Scott Adams blog: I Hope My Father Dies Soon

[KamaAina]

48. Alas, churches ARE allowed to support or oppose ballot measures. Just not candidates.

Look at the Mormons (followed closely by the Catholics) and Prop H8 in CA.

It may, however, surprise you to learn that by no means all of the opposition to physician-assisted suicide comes from the religious wrong. The disability rights community is concerned that the "right to die" might quickly become a "duty to die".

http://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted-suicide/why-assisted-suicide-must-not-be-legalized/

Assisted suicide strikes many people, when they first hear about it, as a cause to support. But upon closer inspection, there are many reasons why legalization is a serious mistake. Supporters focus on superficial issues of choice and self-determination. It is crucial to look deeper. Legalizing assisted suicide would not increase choice and self-determination, despite the assertions of its proponents. It would actually augment real dangers that negate genuine choice and control.

The disability community’s opposition is based on the dangers to people with disabilities and the devaluation of disabled peoples’ lives that result from assisted suicide. Further, this opposition stems from factors that directly impact the disability community as well as all of society. These factors include the secrecy in which assisted suicide operates today, even where it is legal; the lack of robust oversight and the absence of investigation of abuse; the reality of who uses it; the dangers of legalization to further erode the quality of the U.S. health care system; and its potential for other significant harms.

In view of this reality, we address many of the disability-related effects of assisted suicide, while also encompassing the larger social context that inseparably impacts people with disabilities as well as the broader public. First, after addressing common misunderstandings, we examine fear and bias toward disability, and the deadly interaction of assisted suicide and our profit-driven health care system. Second, we review the practice of assisted suicide in Oregon, the first U.S. state to legalize it, and debunk the merits of the so-called Oregon model. By detailing significant problems with Oregon’s supposed safeguards, we raise some of its real dangers, particularly for people with depression and other psychiatric disabilities. Third and finally, we explore the ways that so-called “narrow” assisted suicide proposals can easily expand. This article focuses primarily on conditions in the United States, though much of our discussion also applies in other countries.

In short, we must separate our private wishes for what we each may hope to have available for ourselves some day—a hope that often fails to understand how assisted suicide actually operates—and, rather, focus on the significant dangers of legalizing assisted suicide as public policy in our society today. Assisted suicide would have many unintended consequences.

Disclaimer: I have worked with the author in the past. I can assure you that she is as progressive as any of us.