Democrats Look to Expand Death Cult
General Assembly looks to prioritize Assisted Suicide bill in 2024 Session
Not content with expanding Maryland’s regime of killing unborn children, Democrats again are looking to expand Maryland’s legal killing regime to the elderly and the terminally ill:
Maryland lawmakers have tried year after year, but so far, no bill to legalize medical aid in dying has passed.
But supporters of the legislation think that 2024 might be the year it passes, due to a changing political climate and overall voter support for the measure. The General Assembly is set to convene Jan. 10.
Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, chair of the House Health and Government Operations Committee, said that another round of medical aid in dying legislation will be introduced in the upcoming 2024 session.
“We have been working on it during the interim,” Peña-Melnyk (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s) said in a written statement. “I am hoping that this is the year the bill is successful. It has been carefully drafted and thoughtful. I hope the bill is allowed to come to the Senate floor.”
She said that she has asked Del. Terri Hill (D-Howard) to sponsor the House bill next year. Hill could not be reached for comment.
Peña-Melnyk led the previous attempt last year, with House Bill 933, called the “The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings and the Honorable Shane E. Pendergrass Act.” The bill would have provided certain medical patients the ability to self-administer medication that would result in their own death.
The 2023 legislation restricted such requests to people with a terminal illness and the mental capacity to make their medical decisions. An individual would initially request aid in dying to a physician and then submit a written request that says they were “of sound mind” and suffering from an illness that “will, more likely than not, result in death within 6 months.”
Democrats are never comfortable with the idea of calling it what it is: suicide. They prefer the more euphemistic term “medical aid in dying.”
I’ve written about this issue extensively before:
Proponents make arguments based on emotions, but not much else. It reminds me of the old lawyer saying: “When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.”
We’re all sympathetic to individuals and families facing terminal illnesses. My family has suffered through this. But some of the bravest, most determined people I have known are people who received a terminal diagnosis and wanted to live their life the best they could until the very end.
It’s offensive that assisted suicide proponents imply that those who fight the dying of the light somehow did not die with dignity.
The facts on assisted suicide are stark. The number of patients who have their time remaining misdiagnosed is high. There is no requirement that patients receive a psychological evaluation before being prescribed lethal drugs. Suicide contagion is real, an instance where non-physician assisted suicides spike in locations where assisted suicide is legal.
Assisted suicide is pushed by insurance companies and state Medicaid regimes as a cost-saving measure in lieu of actual treatment, such as when Barbara Wagner or Randy Stroup were denied life-extending treatment by bureaucrats in Oregon who instead offered to pay for their suicide.
When you see the facts, it’s no coincidence that assisted suicide has been defeated in every state has appeared on a ballot.
Greg Kline also wrote extensively about the issue at Red Maryland, including noting how overall suicides increased after the introduction of assisted suicide:
And it is little wonder that proponents of physician assisted suicide want to avoid engaging the issue of suicide directly. If they did they would have to respond to inconvenient facts like the recent study of the Southern Medical Journal finding that states that legalized physician assisted suicide saw an overall increase in the rate of suicide in the adult population, independent of those seeking physician assisted suicide. This documented “suicide contagion” comes at a time when our nation has seen an increase in the national adult suicide rate from 1999 to 2010 of nearly thirty percent.
More coverage here from 2019, including how assisted suicide hurts doctors, and 2020.
The campaign director for “Compassion and Choices”, which was more accurately named The Hemlock Society at on point, went so far as to link assisted suicide directly with the push for more abortion access:
For one, she said the conversation about aid-in-dying goes hand in hand with discussions of ‘bodily autonomy’ especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“I think this is a timely discussion, especially as we look at the abortion rights issue, because that’s one of self-autonomy, right?” she said. “That pregnant women should have autonomy over their body. And I think that applies to death and dying as well. Because why would we not give dying people options at the end of life, when the options are so few?”
The irony of course is that in both instances a doctor, who took an oath to “First, do no harm” is asked to commit an intentional homicide, often for the convenience of somebody else. Just in assisted suicide, it’s the elderly and infirm who die instead of unborn babies.
In Canada, they have already expanded the euphemistically named “Medical Aid in Dying” regime to include diseases that are not terminal, just incurable. Have anorexia? You can choose assisted suicide. Anxiety disorder? You can choose assisted suicide. And often, as in the case of Barbara Wagner or Randy Stroup in Oregon, government bureaucrats influence their decision:
But six disability rights and religious advocates told Reuters that the pace of the planned changes to the assisted death framework in Canada brings additional risks of people opting for MAID because they are unable to access social services - the lack of which could exacerbate their suffering.
After all, since Maryland Democrats want universal healthcare, it’s a lot cheaper to reject a patient’s medical coverage but remind them that the state will pay for them to “die with dignity” instead.
Assisted suicide is evil. And the people of Maryland should have the courage to say so. It is time for our state to say “No” to Maryland Democrats and their death cult.