Year: 2017

Emergency re-post: Write to Your Legislators in Congress Now!

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, law, medical ethics

On January 21, I wrote the following post (see below) to encourage all assisted suicide opponents to contact their own state’s legislators with instructions on how to find your state’s legislators and how to contact them.

There are only 30 legislative days (not calendar days but rather official working days for Congress which are impossible to predict) to contact your own state’s legislators to support a house and senate resolution bill disapproving the D.C. assisted suicide law before it automatically takes effect. The bills are S.J.Res. 4 for the Senate and H.J.Res.27 for the House and both are titled “Nullify District of Columbia Assisted Suicide Law”. You can also find and contact your legislators at those links.

It does not matter if your state has already approved assisted suicide or not. This is a way to let your legislator know you oppose it and this can educate him or her on what a constituent actually wants.

If you can, tell your story about why you oppose legalizing assisted suicide. Speak from your heart. It could be as simple as “I am a senior citizen and I fear giving doctors the right to kill”. Shorter messages are actually more likely to be read.

Thank you.

Nancy Valko RN ALNC

Urgent: Will Congress Stop the Washington D.C. Assisted Suicide Law in Time? Write Now!

January 21, 2017 nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, law, medical ethics,

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser  quietly signed an assisted suicide bill into law on December 19, 2016 after a majority of the city council voted for it.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the Congress has exclusive legislative authority over the District of Columbia. Congress has just 30 legislative days to review a law of the District of Columbia once it is passed by the city government. Resolutions of disapproval must be passed by both houses and be signed by the president to block a D.C. law.

In a race against time, the first step  to block the assisted suicide law was taken January 12, 2017 by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) who introduced introducing a resolution in the Senate that opposes D.C.’s  “Death With Dignity Act”.

A companion resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) also said that he would push to block the law.

COMPASSION AND CHOICES HAS ALREADY STARTED A LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE ASSISTED SUICIDE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

In a message to assisted suicide supporters, Compassion and Choices claims that “more than 2400 supporters” have “sent more than 7,000 messages to members of Congress”.  The organization also emphasizes “the importance of including your personal testimony” as “often the most effective way to change the minds of lawmakers”.

HOW TO CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN OR CONGRESSWOMAN TO OPPOSE  ASSISTED SUICIDE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

The National Right to Life Committee has a website link   to “Nullify District of Columbia Assisted Suicide Law” to contact your Senators and a separate link to contact your House representative(s). Enter your zip code in the box provided and you will be taken to a list of your congresspersons and a form you fill out to send an email to those representatives or senators with your comments.

HOW TO WRITE COMMENTS

Keep your comments respectful  and address the points that most move you. If you have a personal story about why you are against assisted suicide, write it as clearly and concisely as possible.

PROBLEMS WITH THE ASSISTED SUICIDE BILL

While many legislators (as well as the public) are persuaded by the “safeguards” to support assisted suicide laws, the Washington D.C. bill has many of the same problems with “safeguards” that other assisted suicide bills have. (For example, see my blogs “The slippery Slope-Tactics in the Assisted Suicide Movement” and “Pain and ‘Choice’“.)

In the D.C. assisted suicide law, such problems include:

1.The extraordinary immunity protections against civil, criminal liability or professional  disciplinary actions for doctors who participate in “good faith compliance” with the law.

  1. Protection from life or annuity insurance problems due to suicide (“Neither may a qualified patient’s at of ingesting a covered medication have an effect upon a life, health, accident, insurance, or annuity policy”)
  2. Minimal reporting requirements and secrecy in public records (“The Department will generate and make available to the public an annual statistical record of information collected”) Emphasis added.
  3. Require mental health evaluation only for the purpose of determining if the person is mentally capable to make the decision to end his or her life. (“‘Counseling’ means one or more consultations as necessary between a state licensed psychiatrist or psychologist  and a patient for the purpose of determining that the patient is capable and not suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment.”)

