In August of this year several euthanasia and suicide advocacy groups submitted a ballot initiative petition which would legalize “Assisted Suicide”. Assisted Suicide, or Doctor-Prescribed Suicide, means allowing (or possibly forcing) doctors, who are meant to be healers, to prescribe a fatal dose of a drug or drugs with the explicit purpose of ending their patient’s life. Doctor-Prescribed Suicide is not the same as refusing treatment or deciding to not go ahead with invasive or painful procedures–it is a doctor, deliberately and with full knowledge acting to facilitate the death of his patient.
Soon after the petition was submitted a coalition of medical professionals, ethicists, disability advocates and concerned citizens immediately organized the Massachusetts Alliance Against Assisted Suicide to oppose the measure and ensure this commonwealth stays one where doctors save lives rather than end them.
The members and constituent organizations of this committee believe this measure represents one of the greatest threats to human life and ethical medicine in the history of the Commonwealth. By seeking to 
legitimize the proposition that some lives are less worth living, the proposed law strikes at the root of the ideas about the essential dignity of the individual human being that serve as the basis of Western Civilization and our traditions of equality, justice and the rule of law. Life is precious and every moment lived presents a unique opportunity to accomplish something, help someone, share and experience with a loved one or prepare for the end that inevitably comes to all men without artificial acceleration. The choice to end one’s life is permanent and can never be taken back. There is a responsibility to protect suffering people, often struggling with severe depression, from making radical decisions that they will not even have the opportunity to regret.
There are also serious concerns about how the measure will actually be implemented. While advocates of the initiative petition claim there are rigorous safeguards in place to prevent abuse, the example of history taken from other states and foreign countries with similar laws and similar safeguards shows that such controls tend to be ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. In fact, in some cases laws legalizing assisted suicide seem to lead to an environment where “terminal” patients and the handicapped are pressured by doctors, family members and health insurance companies to voluntarily end their lives to avoid “being a burden.” Could suicide as option is the first step down the road to suicide as cost containment? There is also evidence that such laws have also been shown to lead to involuntary euthanasia and infanticide based on nebulous “quality of life” criteria. Will this law lead to a health-care system where someone else decides for you whether your life is worth living? Without knowing for sure that the answers to these questions would be firm negatives, it seems imprudent to even open a public policy discussion of the question. “Hard cases make bad law” goes the old adage–citizens of the Commonwealth owe it to themselves to examine all of the potential implications, included the unintended consequences, of this law before making a decision.
Massachusetts cannot afford to go down this road. This commonwealth deserves an atmosphere of compassionate care where the sick, infirm, disabled and elderly can trust their doctors to act in their true best interests. Massachusetts deserves a health-care system that preserves life instead of destroying it.
Please come back to this site regularly to for updates and to learn more about what you can do to oppose Doctor Prescribed Suicide.