To the editor:

Recently, a guest editorial by Bonnie Evans praised the euphemistically named “Compassionate Care Act” being proposed once again at the State House. Far too many supposed benefits of state sanctioned premature death to counter within the strictures of a letter to the editor, so we will limit this response to one section of the piece: “Slippery Slope.”

Evans contended the bill addressed the perennial opposition to assisted suicide bills by those who feared such bills led to discrimination against the disabled community. She claimed that the Rhode Island bill protected against such abuses by including strict waiting periods and physician requirements to prevent increasing the vulnerability of the already marginalized. And it does include defined requirements that seem to forbid a too quick rush to judgement. 

The problem occurs when the other states and countries that have passed these bills get the population eventually comfortable with the concept that premature death is a solution to difficult situations. Very soon, often starting in the next legislative session, year after year, incremental “adjustments” with new bills always follow. 

Shortening waiting periods, widening definitions of qualifying conditions, removing protections, expanding who can prescribe the pills: Layer by layer they fall away until there are very few if any protections left against a few physicians playing God. 

A few examples of just a few of the complexities help us to see the path inevitably followed once we start down this dark road: 

• In Colorado and Oregon patients in their 30s struggling with anorexia were prescribed lethal drugs rather than real compassionate treatment for their mental illness. Other examples exist.

• Doctors make mistakes frequently in estimating how long so called terminally ill patient will live. A major study of physician prognoses in Chicago revealed that of 468 predictions, only 20 percent were accurate in predicting when death would occur. In another study, “No group accurately predicted the length of patient survival more than 50 percent of the time.” No fault of the doctors; applying general rules to specific patients is never simple. 

• Not only those who will inherit what’s left have a financial motive for favoring a quick, inexpensive demise. In California and Oregon there are numerous examples of patients who were denied possible life saving, but expensive, treatments and then offered cheap lethal drugs instead by insurance companies. Even if they hadn’t requested information on suicide pills. Hundreds of thousands or a $3 copay?

• Once the prescription is written, there is no supervision of the drugs. The inheritor or caregiver can pick up the drugs and place them in the patient’s food without the patient’s knowledge or consent. The enacted laws make investigations of deaths very difficult. Coercion happens behind closed doors and assisted suicide indemnification enables concealment. 

Much more could be written here, but these examples should suffice to encourage readers to do their own research on what really happens in states like Oregon and California once we embark on the path to solve our problem patient’s struggles by killing them.

Jack and Rita Parquette

15 Birch St.

Portsmouth