, lazy or generally lacking in critical thinking skills to realize the text doesn’t really say anything of substance except to promote the organization and its primary agenda – legalization of phyisician assisted suicide.
Excerpt from the press release:
“This case demonstrates the problem with vague ‘assisted suicide’ statutes such as Arizona’s,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices. “Terminally ill patients across the nation ask their physicians for aid in dying. Many doctors, in an uncertain legal environment, rebuff such questions and fail to discuss their patients’ concerns about pain and suffering. When patients cannot talk openly with their doctors they may seek assistance from others. Sympathetic family members or friends are usually unequipped to assess a patient’s competence or end-of-life options. No one should have to risk prosecution to help a dying patient end life peacefully.”
Media accounts suggest Van Voorhis was not terminally ill and may have suffered from mental illness impairing her judgment. The trial judge did not allow prosecutors to present evidence of her psychological state. “In today’s legal framework, judges and juries do not distinguish between the choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill patient for a peaceful death via selfadministered medication, and the act of a distraught individual who is not dying, who may be mentally ill and suicidal,” said Coombs Lee. “The
former is a practice known as aid in dying, which has strong and growing support among the public and medical professionals. The latter is suicide. Our nation’s laws should recognize the difference.”
What’s most important is what Coombs Lee is not saying:
- She is not saying that FEN members “assisting” the suicides of nonterminally ill people in Oregon or Washington state should be vigorously prosecuted — even though FEN has made it clear that they do operate in those states to “help” those the law doesn’t cover;
- She may be silent regarding prosecution because, while she maintains a highly debatable distinction between “aid in dying” and “assisted suicide,” she hasn’t really said that assisted suicide is wrong – or something that should be prosecuted;
- She hasn’t said that the FEN members have done anything wrong – and as near as I can figure it’s the fault of a “vaguely” constructed law that none of us can know if the actions of FEN members were wrong.
Oops. I guess I was mistaken. Coombs Lee did say something of importance – her words invite us to believe that it is the law, rather than the actions of FEN members, that was responsible for Jana Van Voorhis’s death.
I wonder what she’ll say if FEN activities in Oregon or Washington state come to light. Whose fault will the deaths the group facilitates be then? –Stephen Drake