In early October, we alerted you to a service request from a New Hampshire legislator for a proposed Assisted suicide bill. Marjorie Smith was fishing for co-sponsors for her “ACT relative to end-of-life options,” and she found some.
The bill includes protections for everyone involved and details an extensive list of rules for qualifications, including mental capacity and a terminal condition with six or fewer months to live. If you wanted to step onto the slippery slope, this is what you’d use to do that. Legislation focused on end-of-life care (compassion) with many guardrails that can, over time, be taken down as they have in every State or country where Medically Assisted Dying has become law.
The LSR has been given bill number HB1283.
SPONSORS: Rep. M. Smith, Straf. 10; Rep. Dutzy, Hills. 6; Rep. D. Paige, Carr. 1; Rep. Haskins, Rock. 11; Rep. Woodcock, Carr. 1; Rep. Phillips, Rock. 7; Rep. Lynn, Rock. 17; Rep. Wolf, Merr. 7; Rep. Bolton, Graf. 8; Sen. Altschiller, Dist 24
This bill establishes a procedure for an individual with terminal illness to receive medical assistance in dying through the self administration of medication. The bill establishes criteria for the prescription of such medication and establishes reporting requirements and penalties for misuse or noncompliance.
And so it begins.
The final version appears different from the draft we shared previously, but it still includes stipulations to which I’ve previously objected.
137-M:9 Prohibited Acts.
I. Nothing in the chapter shall be construed to authorize a physician or any other person to end an individual’s life by lethal injection, mercy killing, or euthanasia. Actions taken in accordance with this chapter shall not be construed, for any purpose, to constitute suicide, assisted suicide, euthanasia, mercy killing, homicide, or adult abuse under the law.
In my previous piece, I noted that the,
“…prohibition against designating this death as assisted suicide – an affectation that, in years to come, could protect the State from having to accept its role in the rising number of deaths resulting from the inevitable widening of permissions that may result in the state assisting people toward “medically assisted suicide.”
They did nix a suggested preamble (you can read it here). And it is still a felony to ‘interfere with, or prevent a qualified individual’s death against the qualified individual’s wishes,” including,
(a) Altering, forging, concealing, or destroying a request for a terminal prescription without the qualified individual’s authorization.
(b) Concealing or destroying a withdrawal or rescission of a request for a terminal prescription without the qualified individual’s authorization.
(c) Concealing or destroying a qualified individual’s terminal prescription without the qualified individual’s authorization, or preventing a qualified individual from self-administering the terminal prescription.
(d) Coercing or exerting undue influence on a qualified individual to request or to self-administer a terminal prescription for the purpose of ending the qualified individual’s life.
(e) Coercing or exerting undue influence on a qualified individual to prevent the qualified individual from requesting or self-administering a terminal prescription.
My objections here are also the same. Item (e) can easily be misconstrued. “Loved ones who object are likely to do so in a manner that could be mistaken for a violation. Neither undue influence nor coercion for the purpose of the legislation is defined, leaving it open to abuse, not that describing it would not do the same.” Though I suspect these terms are defined elsewhere in statute or law, abuse seems likely, especially from a government that seeks to euthanize its citizens as outlined in one or more of my previous outings on the subject of Medically Assisted dying.
I advise the General Court to assist in the quick legislative death of HB1283.
It is not uncompassionate to accept that this slippery slope inevitably leads to misuse and abuse to cull populations within a society. And this might sound crass, but the terminally ill are still free to find painless ways to end their lives by other means if that is their desperate wish.
I’m not saying it would be neater or cleaner, but what if the terminally ill could commit suicide without the help of the government or the public health apparatus and retain by law at least a minimum of death benefits from their insurance company when they might otherwise have been denied? It would keep the state from getting involved in an act that recent history assures us will be a justifiable end to a growing list of ‘conditions,’ including those resulting almost entirely from direct government action (as policy).
I don’t want New Hampshire on that slippery slope. If you agree that this abuse is inevitable, the only sure way to prevent that is to kill HB1283.
