Oswald Clark
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and a member of this paper’s editorial advisory board, has a new 25-minute video on Preventing the Spread of Assisted Suicide in America. A total of 16 states, comprising 35 per cent of the U.S. population, are considering either legalizing euthanasia (Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota and Rhode Island) or expanding it (California, Hawaii and Washington State). Citizens in these states (and elsewhere) should be informed about what they will be getting into. Schadenberg methodically makes four key points:
- Euthanasia is often introduced with safeguards, but those safeguards are often quickly ignored and then set aside by subsequent amendments to the law or regulations that define them out of existence.
- Euthanasia is not a peaceful, painless way to die. It uses the same drug cocktail used to kill death row patients, and autopsies in those cases show trauma akin to drowning. Furthermore, chloral hydrate burns patients, therefore causing increased suffering. In the March edition of this paper, there is a report on how dying this way is “torturous” but a paralytic drug prevents the individual (whether a criminal facing a medical execution or a patient facing a medical killing) from communicating their distress.
- Euthanasia laws are meant to protect health care professionals who take part in medicalized killing, not the rights of patients.
- There is seldom effective oversight of legal euthanasia regimes, and violations of the law are common.
I highly recommend watching Alex’s informative video. Americans need to know what they are letting their elected representatives do in the name of compassion.
Oswald Clark is The Interim’s Washington correspondent.