CONCLUSION

There are many reasons to oppose legalizing assisted suicide including risk for elder abuse, discrimination against people with disabilities and/or terminal or chronic conditions, the destruction of the most basic rule of medical ethics to not kill patients or help them kill themselves, suicide contagion, etc.

Assisted suicide, legalized and approved by society, is a manifestation of despair and abandonment-not empowerment. We cannot afford to be bystanders while others like Compassion and Choices continue to demand that we all accept legalized assisted suicide as a constitutional and civil right.

 

 

Dr. Anne Bannon, Hero For Life

nancyvalko abortion, assisted suicide, end-of-life, family

anne-reading

Dr. Anne Bannon “reading” her old pro-life insert. June 2016.

My friend and hero, Dr. Anne Bannon, died at the age of 89 on January 30, 2017.

Dr. Anne Bannon became a pediatrician decades ago at a time when women were usually discouraged from entering the almost exclusively men’s profession of medicine. But feisty and stubborn, Dr. Anne persevered to become a great doctor and the Chief of Pediatrics at City Hospital in St. Louis.

When the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion came down, Dr. Anne was surprised and horrified. She went on to found Doctors for Life here in St. Louis.

One of her biggest projects was yearly producing and paying for a multi-page insert into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (see picture), a newspaper that strongly supports legalized abortion and now assisted suicide.

Dr. Anne’s insert was full of facts but perhaps most importantly, it also listed the names of doctors against abortion. Every year, she would personally call every doctor she could and ask them if they opposed abortion and would agree to be listed in the insert. Despite the effort involved, Anne refused any help in contacting these doctors.

Every year, the list of doctors was long and it took courage for these doctors to agree to be listed. My own obstetrician-gynecologist told me that he received calls from other doctors who told him that they would never refer another patient to him if he continued to be listed in the insert. My doctor refused to be intimidated and he told me that publicly standing up for life was more important than possibly hurting his practice. In the end, his practice wound up even stronger.

DR. ANNE AND I

I was introduced to Dr. Anne in 1982 when my daughter Karen was born with Down Syndrome and a severe heart defect. I told her about several doctors who tried to undermine our decision to have our daughter medically treated exactly the same as any other child with a heart condition.

Of course, Dr. Anne was supportive and in 1983, even introduced me to Dr. C. Everett Koop, then Surgeon General under President Ronald Reagan, so that I could tell him my story and advocate for a national hotline that parents of newborns with any disability  could call to find resources to help their children.

Dr. Anne recognized that legalized abortion was leading to increasing acceptance of deliberate death decisions for born people, especially the disabled. Never married with no family nearby, she asked me to be her durable power of attorney for health care because she wanted truly ethical health care in case she became unable to speak for herself.

Several years ago, Dr. Anne developed dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and was in a nursing home on Medicaid. By the time she died, she was in the late stages and unable to walk or even speak clearly  most of the time. But she was excited and delighted when we, her friends, visited her in the nursing home even when she could not remember our names. We were her St. Louis family and we loved her.

Dr. Anne fractured her hip last Saturday night and needed surgery. She did well in surgery but suddenly became critically ill at the end of the surgery . But, to the doctors’ surprise and just when they were ready to give up, Anne suddenly got better. She was taken to intensive care on a ventilator and unconscious but stable. Anne’s famous fighting Irish spirit came out one last time and we were proud of her.

Dr. Anne was in critical but stable condition and apparently in a coma when we called a wonderful local priest to give her the Catholic Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, previously known as Last Rites or Extreme Unction. According to one friend and the doctor attending, her face seemed to soften during the sacrament and she even blinked and put her tongue out. That in itself was amazing.

After the sacrament, her vital signs immediately started to drop and despite an increase in her medications, Dr. Anne died peacefully and in no distress a few hours later. We knew she wanted the sacrament and I believe that she hung on until she received it.

