LIFE DIGEST: Assisted suicide claims 1st victim in Washington
- May 27, 2009
Washington has its first legal death by physician-assisted suicide since the state’s voters approved the practice in November.
Linda Fleming, 66, died May 21 after taking a lethal dose of drugs prescribed for her under Washington’s Death With Dignity Act, according to Compassion and Choices, a pro-assisted suicide organization. Fleming had been diagnosed only a month earlier with pancreatic cancer.
Also in this edition: Sex-selection, cloning bans enacted in Oklahoma and Kansas governor restores Planned Parenthood funds and Repeat abortions increase in Great Britain.
“The pain became unbearable, and it was only going to get worse,” Fleming said, according to a release from Compassion and Choices. “I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of death. . . . The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death.”
The head of an organization opposed to assisted suicide said, however, people with terminal illnesses “need competent, supportive care, not lethal drugs.”
Eileen Geller, president of True Compassion Advocates, said she is “deeply concerned that vulnerable ill people’s fears not be exploited. Excellent comfort care, pain control, symptom management and support are available through hospice and palliative care.”
“Assisted suicide is a tragedy which heightens fear and increases misinformation about living and dying,” said Geller, a hospice nurse for more than 25 years. “We need to advocate for truly compassionate care, not false and misleading choices.”
The Washington law is patterned after one in Oregon, which has had 401 deaths by assisted suicide reported to the state since the practice became legal in 1997. Oregon set a record in 2008 for most assisted suicides in a year with 60.
Sex-selection, cloning bans enacted in Oklahoma
Sex-selection, cloning bans enacted in Oklahoma
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry has signed into law bills banning sex-selection abortions and human cloning.
The sex-selection prohibition also requires doctors to report to the state the reasons women choose abortion and complications that occur as a result of the procedure, according to The Daily Oklahoman.
The anti-cloning measure prohibits the creation of an embryo by cloning in order to harvest his stem cells, as well as the production of an embryo for the purpose of carrying the child to term. The extraction of stem cells from an embryo for research purposes destroys the days-old human being.
Both houses of the legislature passed the comprehensive cloning ban unanimously.
Mary Spaulding Balch, the National Right to Life Committee’s director of state legislation, commended Oklahoma for its “courageous stand” on sex-selection abortions.
“It is unfortunate, even in this enlightened age of women, that many cultures here and abroad favor males over females,” she said in a written statement. “All over the world, millions of females are missing due to sex selection abortions.”
Balch described the new law on abortion reporting as “the most comprehensive reporting law in the nation.”
“Hopefully the information gleaned from this reported information will help us determine some of the reasons women think they need to kill their babies so that we might address those needs and save lives,” she said.
Henry signed the bills into law May 21.
Kansas governor restores Planned Parenthood funds
Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson vetoed legislation May 22 that would have barred state funds from Planned Parenthood.
Parkinson, a Democrat, used the line-item veto to restore $250,000 to Planned Parenthood. It appears unlikely the legislature will be able to override the veto before it adjourns June 4, according to The Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal.
The vetoed measure would have redirected the funds designated for Planned Parenthood to state and local health departments, the newspaper reported.
In defense of his veto, Parkinson said the money should stay with Planned Parenthood in order to provide “family planning services and contraceptives” and thereby reduce abortions.
Planned Parenthood has an interest in producing more abortions, however, a pro-life leader said.
“From a practical point of view, it is simply not good policy to give tax dollar priority to an organization to prevent pregnancy that stands to make more money when they fail to do their job by referring such women to their own abortion services,” Kansans for Life Executive Director Mary Kay Culp said, according to The Capital-Journal.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the national organization, is the country’s leading abortion provider. Its affiliates performed more than 305,000 abortions in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available.
Repeat abortions increase in Great Britain
Repeat abortions were reported at a record rate in Great Britain last year, even though the total number of the procedures declined.
One-third of women who underwent the procedure in 2008 received at least their second abortion, according to statistics released May 21, The Times of London reported. There were 64,715 repeat abortions last year.
The figures showed, according to The Times, 11,354 women had their third abortion, 2,780 their fourth and 46 at least their eighth.
“Back in 1967 we said that the Abortion Act would eventually lead to women using it as a form of contraception, and here we are with the data showing that is exactly what is happening,” said a spokeswoman for the ProLife Alliance, the newspaper reported.
The total number of abortions fell 1.6 percent from the previous year to 195,296.
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Further Learning
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