AB 2747 would authorize total sedation without nutrition and hydration for depressed and confused patients, whether or not their natural death was imminent.
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SACRAMENTO (LifeSiteNews) - An assisted-suicide bill that allows doctors and nurses to suggest death by unconscious dehydration has barely passed the California State Assembly.
AB 2747 would authorize total sedation without nutrition and hydration for depressed and confused patients, whether or not their natural death was imminent.
The bill would also allow family members to order the death of a mentally disabled person when a nurse opines they have less than a year to live, similar to Terry Schindler Schiavo's death at the hands of her husband.
AB 2747 passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly Wednesday afternoon on a 40-32 vote, a one-vote margin of victory in the 80-member lower house.
The vote was virtually party line, Democrats for, Republicans against. AB 2747 is authored by the same Democrats who unsuccessfully carried physician-assisted suicide bills for the last three years.
"This deceptive bill will cause death and shorten life, despite its claims," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, a leading California-based pro-life, pro-family organization.
"Drying up and shriveling to death through dehydration is a fate worse than lethal injection. By transforming palliative sedation into a vehicle for assisted suicide, AB 2747 would transform doctors and nurses from healers and comforters into killers like Dr. Jack Kevorkian."
AB 2747 would allow a doctor or a nurse to opine that a patient has "less than one year to live," and then ask depressed patients if they would like to be totally sedated into unconsciousness.
Total sedation is usually an irreversible procedure that does not include nutrition and hydration. If patients or decision-making family members fall prey to suggestions of total sedation, death from dehydration will usually occur within five days.
This is the fourth time that the assisted suicide bill has been pushed by Assembly Democrats Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine. But this year, instead of proposing to have doctors administer lethal injections, AB 2747 aims to produce death by sedation abuse, a clear violation of life-affirming medical ethics.
Until now, total sedation has been used only when death was imminent - within hours or days - and when strong pain medication was not enough. Medical ethics require that food and water (nutrition and hydration) not be removed when sleep-inducing drugs are used, since doing so would cause unnatural, as opposed to natural, death. Yet AB 2747 pushes total sedation even if patients have not rejected food and water.
"Just as the assisted-suicide bills of the last three years have been rejected, so should the California Legislature reject AB 2747," said Thomasson.
"Assisted suicide by total sedation ignores the sanctity of human life and violates life-affirming medical ethics. People who are ill need support, spiritual care, and counseling if they're depressed. But AB 2747 would ensure the death of innocent Californians at the hands of an increasingly unscrupulous insurance industry that regards people cheaper dead than alive."
Dr. Howard M. Ducharme is past chair of the philosophy department at the University of Akron. On January 24, 2002, Dr. Ducharme participated in "The Debate over Total/Terminal/Palliative Sedation," sponsored by The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity (http://www.cbhd.org/resources/endoflife/kingsbury-ducharme_2...), where he detailed how total sedation prematurely kills people:
Total sedation (TS) -- called by some "terminal sedation," "palliative sedation," or "slow euthanasia" -- is a protocol recently added to the lexicon of contemporary medical interventions and is a construct actively promulgated by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).
It is defined as "the application of pharmacotherapy to induce a state of decreased or absent awareness (unconsciousness) in order to relieve the burden of otherwise intractable suffering."
With only this much said, there may seem to be no ethical objection to TS -- a patient who is terminally ill, imminently dying, and suffering overwhelming physical pain may simply request temporary TS to get some sleep today with the hope that the pain will be endurable tomorrow. However, any quick acceptance of TS would be ill-advised because of the many "devils in the details."
TS is not limited to patients with terminal illness who are imminently dying. The NHPCO's policy explains that TS can be used "in the last day or two of life," but it can also be used "at multiple points" in a "patient's trajectory toward death," when the patient is not imminently dying.
Thus, TS is not limited by standard clinical criteria as put forth in the AMA's policy on forgoing life-sustaining treatment (FLST) -- i.e., that the patient be terminally ill and ...
a few months ago my cousin died of cancer. she was told by her doctors that she had 3 months to live. that was in 1999.
my cousin was tough. she served in the military in the 1980's, proudly.
previously she had had ovarian cancer. well she, laurie, had her uterus and all that was necessary to be removed done. she had birthed four children, one dying barely taking his first breathes before he took his last. she grieved him always.
her daughter has bipolar disorder. i witnessed her daughter hitting her while laurie was confined to a wheel chair. but laurie's spirit was strong. her daughter gave birth to 3 illegitimate sons after her diagnoses. laurie raised them for a while, then placed them each in a loving adoptive home. all this while enduring chemo, etc... her minister wanted her to enter hospice, as did her doctors and social workers. she said no. she wasn't ready to go. they pressured her and presured her. she, profanely told me how she'd die when her and the Lord where ready for her too. she was a treasure. she cursed like a sailor, was a hillbilly at heart. loved her beer and cigarettes. she also knew God loves her! she was wracked with pain physically and mentally.
i can just imagine how much sooner she would have been stolen from this world if her nearest and dearest, or physicians and minister had been allowed to decide her fate. she lived for nine years after the death sentence given. cancer overwhelmed her body snaking along her spine, in her breasts, lungs, and brain, but never her spirit. she stopped taking this drug and that. she knew her fate early on. but fought. 1 month before her death she placed her youngest grandchild with the same adoptive family, so the brothers could be raised together. she told me she knew her time was done a week before her death. she called hospice one day in the afternoon, while her children were out of the house. she passed 3 days later, at rest.
sadly, i lived far away, with children of my own. i was only able to physically visit twice during that time. but she and i emailed or spoke weekly, often daily. i know she suffered. the pain was great. but she managed to care for her grandchildren as infants while being so ill. maybe others are not as strong, but she fought for this life and would not be denied. she would not listen to the executioners. thank God she didn't live in california!
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