As a former hospice nurse, I have often seen this kind of hanging on by dying patients until an important matter was resolved.

So, to the end, Dr. Anne was still teaching about the value of all life.

Rest in peace, Dr. Anne Bannon!

Urgent: Will Congress Stop the Washington D.C. Assisted Suicide Law in Time? Write Now!

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, law, medical ethics, Uncategorized

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser  quietly signed an assisted suicide bill into law on December 19, 2016 after a majority of the city council voted for it.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the Congress has exclusive legislative authority over the District of Columbia. Congress has just 30 legislative days to review a law of the District of Columbia once it is passed by the city government. Resolutions of disapproval must be passed by both houses and be signed by the president to block a D.C. law.

In a race against time, the first step  to block the assisted suicide law was taken January 12, 2017 by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) who introduced introducing a resolution in the Senate that opposes D.C.’s  “Death With Dignity Act”.

A companion resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) also said that he would push to block the law.

COMPASSION AND CHOICES HAS ALREADY STARTED A LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE ASSISTED SUICIDE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

In a message to assisted suicide supporters, Compassion and Choices claims that “more than 2400 supporters” have “sent more than 7,000 messages to members of Congress”.  The organization also emphasizes “the importance of including your personal testimony” as “often the most effective way to change the minds of lawmakers”.

HOW TO CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN OR CONGRESSWOMAN TO OPPOSE  ASSISTED SUICIDE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

The National Right to Life Committee has a website link   to “Nullify District of Columbia Assisted Suicide Law” to contact your Senators and a separate link to contact your House representative(s). Enter your zip code in the box provided and you will be taken to a list of your congresspersons and a form you fill out to send an email to those representatives or senators with your comments.

HOW TO WRITE COMMENTS

Keep your comments respectful  and address the points that most move you. If you have a personal story about why you are against assisted suicide, write it as clearly and concisely as possible.

PROBLEMS WITH THE ASSISTED SUICIDE BILL

While many legislators (as well as the public) are persuaded by the “safeguards” to support assisted suicide laws, the Washington D.C. bill has many of the same problems with “safeguards” that other assisted suicide bills have. (For example, see my blogs “The slippery Slope-Tactics in the Assisted Suicide Movement” and “Pain and ‘Choice’“.)

In the D.C. assisted suicide law, such problems include:

1.The extraordinary immunity protections against civil, criminal liability or professional  disciplinary actions for doctors who participate in “good faith compliance” with the law.

2. Protection from life or annuity insurance problems due to suicide (“Neither may a qualified patient’s at of ingesting a covered medication have an effect upon a life, health, accident, insurance, or annuity policy”)

3. Minimal reporting requirements and secrecy in public records (“The Department will generate and make available to the public an annual statistical record of information collected”) Emphasis added.

4. Require mental health evaluation only for the purpose of determining if the person is mentally capable to make the decision to end his or her life. (“‘Counseling’ means one or more consultations as necessary between a state licensed psychiatrist or psychologist  and a patient for the purpose of determining that the patient is capable and not suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment.”)

CONCLUSION

There are many reasons to oppose legalizing assisted suicide including risk for elder abuse, discrimination against people with disabilities and/or terminal or chronic conditions, the destruction of the most basic rule of medical ethics to not kill patients or help them kill themselves, suicide contagion, etc.

Assisted suicide, legalized and approved by society, is a manifestation of despair and abandonment-not empowerment. We cannot afford to be bystanders while others like Compassion and Choices continue to demand that we all accept legalized assisted suicide as a constitutional and civil right.

Could St. Louis Become a Sanctuary City for Abortion?

nancyvalko abortion, law, Planned Parenthood

The St. Louis Planned Parenthood became the last abortion clinic in Missouri in November, 2015 after an abortionist lost her “refer and follow” hospital admitting privileges in Columbia, Mo.

