Senate Bill 579 would eliminate physician-assisted suicide waiting periods for those near death. The Oregon Senate passed the bill 16-11.
“Every person has a right to be valued and treated ethically, especially during their last days of life,” says Lois Anderson, ORTL executive director. “Persons near death deserve the same protections under the law. Even more, they deserve proper care, compassion and confirmation of their inherent value, not a deadly prescription.”
Democrat Senators Peter Courtney and Sara Gelser voted against the bill.
“It is dangerous to assume that the political party someone belongs to is universally right or universally wrong,” says Lois Anderson, ORTL executive director. “Senators Peter Courtney and Sara Gelser avoided group-think today and voted with their constituents’ safety in mind.”
I cannot believe that legislatures set them selves up as God.
Once lawmakers head down the road of deciding who gets to live and who gets to die (and exactly WHEN), I become fearful of being an older, infirm Oregonian!
God help us! This is just not right….Everyone deserves to live and die on their own time…We fight to prevent suicide and then to have this go through…The world of politics has gone completely crazy./
In the Senate Bill 579 it should include contacting close relatives to confirm that Oregon’s PAS (physician-assisted suicide) for the individual is an accepted course of action.
Otherwise, it appears wide-open to rid unwanted people by the whim of any doctor, physician, or nursing facility, or …? There need to be restraints, less it gets out-of-hand.
Our world has become so cold and non-caring that even the thought of caring for another is not acceptable. If someone is not”convenient” we want nothing to do with them. This Individualism is growing and growing, we need to address it and help people to see the need of caring for one another. Those who do care are much happier in their lives than those who do not care.
Only God has the right to decide when it’s time to die. We should not be killing off the elderly because the government sees the as a burden.