The elder abuse of assisted suicide vs. authentic compassion

The pastor was worried.  Ever since Washington’s so-called Death with Dignity Act legalized assisted suicide, he’d noticed an uptick in calls from elderly parishioners wondering if they should stop routine medical treatment for heart disease or diabetes, get “qualified” as terminally ill, and avail themselves of the life-ending suicide drugs marketed as “aid-in-dying” by unprincipled relatives and smooth-talking pro-suicide groups.

Several seniors told the pastor of increased pressure from adult children to “stop taking your medications and die” so the children could have access to funds currently being spent on assisted living apartments and nursing homes.  These victims of elder abuse, faced with a barrage of media information about the costs of elder care, pressure from greedy relatives, and a growing internal sense of “being a burden,” actually considered ending their lives.

Such is the ugly unpublished underbelly of the pro-suicide/assisted suicide movement.  Despite glowing descriptions of compassion and control, the template of manipulative coercion and outright elder abuse described by this pastor and others is all too common.

So, what to do?  How can individuals, families, and communities do a better job at decreasing the lethal market for suicide and assisted suicide?  How do we establish safe harbors in medical and senior care?  What positive resources are available to support at risk populations and prevent elder abuse?

True Compassion Advocates has created a wealth of resources and information to prevent these elders and others with chronic illnesses and disabilities from being coerced into considering suicide and assisted suicide.

A summary of current TCA’s endeavors follows:   Contact us for more information about how to make a life-saving difference in your family or community.

Neighbor to Neighbor Outreach

What do family members and friends chronic health condition or illnesses have in common with elderly neighbors or co-workers with disabilities?  The answer?  Both are high risk populations who frequently have inadequate access to supportive resources and may feel they are a burden.  Simple outreach and neighborly concern can go a long way towards decreasing the market for suicide and assisted suicide and improving support for those at risk.  A kind word or action, a check-in visit, phone call, or email can make a world of difference.  Lend a helping hand, make a meal, reach out with concern. See TCA’s excellent resources on caregiver resources, including organizations which can help, serious illness support, aging with courage, and suicide prevention.

Education & Information

Ever wonder how to get the vital information you or someone you know needs with regard to medical decision making?   TCA partners with individuals and communities to bring dynamic, up-to-date educational resources presentations, and workshops. We have a broad array of news articles, informational materials, and brochures available for distribution. Our brochure, The Simple Guide for Medical Care and Decision-Making is an excellent brief overview of health care decisions, including what questions to ask and an overview of pain control, hospice care, and assisted suicide. Please contact us to order brochures or to inquire about the presentations and workshop we present in communities nationwide.

Safe Harbors

Each person, family, and community has the right to recieve health care they can trust with their lives. They have a right to know if their hospital, senior living facility, or health care provider offers excellent care to vulnerable ill people or lethal drug overdoses. Before choosing a provider, call or write and ask if they offer safe harbor from assisted suicide or elder abuse. Writing Letters/ Contacting Health Care Providers

Tell us your stories

Many family members have emailed us or called us to tell us their experiences and challenges with caring for ill loved ones, finding health care providers they can trust with their lives, and episodes of assisted suicide, along with concerns of elder abuse, or suicide promotion. Please feel free to contact us if you’d like to tell us your story or receive information or support. Just knowing you aren’t alone can make a world of difference.

Communities for Compassionate Care(CCC)

TCA works collaboratively with organizations and communities such as the newly forming Communities for Compassionate Care which offers life-affirming health care, pastoral support, and community-based services to increase support during aging, disability, illness, and caregiving.  CCC facilitates compassionate connections between people who need help and life-affirming organizations which can assist them.  More info about this exciting new endeavor will be forthcoming.

Supportive Care Gatherings

Peaceful demonstrations of compassion on behalf of those at risk for suicide, assisted suicide, and elder abuse are held at various community locations, including hospitals and senior living facilities. Please call TCA for further news about how you can, literally, walk your talk, save lives, and promote truly compassionate care.