Now two St. Louis aldermen in partnership with NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri started an effort  in December 2016 to “make the city a sanctuary for reproductive rights”, i.e. abortion, by adding “reproductive health decisions” to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

Their new bill, BB 203, adds “reproductive health decisions”, defined as “any decision related to the use or intended use of a particular drug, device, or medical service, including the use or intended use of contraception or fertility control or the planned or intended initiation or termination of a pregnancy” to the already protected categories of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin or ancestry, or legal source of income.

Penalties under the current Civil Rights Enforcement Agency ordinance include up to $500 in fines and up to 90 days in jail but already a veteran pro-life activist was arrested on New Year’s Eve morning at the clinic and charged with alleged “domestic terrorism”.

In addition, as Samuel Lee of Campaign Life Missouri points out about BB 203: “There are no exemptions for churches, religious organization or for any person with a conscientious objection.”

Furthermore, he lists some possible acts that could be considered unlawful “discrimination” if BB 203 becomes law:

  • A Catholic hospital refusing to lease medical office space to a doctor who wants to perform abortions.
  • A doctors’ medical group rejecting as an employee, a physician who wants to prescribe abortion pills to his or her patients.
  • A property owner declining to lease office space to the CEO of Planned Parenthood.
  • The Archdiocese of St. Louis or Catholic Charities (at least as applied to their City of St. Louis employees), failing to include in their employees’ health benefit plans, coverage for abortion (at any time for any reason throughout pregnancy), contraception, sterilization or artificial reproduction.
  • A pastor in a pro-life church demoting or reassigning the youth minister because he encouraged and paid for his girlfriend’s abortion, because that is an “adverse employment action” (as defined in the bill) against the employee.
  • A maternity home, pregnancy resource center, Catholic Charities agency, etc., firing a counselor or social worker who referred a client for an abortion.
  • A mom or dad to denying parental consent for their minor daughter to get an abortion, because the parent would be “interfer[ing] with any person in the exercise or enjoyment of, or on account of his having exercised or enjoyed, rights granted and protected by this ordinance.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood’s new efforts to pass such an ordinance come after much bad publicity for the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic, including multiple safety violations discovered by Operation Rescue and 60 ambulance responses to the Planned Parenthood clinic since 2009 and observed by pro-life activists at the clinic.

.Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis is also speaking out against BB 203 and states that  “the Archdiocese of St. Louis cannot and will not comply with any ordinance like Board Bill 203 that attempts to force the Church and others to become unwilling participants in the abortion business. There is no room for compromise on such a matter.”

Instead, Archbishop Carlson proposes that “St. Louis should be a sanctuary for life and compassion, especially compassion for mothers and their developing children.”

We must continue to challenge Planned Parenthood’s desperate efforts to shield its abortion business whenever and wherever such efforts occur.

Rest in Peace, Nat Henthoff

nancyvalko futility, medical ethics

The famous writer and intellectual Nat Henthoff died January 7, 2017 at the age of 91.

Wesley Smith wrote a wonderful tribute to this self-described “Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, left-wing pro-lifer” in an article titled “Nat Henthoff, Memory Eternal”  for the National Review.

I knew Nat for many years. He was a wonderful man with a great sense of humor and a great intellectual with expertise in many areas including journalism, jazz and law. He was also proud of being a total Luddite and insisted that I send him all my articles by snail mail instead of email-which drove me crazy!

I was honored when he quoted me in his 2003 article “The Culture of Death” in the Village Voice but I was embarrassed when he sent a photographer from the newspaper to take my picture for the article.

I now treasure that article.

Rest in peace, Nat. We miss you  and we will never forget you!

The Slippery Slope-Tactics in the Assisted Suicide Movement

nancyvalko assisted suicide, brain injury, Compassion & Choices, euthanasia, food and water, medical ethics

I first saw this tactic  in the mid-1980s when Missouri was considering a “living will” law to allow a person to refuse “death prolonging procedures” if a person became terminally ill and unable to speak for himself or herself.  Some of us warned about a broader agenda, citing court cases involving feeding tubes and seriously brain-injured but non-terminally ill patients like Paul Brophy and Claire Conroy in New Jersey and Massachusetts . In  response, “right to die” activists (as they were known then) added the ”safeguard” of not allowing the withholding of food and water to the Missouri law  and the bill was passed.

