"This is how society will pay you back? With non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia?"

Assisted suicide discussion veering into talk of terminating lives on non-terminal people

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/assisted-suicide-discussion-veering-into-talk-of-terminating-lives-of/article_87332fc0-4fe8-11e4-94f5-632029a45aed.html

I am a lawyer in Washington State, where assisted suicide is legal. Our law was passed by a deceptive ballot measure spearheaded by Compassion & Choices. Voters were promised that only the patient would be allowed to administer the lethal dose, which is false. Our law does say that the patient may self-administer the lethal dose, but there is no language saying that administration must be by self-administration. For more information, please go here:  https://www.kcba.org/newsevents/barbulletin/BView.aspx?Month=05&Year=2009&AID=article5.htm

Once assisted suicide is legal, there is pressure to expand. For example, here in Washington State, we have had “trial balloon” proposals to expand our law to non-terminal people. For me, the most disturbing one was a casual discussion in our largest paper suggesting euthanasia for people who didn’t save enough money for their old age. So, if you worked hard all your life, paid your taxes, and your pension plan went broke, this is how society will pay you back? With non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia?

To view a copy of the newspaper column, please go here: https://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/jerry-large_001.pdf.

Protect yourselves and your families. Don’t let assisted suicide become legal in Montana.

Margaret Dore, president,
Choice is an Illusion,
Seattle, Washington

This is how society will pay you back? With non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia?

Assisted suicide discussion veering into talk of terminating lives of non-terminal people

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/assisted-suicide-discussion-veering-into-talk-of-terminating-lives-of/article_87332fc0-4fe8-11e4-94f5-632029a45aed.html

I am a lawyer in Washington State, where assisted suicide is legal. Our law was passed by a deceptive ballot measure spearheaded by Compassion & Choices. Voters were promised that only the patient would be allowed to administer the lethal dose, which is false. Our law does say that the patient may self-administer the lethal dose, but there is no language saying that administration must be by self-administration. For more information, please go here:  https://www.kcba.org/newsevents/barbulletin/BView.aspx?Month=05&Year=2009&AID=article5.htm

Once assisted suicide is legal, there is pressure to expand. For example, here in Washington State, we have had “trial balloon” proposals to expand our law to non-terminal people. For me, the most disturbing one was a casual discussion in our largest paper suggesting euthanasia for people who didn’t save enough money for their old age. So, if you worked hard all your life, paid your taxes, and your pension plan went broke, this is how society will pay you back? With non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia?

To view a copy of the newspaper column, please go here: https://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/jerry-large_001.pdf.

I never heard anyone talk like this before our assisted suicide law was passed.

Protect yourselves and your families. Don’t let assisted suicide become legal in Montana.

Margaret Dore, president,

Choice is an Illusion, 

Seattle, Washington

Assisters Can Have Their Own Agenda

http://ravallirepublic.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_d9ec8917-b025-5aad-97dd-0520559fde00.html

Greed, personal motives can influence 'choice' to commit assisted suicide . . .

A Roundup man was recently charged with “aiding or soliciting suicide” of a 16-year-old girl here in Montana. His apparent motive was to prevent her testimony against him in another matter, i.e., by getting her to kill herself. According to an Associate Press article, he coerced her to actually take steps towards that goal, which fortunately did not result in her death. See  http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/convicted-rapist-charged-with-aiding-or-soliciting-suicide-of-victim/article_65c2f39c-ae01-5104-a279-da45b352ef42.html

Similarly, in Minnesota, a former nurse was recently convicted of assisting a young man to kill himself. Both the nurse and the Roundup man had used webcams to communicate with their victims. The nurse’s reported motive was the “thrill of the chase.” See  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/suicideobsessed-us-nurse-convicted-of-helping-coventry-man-kill-himself-9722534.html.

These stories illustrates a fundamental problem with legalizing assisted suicide. The assisting person can have his or her own agenda to encourage a person to kill themselves. The “choice” will not necessarily be that of the victim/patient.

In my practice, where I have a high percentage of older patients, I have witnessed greed by family members over inheritances, including vicious battles over the death bed. This same motive of greed could lead to a coerced suicide, especially if assisted suicide were legalized in our state.

Let’s keep legal assisted suicide out of Montana.

Annie Bukacek,
Kalispell

Assisters Can Have Their Own Agenda

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-assisted-suicide-20141005,0,1813199.story

Brad Williams makes a good point about the problems with legalizing assisted suicide, one of them being that people assisting a suicide may have their own agenda ("The perils of assisted suicide," Oct. 2).

Mr. Williams gives the example of a recent Montana case in which a man is accused of encouraging a teenage girl to kill herself in order to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape trial.

I am a doctor in Oregon, one of the few states in which physician-assisted suicide is legal. In this context, assisters with an agenda include our state's Medicaid program, which uses coverage incentives to steer patients to suicide.

The program will pay for a patient's suicide but will not necessarily pay for the patient's treatment to cure a disease or to extend the patient's life.

