“I predict that as more people suffer from dementing illnesses, we will undoubtably cross a threshold and finally witness significant changes.” — Lewis Cohen, MD
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A family practice physician explains why she changed her mind about Medical Aid in Dying.
“Opponents of Death-with-Dignity (DWD) laws use several falsehoods in their attempts to prevent legislation from passing. We believe policy decisions affecting people with terminal illness should be made based on evidence and the actual content of the legislation.”
“New legislation and court judgments are further expanding access to MAID, some bringing new and different twists.”
“One facility used the term “provider-hastened death” and stated that it encompasses euthanasia.”
“What is fundamentally the difference between a doctor pulling a plug on a machine that provides lifesaving nutrients to a person that could potentially stay ‘alive’ on it for years, and a doctor prescribing pills to a person with mere days or months to live to end their unnecessary suffering?”
“Why would an anti-MAiD activist try to force a patient about whom they know nothing, to live by the activist’s personal values rather than the patient’s own?”
Advocates, supporters, and champions (of MAiD) need to decide if it is better to have a law that is less than ideal … or have no law at all? Is something better than nothing?
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
The lawsuit does not attack the right of patients to access medical aid in dying, which is the heart of the bill. Rather, it challenges provisions of the law that require providers to inform patients of the availability of medical aid in dying, and to refer those patients to a willing provider if the patient’s primary provider is unable or is unwilling for any reason.
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