Blog Post

Assisted Suicide Bill Dies in New Hampshire

elder careCommentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

In what should be a concern to anyone over the age of 55, some legislators in New Hampshire believe that society needs to legalize assisted suicide to keep up with the aging population; thankfully, the bill they proposed was unable to garner enough votes to pass.

The New Hampshire Union Leader is reporting that lawmakers in the state house delivered a resounding defeat of House Bill 1325, the "Death with Dignity Act", by a vote of 219-66. The bill would have allowed patients to be euthanized after two doctors confirmed that they had less than six months to live.

However, the House voted 162-126 to establish a seven-member committee to study "end-of-life" decisions and to investigate "the positive and negative effects of legislation in states that have enacted aid-in-dying laws," and "how to encourage careful and responsible deliberation about this complex and emotional issue."

According to the bill's chief proponent Rep. Rich Watrous (D), because the state is "rapidly aging, and modern medicine becomes more intrusive, end-of-life care should be periodically examined by the Legislature so that our citizens maintain control over their lives and determine what medicine and procedures they wish to receive."

Even though this makes for a great sound bite, the three states that currently allow assisted suicide have encountered serious problems that have led to violations of the guidelines and the subsequent abuse of the elderly and disabled.

As attorney and anti-euthanasia activist Wesley Smith points out, this has also been the experience in several European countries such as the Netherlands,  Switzerland and Belgium where assisted suicide laws degenerated from killing the terminally ill to allowing the depressed to die, letting minor children opt for suicide, not punishing psychiatrists who euthanize their mentally ill patients and even using it for organ harvesting.

Thankfully, New Hampshire lawmakers such as Rep. Lenette Peterson (R) spoke truth to power, saying that the bill would provide "a new deadly avenue for predators and could lead to a convenient termination of life so that imperfections, consequences and conflict" can result in someone's death.

Peterson obviously did her homework and knew the reality of these laws once they are passed and put into practice.

"Other people would eventually be deciding whether you should live or not," she said, adding, "death is not a treatment."

Thus far, Oregon, Washington and Vermont allow assisted suicide while 39 states have laws prohibiting it. The remaining seven states either prohibit it by common law or are ambiguous about its legality.

The New Hampshire bill is dead - at least for now.  But America's elite, who are fixated on controlling the population and deciding who lives and who dies, are very much behind these bills.

"Assisted suicide advocates have been funded in the tens of millions over the last 20 years by the likes of George Soros and the Tides Foundation," Smith writes. "Advocacy groups have the money to poll, focus group, travel the country, hire well-tailored six-figure salaried elites and PR professionals to push the agenda among ruling class types."

Thankfully, "Americans are just not rushing to swallow the poison, with the country still about evenly divided on the issue," he said.

"Let’s hope that continues." © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com

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