AMA Legislative Body To Consider Reversing Its Opposition to Assisted Suicide

The future of assisted suicide in America is in the air as the nation’s largest physician’s association considers reversing its opposition to euthanasia. The American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics states that “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer,” but the organization’s governing body, the House of Delegates, will debate changing that position at its November 10-14 meeting at National Harbor, Maryland. Shocking numbers out of Canada last month showed that euthanasia is now the fifth-leading cause of death in that country, raising concerns that America’s efforts could follow a similar trajectory. Though backers of Canada’s assisted suicide originally limited it to assisting the terminally ill in dying, it’s been expanded to soon allow doctors to euthanize the mentally ill and drug addicts, as the Sun has reported. Disability rights groups in America, including a grassroots organization called “Not Dead Yet,” are warning that legalizing assisted suicide is a deadly method of discrimination against disabled people. “Assisted suicide laws are dangerous in our profit-driven healthcare system,” Not Dead Yet’s president and chief executive, Diane Coleman, tells the Sun. “Too many doctors devalue our lives,” Ms. Coleman adds. “It’s well documented that people with disabilities experience healthcare disparities, even worse for disabled people of color. The AMA must continue to stand for caring, not killing, patients.”The Sun was unable to reach an AMA official willing to comment on the pending resolution. The resolution proposes to call assisted suicide “medical aid in dying,” as the term “suicide” may “misrepresent and stigmatize patients’ rationale and choices,” the resolution argues.The resolution notes that medical aid in dying is legal in 11 U.S. jurisdictions, including California, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., among others. Citing a 2020 Medscape survey in which 55 percent of physicians supported legalized euthanasia, the proposal says this polling indicates that “neutrality may more accurately represent the views of the medical profession, rather than opposition” to assisted suicide. “Doctors should never be neutral when it comes to life. It wasn’t that long ago that all doctors took the Hippocratic oath where they swore to ‘give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel,’” a spokesman for Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition, Pete Baklinski, tells the Sun.Medical professionals should be focused on healing, not killing, he adds. “If the American Medical Association goes down the path that Canada has gone, U.S. doctors, just like our Canadian doctors now, will soon find themselves compelled by law, with no ability to object, to participate, even by means of a referral, in killing their sick and elderly patients who request it,” Mr. Baklinski says. Neutrality on assisted suicide is the first step in a “slippery slope,” Mr. Baklinski warns American doctors, following what he has seen in Canada. In Canada, in addition to mentally ill patients soon being able to request euthanasia, “there is talk in our Parliament of expanding it to children,” he says. “It has been offered to former military members suffering from PTSD. It’s been offered to even those suffering from social issues, like being homeless,” Mr. Baklinski says. “This pandora’s box should never be opened. It has brought in a death regime into our country which is constantly looking for more victims to kill.”A leading U.S. group advocating for legalized euthanasia for the terminally ill, Death with Dignity, declined to comment to the Sun on the resolution.

AMA Legislative Body To Consider Reversing Its Opposition to Assisted Suicide

AMA Legislative Body To Consider Reversing Its Opposition to Assisted Suicide

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