{"id":302715,"date":"2025-06-20T11:36:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T11:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/activist\/does-not-go-far-enough-thaddeus-pope-gives-delaware-assisted-suicide-law-a-middling-grade\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T11:36:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T11:36:05","slug":"does-not-go-far-enough-thaddeus-pope-gives-delaware-assisted-suicide-law-a-middling-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=302715","title":{"rendered":"Does Not Go Far Enough: Thaddeus Pope Gives Delaware Assisted Suicide Law a Middling Grade"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\tBy Lisa Blumberg<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n

Lisa Blumberg<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The traditional strategy of groups promoting assisted suicide for initially passing a law legalizing the practice is by touting a few minimal requirements as inviolable safeguards. Assisted suicide, they assert, will be a rarely used option for a small, well-vetted cohort of people who are dying, suffering and with no remaining alternatives who have thought long and hard about their decision. As Jason Negri, policy advisor for the\u00a0 Patients Rights Action Fund has <\/a>said, this is \u201ca calculated move to garner support from people who are uncertain about assisted suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then after a law is enacted \u2013 usually after multiple unsuccessful efforts \u2013 proponents suddenly become concerned with \u201caccess\u201d by which they mean making it easier for life-ending prescriptions to be written. Requirements once described as safeguards such as a waiting period between requests or the need for two doctors to concur on eligibility are chipped away at. It has happened in virtually all of the handful of states where these laws have been passed.<\/p>\n

Some supporters are candid about this strategy.\u00a0 Josh Elliott, a Connecticut legislator and proponent of legalized assisted suicide has said<\/a> that getting any assisted suicide law regardless of what it says \u00a0\u00a0enacted, \u201cwould open the door to evaluation and expansion.\u201d (Connecticut to date has not been able to get an assisted suicide law through the legislature).<\/p>\n

However, other supporters flushed with a few victories are getting impatient with this incremental approach. They want to go whole hog right from the get-go. In this\u00a0 spirit, ethicist Thaddeus Pope grades\u00a0 the newly enacted Delaware Assisted Suicide law<\/a> on access based on four expansionist criteria.\u00a0\u00a0 He gives it two Ds, a B+ and A for an overall grade of a B.<\/p>\n

He is quick to point out that his grading is on a curve. He is only comparing Delaware to other assisted suicide laws in the US. He is not comparing it to the laws he really admires, and thinks are the eventual way of the future<\/a> such as those in Belgium and Canada that permit euthanasia for any willing person with \u201cgrievous and irremediable medical condition\u201d regardless of whether they are terminally ill. If he did that, Delaware\u2019s grade would be quite a bit lower.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Delaware\u2019s only A\u00a0 is in following expansionist West Coast assisted suicide states to permit advance practice nurses as well as doctors to determine a person\u2019s eligibility for assisted suicide and write lethal prescriptions.<\/p>\n

My take: This gives short shrift to the complexity in judging life expectancy and implies that assisted suicide is an ordinary medical procedure like wrapping a sprain. It also expands the pool of people who could derive a livelihood from the legalization of assisted suicide.<\/p>\n

Delaware earns a D for requiring state residency, but Pope thinks this requirement may be short lived.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

My take: Dispensing with a residency requirement reinforces the misperception that assisted suicide is healthcare and eligible people should be able to seek it. It also directly advances the commercial interests of the assisted suicide industry in the state. Assisted suicide practitioners are always front and center in challenging residency requirements.<\/p>\n

Pope also gives Delaware a D for requiring a 15-day waiting period between separate requests for a lethal prescription. Most West Coast assisted suicide states have reduced the waiting period to 48 hours or less.<\/p>\n

My take: \u00a0A truncated or non-existent waiting period again reinforces the misperception that assisted suicide is healthcare.\u00a0 It belies what a profoundly shattering and irreversible thing it is to cause death.<\/p>\n

Delaware earns an B+\u00a0 on what Pope call transparency. Delaware requires opting out facilities to provide notice to the public of that fact, but Pope says that \u201cit remains to be seen if this will be well-regulated like Colorado or laxly regulated as in California.\u201d<\/p>\n

My take:\u00a0 By well-regulated, Pope seems to mean consistently enforced and it is here that Pope really shows his bias.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t seem overly concerned with the touted \u201csafeguards\u201d of the act.\u00a0 He supports provisions which undercut them.\u00a0 In a recent blog<\/a>, he dismisses the possibility of assisted suicide drugs being ingested by a person other than the patients to whom they have been prescribed as an ordinary healthcare risk. (He acknowledges that instances of this has occurred).\u00a0 Yet, he is concerned about enforcement of a provision that essentially amount to free advertising for the assisted suicide industry and subliminal suggestion, i.e. our facility does not provide this type of thing,but you may be able to get it elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Since we are talking about grades, we might as well talk about lessons. So, what is the lesson here? Many proponents are dissatisfied with the \u201cbasic\u201d assisted suicide bill, even as they navigate political constraints and so put in minimal restrictions. They want to normalize assisted suicide by portraying it as healthcare. It is not enough for them to legalize assisted suicide and eventually euthanasia. They went to facilitate the practice of it. They want a swath of the population to die that way. They just don\u2019t say why.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lisa Blumberg Lisa Blumberg \u00a0 The traditional strategy of groups promoting assisted suicide for initially passing a law legalizing the practice is by touting a few minimal requirements as inviolable safeguards. Assisted suicide, they assert, will be a rarely used option for a small, well-vetted cohort of people who are dying, suffering and with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":302716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[13524,28870,3654,12685,135042,47662,14279,135041],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-302715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-assisted","tag-delaware","tag-grade","tag-law","tag-middling","tag-pope","tag-suicide","tag-thaddeus"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes Not Go Far Enough: Thaddeus Pope Gives Delaware Assisted Suicide Law a Middling Grade - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=302715\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does Not Go Far Enough: Thaddeus Pope Gives Delaware Assisted Suicide Law a Middling Grade - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Lisa Blumberg Lisa Blumberg \u00a0 The traditional strategy of groups promoting assisted suicide for initially passing a law legalizing the practice is by touting a few minimal requirements as inviolable safeguards. 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