Aid in Dying

The FCL Executive Committee is interested in experience under Oregon"s assisted-dying initiative.

FCL supported an unsuccessful assisted-dying initiative, Proposition 161, in 1992. At that time, the FCL Newsletter stated

?Eighty percent of a person?s health care costs are incurred in the last 18 months of life. Much of this enormously expensive care is given by the providers who oppose this measure, and stand to gain financially by denying the patient?s choice for aid-in-dying.

?We believe it is wrong to remain passively silent while loved ones linger in pain. As the proponents point out, thousands of individual doctors and nurses support this measure because it allows them ? without fear of civil or criminal liability ? to respond to terminal patients who are begging for help in dying.

?The Preamble to the FCL Policy Statement says, ?Friends believe there is that of God in every person, and that each person is endowed with worth and dignity.? We believe that this measure allows that dignity to be respected.?

Selected resources

Supporters of aid-in-dying

Death With Dignity National Center
Estelle Rogers
(703) 979-0526
info@deathwithdignity.org
www.deathwithdignity.org

The Hemlock Society USA
(303) 639-1202
hemlock@private1.com

Opponents of aid-in-dying

California Catholic Conference
Carol Hogan
(916) 443-4851
cacathcon@aol.com

Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals
Jim DeGon
(510) 436-8020

Selected publications

Andrew Batavia, et al, "Choices at Life's End," Death With Dignity National Center, n.d.

Ezekiel Emanuel, "Whose Right to Die" Atlantic Monthly, March 1997

Barry Siegel, "A Legal Way Out," Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1999

Wesley J. Smith, Forced Exit The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder (Random House/Times Books), 1997

James D. Standish, "Beyond Death with Dignity," Liberty, July/August 1999

[kl 12/1/99, rev 2/02]