We may seem a long way from legalizing physician-assisted suicide in the United States. But it wasn’t very long ago that such a thing seemed unthinkable in Canada, too. Let’s hope lawmakers stateside change course before it’s too late.
Dovie Eisner was born with a rare genetic condition called nemaline myopathy. He requires a wheelchair and has a host of other health problems. Last year at one point, he stopped breathing, passed out on the street, and was taken to the emergency room.
“I was alive—thanks to the determination of law enforcers and local medical personnel to keep me that way,” Eisner wrote recently in UnHerd. But, he warns, a law being considered in his home state of New York “threatens to undo this presumption in favour of lifesaving” that motivated first responders to keep him alive.
The bill, called the Medical Aid in Dying Act, would allow mentally competent adults with six months or less to live “to obtain a prescription that would put them to sleep and peacefully end their lives.”
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.
Physician-Assisted Suicide Is A Bigger Problem Than We Realize
Sally C. Pipes
We may seem a long way from legalizing physician-assisted suicide in the United States. But it wasn’t very long ago that such a thing seemed unthinkable in Canada, too. Let’s hope lawmakers stateside change course before it’s too late.
Dovie Eisner was born with a rare genetic condition called nemaline myopathy. He requires a wheelchair and has a host of other health problems. Last year at one point, he stopped breathing, passed out on the street, and was taken to the emergency room.
“I was alive—thanks to the determination of law enforcers and local medical personnel to keep me that way,” Eisner wrote recently in UnHerd. But, he warns, a law being considered in his home state of New York “threatens to undo this presumption in favour of lifesaving” that motivated first responders to keep him alive.
The bill, called the Medical Aid in Dying Act, would allow mentally competent adults with six months or less to live “to obtain a prescription that would put them to sleep and peacefully end their lives.”
Read the op-ed here.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.