Sometime in the next few weeks the Judiciary Committee will hold a public hearing on a bill to legalize assisted suicide, either SB 668, whose Orwellian title is “AN ACT PROVIDING A MEDICAL OPTION OF COMPASSIONATE AID IN DYING FOR TERMINALLY ILL ADULTS” or a similar bill.
Family Institute of Connecticut Action needs as many people as possible to take the steps below to help us defeat the assisted suicide bill. (Please set aside Tuesday, March 24th right now to come to the state Capitol in Hartford for FIC Action’s lobby day against assisted suicide.)
Though FIC Action and our allies crushed assisted suicide at the state Capitol for the last two years–and the biggest pro-assisted suicide legislator lost her election last year–the George Soros-funded pro-assisted suicide group is using its great wealth to force our overburdened state government to take up the issue again in 2015.
We have to respond. We have to contact our legislators and ask them to vote NO on the Assisted Suicide Bill.
FIC Action does not support keeping a patient alive by extraordinary means against that patient’s will. We support true aid-in-dying, which is hospice and palliative care. What we oppose is licensing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs for the purpose of taking a human life, prescribing suicide as a treatment.
And we are not alone. Connecticut hospice associations, the Connecticut Medical Society, disability rights advocates and many on the political Left joined FIC Action these last two years in opposing assisted suicide because it is bad public policy that puts vulnerable populations at risk. We can find alternatives for easing pain without passing a law that could put pressure on the elderly and people with disabilities to feel that they are a burden and should end their lives.
The societal implications of legalizing assisted suicide are staggering. Government and doctors would be endorsing suicide. One Connecticut legislator at the “Compassion and Choices” press conference two years ago admitted under questioning that once this first bill is passed, they could come back for a second bill to allow the mentally incompetent to take their own lives. In Belgium, a law to euthanize children has been passed. In Oregon, patients desiring treatment under the Oregon Health Plan have been offered assisted suicide instead.
2) In addition to your own legislators, contact the members of the Judiciary Committee now and ask them to vote NO on SB 668. Their contact information can be found here.
3) Come lobby your legislators in person! Plan to attend FIC Action’s lobby day on Tuesday, March 24th. Please also–especially!–come to the legislature to testify against Assisted Suicide the day of the public hearing, which may be on or about March 20th. Watch your in-box for more details.
https://www.votervoice.net/link/target/fict/MKP7rEr54.aspx