Not surprisingly, Missouri soon faced the Nancy Cruzan case  involving the withdrawal of a feeding tube from a non-terminally ill young woman in a so-called “persistent vegetative state”.  Soon after that,  a Missouri Designated Health Care Decision Maker Act was passed that would allow a person to designate someone to make health care decisions (or a relative if there is no document) including withholding or withdrawing of feeding tubes when the person was incapacitated whether or not they were terminally ill or even in a so-called “vegetative state”.

Now, over 30 years later, we have legalized physician-assisted suicide in several states and the District of Columbia and the former “right to die” groups are now known as Compassion and Choices.

TODAY’S SLIPPERY SLOPE TACTICS

In a December 2016 commentary article titled “End of Life Liberty in DC” for a publication supported by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, lawyer and long-time assisted suicide activist Kathryn L. Tucker surprisingly criticizes the new assisted suicide law quietly signed into law by the mayor of Washington, DC. this month.

While most people might believe that passage of yet another assisted suicide law would be cause for celebration for assisted suicide activists, Ms. Tucker is unhappy with the so-called “safeguards” in the DC law-just as “right to die” activists were with Missouri’s “living will” law.

Ms. Tucker now complains about the “many burdens and restrictions imposed” by these “safeguards” which, ironically, are added by assisted suicide activists themselves when they  “routinely face arguments of insufficient ‘safeguards’”.  Ms. Tucker lists some of these so-called “burdens and restrictions”:

  • Patients electing AID (aid in dying, the activists preferred term for physician-assisted suicide) must make at least three requests, two oral and one written.
  • The requests must be witnessed.
  • A second opinion confirming diagnosis and prognosis is required.
  • A mental health specialist must be consulted if the attending or consulting physician has concerns regarding the patient’s ability to make an informed decision.
  • A minimum fifteen-day waiting period must elapse between the two oral requests.
  • Physicians must collect and report a vast amount of demographic data on who chooses AID and why.

Ms. Tucker claims these so-called burdens and restrictions “impose heavy governmental intrusion into the practice of medicine, which is concerning because it creates barriers to patient access and to physician participation.” (Emphasis added)

Instead, Ms. Tucker proposes another, more expansive statute without the usual so-called “safeguards” that would provide:

a clear safe harbor (i.e. immunity) for physicians to practice aid in dying in conformity with standard of care. This reflected a positive step in the direction of normalizing AID within the practice of medicine. Medicine is not routinely governed by statute but, rather, by the type of care that a competent health care professional would render in similar circumstances —referred to as standard of care or best practice. (Emphasis added)

In other words, Ms. Tucker is proposing a policy that makes assisted suicide simply normal medical care with special protections against criminal, civil or disciplinary actions for doctors who participate even though such immunity is not given for other medical practices.

CONCLUSION

Ms. Tucker and other are deadly serious about this. When Vermont passed its assisted suicide law in 2013, the law contained a “sunset” provision that would end “nearly all regulation” after the first three years. Fortunately, this was repealed in 2015.

However, assisted suicide activists will not give up on this as Compassion and Choices makes clear:

We firmly believe — and experience demonstrates — that working within healthcare systems to normalize medical aid in dying will ensure fewer people suffer at the end of their life. (Emphasis added)

As Ms. Tucker demonstrates, assisted suicide advocates will promise anything to get assisted suicide laws passed but it appears that they will never be satisfied until assisted suicide becomes a private and unfettered practice using well-funded groups like Compassion and Choices as the potentially taxpayer-funded “experts” in charge of policies, referrals, training and education.