The tragic cases of Nancy Cruzan and Christine Busalacchi , young Missouri women who were claimed to be in a “persistent vegetative state” and starved and dehydrated to death, outraged those of us in Missouri Nurses for Life and we took action.
Besides educating people about severe brain damage, treatment, cases of recovery and the radical change in medical ethics that could lead to the legalization of euthanasia, we also fought for healthcare providers’ rights against workplace discrimination for refusing to participate in deliberate death decisions. We talked to nurses who were threatened with termination.
Although Missouri had some protections against forcing participating in abortion, there were no statutes we could find where health care providers were protected against being forced to participate in deliberate death decisions. We were also told by some legislators that our chance of success was almost nil
Nevertheless, we persisted and after years of work and enduring legislators watering down our original proposal to include lethal overdoses and strong penalties, Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 404.872.1 was signed into law in 1992. It states:
Refusal to honor health care decision, discrimination prohibited, when.
404.872. No physician, nurse, or other individual who is a health care provider or an employee of a health care facility shall be discharged or otherwise discriminated against in his employment or employment application for refusing to honor a health care decision withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment if such refusal is based upon the individual’s religious beliefs, or sincerely held moral convictions.
(L. 1992 S.B. 573 & 634 § 7)
Fast Forward to Today
In 2016, we face groups like Compassion and Choices that have pushed assisted suicide legislation through in some states and hoping for an eventual sweeping Supreme Court decision making assisted suicide a constitutional right like abortion.
Some European countries like Belgium and Holland have virtual euthanasia on demand for even non-terminally ill people of any age. In Canada, their Supreme Court has forced assisted suicide on that country and now the province of Quebec has lethal injection kits available to any doctor.
Not surprisingly, conscience/workplace rights for health care providers are being vigorously fought both in those countries and here in the US.
For example, Compassion and Choices’ Barbara Coombs Lee, one of the architects of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, claims that strong conscience-right protections encourage “workers to exercise their idiosyncratic convictions at the expense of patient care” at the end of life.
Hope on the Horizon?
In May, a hospital in Poland stopped performing abortions after every single doctor signed a pledge refusing to do them.
Now, several hospitals in Santa Barbara and Palm Springs as well as Providence medical centers are opting out of the new California assisted suicide law.
Personally, I believe that if people are given a choice when they are sick, they would naturally prefer a hospital that is committed to care rather than assisted suicide.
Thus, conscientious objection, workplace discrimination/conscience rights laws and the power of institutions dedicated to ethical health care can help turn the tide against assisted suicide laws or at least save some lives and mitigate some of the damage caused by assisted suicide laws. It may take a long time before killing sick or disabled people is again seen as abhorrent and unethical but the effort will be worth it.
As I have said before, “NO!” is a powerful and potentially lifesaving word.
nancyvalko 
Really now, debunking the basic premise of physician-assisted suicide (p.a.s.) is becoming a coast-to-coast struggle, finally (an international struggle)! Just never ceases to amaze me how so many folks whom I thought had deep dedication to civil rights and justice for all living beings cannot connect the dots of fraud: the fraud of direct suicide assistance for terminally ill, deeply depressed, and covertly deceived persons of all ages. I find it all even corresponds to rudimentary consumer protection values championed by popular activists like Ralph Nader and the late Rep. Claude Pepper, i.e. you don’t let the producers and suppliers of a bad product or service to get away with touting the merits of cigarettes, caffeinated beer, or debunked treatments like tanning beds. If the twisted rationales of Compassion and Choices, Inc. penetrate any deeper into the thin, porous skin of policy analysis our nation is in for a rough century. More is done to halt the importation of powdered rhinoceros horn nostrums than p.a.s. in urban California. Once all this nonsense is imported from Europe and Canada, it will be far more confusing and tragic than pill mill, no fault auto insurance, reverse mortgage, and withheld Medicaid expansion combined, in my opinion.
LikeLike