Hearing held on physician assisted suicide bills

Sandra A. Kucharski
Special to The CFP

The Massachusetts Joint Committee on Public Health held hearings Oct. 20 on Senate 1331 and House 2246, bills known as “an act relative to end-of-life options” which would legalize physician-assisted suicide statewide.
About 30 people attended the hearing which was also livestreamed. Sixty-five individuals testified, either in person or by video conferencing. This was the fifth time since 2017 that hearings on assisted suicide legislation have been held.
Sen. Joanne Comerford (D), co-sponsor of Senate 1331, noted that the bill had “18 Senate sponsors and strong House support” and that “Govenor Maura Healy (D) is in favor of the bill.” Representative James O’Day (D), 14th Worcester District, a lead sponsor of House 2246, testified that the bill gives individuals a “choice on control of their lives.”
Proponents marginally outnumbered opponents. The testimonies of proponents largely centered around emotional anecdotes of suffering relatives who had died without the choice of assisted suicide or their own personal desire to choose how and when they would die.
Some in favor of assisted suicide quoted results from a 2023 poll showing that 73% of residents and 69% of Catholics favor assisted suicide. The poll, however, was commissioned by Compassion and Choices, an offshoot of the Hemlock Society and dedicated to passing assisted suicide legislation in every state.
Meaghan Schrader, a disability justice scholar, discounted the results observing, “You can get the result you want if you ask the right question.”
The Catholic Church is opposed to assisted suicide based on the fundamental principle that every human life has an innate dignity and value, independent of physical or cognitive abilities.
Opponent’s arguments concerned the impact an assisted suicide law would have on one’s own treatment options, and physicians’ freedom of conscience rights and the disproportional effect on the disabled, elderly, poor, people of color, and recent immigrants. Opponents also worried that the bill’s passage would begin a slippery slope of extending assisted suicide to more than just those with a terminal illness with less than six months to live, as has already happened in Belgium and most recently Canada.
The American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians, the nation’s two largest groups of physicians, oppose assisted suicide. Dr. Thomas Sullivan, a cardiologist with more than four decades of direct patient care experience, noted that despite its neutral position, “palliative, hospice and compassionate care are the preferred plan of Massachusetts Medical Society.”
Kris Correira, a physician assistant and parishioner at Christ the King Parish, Worcester, testified that, “legalizing assisted suicide, even if you call it medical-aid-in-dying, will profoundly deepen the mistrust of an already broken healthcare system.”
Representatives from the disabled community noted they already experience a bias from doctors, who perceive they have a lesser quality of life. They expressed concern that, should the legislation pass, they would be offered assisted suicide rather than medical treatment.
Maria Jose Hernandez Flores of the League of United Latin American Citizens questioned how an uninsured immigrant with a terminal disease would be treated if assisted suicide were an option, in light of the fact that financially disadvantaged and culturally diverse people already face disparities in health care.
Anita Cameron, director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet, noted that it is well documented that “Blacks already receive inferior cardiac care, diabetes management, cancer treatment and pain management” and called the law “dangerous.”
Pastor Luiz Morales of Sommerville, a psychologist, addressed one of the loopholes in the proposed legislation affecting elders. Someone who stands to inherit an estate can witness the signature of a person requesting assisted suicide. He related how he was asked to evaluate an elderly woman whose son was her caregiver. The son, tired of caring for his mother, “gave her a label of suicidal, terminally ill and mentally ill.”
“He wanted her home,” he said. Pastor Morales evaluated the woman who was neither suicidal nor mentally ill. He told the committee, “If someone else had evaluated her, she would be the perfect candidate for medical-aid-in-dying” if assisted suicide were available.
Tahni Morrell told of her husband’s six-year battle with cancer. He outlived his doctor’s prognosis and they even had a third child. “There is profound purposefulness sharing in the natural process (of dying) together,” she said. Assisted suicide “cuts short the sacred space for healing to occur,” she added.