PROVIDENCE — While there has been a perennial push over the years to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Rhode Island, the opposition of the Catholic Church and its faithful to the practice has been enough to prevent its passage.
With recent changes in leadership in the state legislature, however, keeping bills that would authorize medically assisted suicide from passage into law can no longer be reasonably assumed.
“Taking advantage of recent leadership changes in the R.I. House of Representatives, powerful lawmakers on Smith Hill have mounted a very aggressive behind-the-scenes push to legalize assisted suicide in Rhode Island before going into recess next month,” Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee Director Barth E. Bracy said Sunday.
He noted that time for action was of the essence as hearings have already been held on Senate Bill 2051 and House Bill 7760, with either or both chambers now poised to schedule a committee vote and subsequent floor vote on assisted suicide extremely quickly—as soon as 48 hours after an announcement is made the matter will be taken up for action.
Bracy emphasized in an Action Alert to Rhode Islanders that “suicide is not health care,” as some in favor of its passage have sought to frame the legislation.
“The dangerous policy of assisted suicide puts our most vulnerable relatives, friends, and neighbors at risk — and even ourselves,” he said. “Patients deserve access to quality care, not an ill-conceived public policy, riddled with loopholes, that puts patients at risk of mistakes, coercion, and abuse.”
He said that the legalization of assisted suicide not only abandons the vulnerable, it puts all of us at risk by changing the standard of care, allowing for the substitution of life-saving, life-supporting, and life-enhancing medical care, as well as quality palliative and hospice care, with the cheap and irreversible alternative of ending patients' lives.
“And it undercuts suicide prevention efforts by sending the message that suicide is okay,” Bracy said.
Introduced in the House on Feb. 12, the “Lila Sapinsley Compassionate Care Act” would allow terminally ill adults with six moths or less to live to seek medication from their medical professional to hasten their death to reduce or avoid suffering.
The authorization for the medication would require two oral requests from the patient, each separated by 15 days, along with a written request.
A second physician would be required to verify the diagnosis, prognosis and capacity of the patient to initiate such a request.
The bill also mandates that the patient must administer the life-ending medication themselves, and would allow healthcare facilities to opt out of being mandated to participate in the process.
A companion bill was introduced in the Senate on Jan. 9.
While proponents of the House and Senate bills say such measures provide a compassionate option for the terminally ill to avoid additional suffering, some healthcare providers contend such an option for ending one’s life can put already vulnerable people at even greater risk.
“Patients at the end of life are overwhelmed and it’s normal for them to be depressed and feel guilty because of the [apparent] burden that they place on their families and on their caregivers. This is natural and normal,” said Deacon Timothy Flanigan, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at The Miriam and Rhode Island Hospitals and Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
“They fear the loss of dignity. It’s a time that they require tender, loving care just to be made comfortable. Patients at this time are in a particularly vulnerable state and what is needed is palliative care and hospice care and not physician-assisted suicide.”
Deacon Flanigan also finds the title of the House bill misleading.
“It’s called a compassionate care act, but it is neither truly compassionate nor does it provide care,” he added. “It allows life-ending medications to be provided by prescription. This is physician-assisted suicide for individuals that are determined to have less than six months to live.”
Father Bernard A. Healey, director of the Rhode Island Catholic Conference, testified that physician-assisted suicide does not show compassion or respect the lives of the vulnerable.
“The Church specifically opposes physician-assisted suicide because it seeks to legalize the intentional taking of human life; this deliberate activity violates the most basic tenet of our belief in the sacredness of life and simultaneously poses many dangers to vulnerable populations, he said.
“A truly caring community devotes more attention and support to members facing the most vulnerable times in their lives; when the sick, elderly, and vulnerable are tempted to see their lives as less valuable, they most need the love and assistance of others to assure them of their worth.”
Father Healey, in his testimony in opposition to the bills’ passage, said that some patients in states where physician-assisted suicide is legal have chosen the path to a quicker death so that they won’t be a financial burden to anyone after being told their health insurers won’t pay for treatment that may sustain their lives, but instead will cover assisted suicide.
“For Christians, other religious believers, and many people of goodwill, dying is not an evil to avoid at all costs. It is a step in a journey that continues in the next life with God,” he said.
“They need their dignity affirmed by being loved and encouraged to hope, not attacked by allowing their despair to reach its limit in self-killing. They need relief from pain and discomfort, not relief from life itself.”
Father Healey also challenged the “alleged safeguards” the legislation professes to employ, noting that in just a few short years those may cease to exist.
Other states eventually eliminated their state waiting periods and thus opening assisted suicide to anyone in the world.
“A compassionate path forward is to support dying persons by alleviating their suffering through palliative care, hospice care, and other comprehensive programs.”
“As citizens, we need to build the common good of our entire society and advance the dignity of every human life, especially the terminally ill, not attack it with legalized assisted suicide,” he concluded.
Rhode Island Right to Life and the Rhode Island Catholic Conference are encouraging the faithful to contact their state representative and senator now to voice their opposition to the legislation before it comes up soon for a final vote.
The Rhode Island Catholic Conference has provided the following link to make it easier to contact legislators by providing a template to simply fill in: https://provd.io/pas. RIRTL also provided a link to examples of the dangers of assisted suicide: https://notinri.com