Swine flu and assisted suicide?!? Turns out there’s a connection…

Swine flu and assisted suicide connected?  Bizarre.  Yet true.  But only in Washington…

Here’s the deal: Today’s Seattle Times features a prominent article on the front of the B section entitled: Swine flu role verified in death: officials reaffirm report after family denies it. State says man with H1N1 died of pneumonia.  It turns out “that the Snohomish County resident with swine flu who died Wednesday definitely had the virus, and it played a role in the ailing man’s death.”  The story goes on to report : “the unnamed man’s relatives had told KOMOTV that they don’t believe he had swine flu at all—and that he died of underlying heart problems instead. His death is the first to be linked to swine flu in Washington and the third in the United States.  The other two fatalities also involved people with serious underlying health issues. ”

Hold the press!  Let’s review this, shall we?  So, it turns out that the unfortunate gentleman from Snohomish county and the other two who have died in the US with swine flu had swine flu and serious underlying health issues.  But medical and health officials report that all three died of swine flu—or at least that swine flu played a prominent role in their deaths.

Hmmm.  Can’t help but wonder what the death certificates will report?  Do you think the death certificates will be accurate?  Should they be?  Will they actually accurately report what these people actually died from—which was swine flu?  Or just report that they only died of the underlying diseases?  And leave the swine flu virus, which was the proximal cause of each death, out of the form completely?

Does it matter?

Look, it matters a heck of a lot.  Obviously.  And not just for swine flu deaths.  We must be able to keep track of who dies of what, when, where, and how.  Data obtained from a tabulation of death certificates helps us spot trends in morbidity and mortality and ascertain causes of death by county, state, and country.  Such information is vital to the health and welfare of the rest of us—researchers use such information as tools to track trends and recognize patterns, to establish public health guidelines or social policy changes, to protect vulnerable populations and to spot and prevent discrimination, among other things.  In other words, we keep track of the vital statistics on death certificates to save lives. 

Everywhere in the US, it has always been a requirement that death certificates accurately reflect reality—reflect what actually happened to cause the person to die, not just what a physician feels like putting down as the cause of death, what the family wishes were the cause of death, or what the state orders a physician to put down as the cause of death.

Everywhere that is, except in Washington State, in the brave new world of ‘truth is way stranger than fiction.’  Here, ever since the so-called Death with Dignity Initiative passed last November, physicians are now required to falsify death certificates when patients die of assisted suicide.  Truly, as strange, irrational, and illogical as it might appear, when a Washingtonian dies of an intentional lethal drug overdose, his or her physician is REQUIRED to lie—to say he or she died only of some underlying disease instead.  Assisted sucide is not even mentioned as a contributory factor.

So, to paraphrase George Orwell, it would seem that some Washington death certificates are more equal than others. Those with swine flu, for instance, are required to be accurate and complete. Yet with assisted suicides, death certificates MUST be obfuscated and falsified.

One wonders: if accuracy of death certificates is a matter of life and death for swine flu, why is it not for assisted suicide?

Dignity? Whose definition?

We constantly see the euphemistic (and incorrect) phrase  “death with dignity” when discussing physician assisted suicide.  But do we really know what “dignity” implies  in the context of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia?

Philosopher  Elizabeth Anscombe wrote:

‘With the plea “Kill me: I need death but cannot kill myself” it becomes clear that it is not the dignity of human self-determination that is in question. What is [being] demanded is that such suffering people be treated as we treat other animals. The impulse to “put an animal out of its misery” is an impulse of sympathy with a creature that resembles us… But men, being spirit as well as flesh, are not the same as the other animals. Whatever blasphemes the spirit in man is evil, discouraging, at best trivialising, at worst doing dirt on life. Such is the considered recommendation of suicide and killing in face of suffering… [P]ropaganda in favour of death as a remedy… is irreligious… the contrasting religious attitude [is] one of respect before the mystery of human life…

She is quite right — what a lousy message physician assisted suicide sends out to the wider community. It has nothing to do with human dignity. It’s about treating human beings as mere animals, with no inherent worth and value.

Once a society has allowed patients the right to die, it will be forced to provide the means.  You can see the goal posts being moved.  Now that I-1000 has passed, we’re already hearing laments about doctors and hospitals opting out of  providing lethal prescriptions for their patients.  With headlines like “Terminal Missoula Woman Being Denied Physician-Assisted Suicide”, those in favor of assisted suicide are once again using our very human fear of death and dying to achieve their own ends.   That is neither dignified nor ethical.

Certainly, something is happening in society regarding assisted suicide.  When allowing people to kill themselves is viewed as a kindness; when instead of alleviating people’s fear, you encourage them to give in to it; when instead of helping those who are suffering, you kill them — what does that say about us as a society?  Are the lines between science, logic, compassion, indifference and murder now so blurred?