In other words, with the legalization of assisted suicide, the "treatment" of suicide is displacing desired treatments to cure or to extend life.

I first became aware of such issues in 1982, shortly before my first wife died of cancer. We had just visited her doctor. As we were leaving, he had suggested that she overdose herself on medication.

I still remember the look of horror on her face. She said, "Ken, he wants me to kill myself."

We must protect our health care system from such abuses. Citizens should tell their legislators and other public officials to say no to assisted-suicide.

Kenneth Stevens, Sherwood, Ore.

Assisted suicide has broader application to people who aren't at "end of life"

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/assisted-suicide-has-broader-application-to-people-who-aren-t/article_ac55a646-3843-11e4-a89b-001a4bcf887a.html

Thank you for Ted Friesen’s (Sept. 5) letter describing the broader agenda of assisted suicide proponent Compassion & Choices to defend Medicaid against individual patient choices. I also appreciate your paper’s provision of the links to supporting documentation so that I can read the evidence for myself.

I was, however, disappointed with the headline given to Friesen’s letter, which implies that assisted suicide legalization only affects people at the “end of life.” This is not true for at least two reasons.

First, in places where legalization has been proposed, “eligibility” requirements are not limited to people at the end of life. Consider, for example, Montana’s Baxter case where Compassion & Choices proposed legal assisted suicide for “terminally ill adult patients.” A formal opinion letter by Dr. Richard Wonderly and attorney Theresa Schrempp attaches a two-page copy of that proposal and states:

“Shockingly, this definition is broad enough to include an 18-year-old who is insulin dependent or . . . a young adult with stable HIV/AIDS. Each of these patients could live for decades with appropriate medical treatment. Yet, they are “terminally ill” according to the definition promoted by advocates of assisted suicide.”

http://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/schrempp_wonderly_opn_ltr1.pdf

Second, even if an assisted suicide law is limited to persons expected to die in a short time, there is the problem that predictions of life expectancy can be wrong. I have seen this in my own practice.

Consider also John Norton, who was diagnosed with ALS and told that he would get progressively worse (be paralyzed) and die in three to five years. He instead has a “wonderful life” 57 years later. His affidavit states:

“If assisted suicide or euthanasia had been available to me in the 1950s, I would have missed the bulk of my life and my life yet to come.“

https://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/signed-john-norton-affidavit_001.pdf

Carley C. Robertson,
Havre

Convicted rapist charged with ‘aiding or soliciting suicide’ of victim

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/convicted-rapist-charged-with-aiding-or-soliciting-suicide-of-victim/article_65c2f39c-ae01-5104-a279-da45b352ef42.html

September 18, 2014 6:00 am  •  By Eddie Gregg

A Roundup man in Montana State Prison for having sex with an underage girl is facing a new charge alleging he pressured the girl to kill herself during a live video chat in September 2013.

Last week, the Musselshell County Attorney’s Office charged Michael John Morlan, 21, with aiding or soliciting suicide, and two other felonies — intimidation and tampering with witnesses and informants.

It is unclear whether anyone has ever been charged with or convicted of aiding or soliciting suicide in Montana. Musselshell County Attorney Kent M. Sipe was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Charging documents say Morlan contacted the girl, who is now 16 years old, via Skype, an online video-chatting service, on Sept. 1, 2013, and told her to kill herself while he watched.

The documents say Morlan told her he wanted to watch so that he could make sure she was doing it right.

The alleged victim reported to law enforcement that when she started crying, Morlan told her to stop wasting air and get it over with.

Court records, quoting the alleged victim, detail a back-and-forth conversation between the two in which Morlan repeatedly told her to kill herself and pressured her to continue as she cut herself and took prescription anti-depressants.

When she started cutting her wrists, Morlan told her to cut deeper, she said. The girl said she had prescription anti-depressants and put them in her hand. When she did this, she said, Morlan told her to take all of them.

She said she took the pills and then panicked, disconnected the Skype call and went to her parents for help.

About a year prior to this incident, Morlan had been charged with two felony counts of sexual intercourse without consent involving the same girl.

The charges alleged that Morlan had a sexual relationship with her from April 2011 — when she was 12 years old — through July 2012 and that he admitted to law enforcement that he digitally penetrated the girl on July 25, 2012.

Morlan was apparently out of jail after posting bond at the time he is accused of trying to coerce the girl to kill herself.

The girl reported that in August 2013, Morlan stalked and intimidated her when she tried to avoid communication with him.

She said he threatened to make her life miserable if she went to police and told her he had people watching her.

The girl told investigators that while at the youth center in Roundup a person, identified in charging documents as B.K., came up to her and told her to “quit telling everyone that Mickey raped you.”

In November, Morlan pleaded guilty to the two rape charges. District Judge Randal I. Spaulding sentenced him to 15 years in prison, with eight years suspended.

The judge also revoked Morlan’s sentence in a 2011 felony drug distribution case and sentenced him to an additional five-year commitment.

Morlan, who is being held at the state prison, is scheduled for arraignment in Musselshell County District Court on Sept. 22.

Aiding or soliciting suicide caries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.