After Debate Gets Heated, Assisted-Suicide Bill is Defeated in Hawaii

Fr. Mark Hodges : Mar 27, 2017
LifeSiteNews.com

John Norton was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease in the 1950s and told he had 3-5 painful years to live. Instead, the disease stopped progressing completely on its own. In 2012, Norton wrote, "If assisted suicide or euthanasia had been available to me in the 1950s, I would have missed the bulk of my life and my life yet to come."

(Honolulu, HI)—[LifeSiteNews] The Hawaii state House of Representatives effectively killed a proposed "Medical Aid in Dying Act" last week. (Photo: KITV 4 screenshot/via LifeSiteNews.com)

The Hawaii State Senate Committee on Commerce, Consumer Protection and Health recommended passage of SB-1129, but after heated debate the state's House Health Committee "deferred" it for changes and amendments.

Patterned after Oregon's assisted-suicide law, the Medical Aid in Dying Act would transform killing a patient into a legal medical treatment for terminal illness.

SB-1129 expands its prototype Oregon law in many ways, including allowing certain nurses, not just licensed physicians, to both diagnose a patient's terminal illness and to prescribe the lethal drugs to kill him or her.

Other areas of pro-life concern include:

Patients who do not want to die may choose to be euthanized in order to no longer "burden" their family. Oregon's own records show nearly 50 percent of assisted suicides chose to be killed to avoid burdening their family, friends or caregivers.

Contrary to the report issued by the State Senate Committee, the bill applies not just to patients at the end of life. People with years or decades to live may qualify for assisted suicide...

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