The Nevada state legislature has defeated a radical bill that would make the state the next to legalize assisted suicide.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law a bill earlier this month targeting elderly and disabled people that legalizes assisted suicide statewide. That made New Jersey the 7th state to legalize assisted suicide and some Nevada lawmakers wanted the Silver State to become the 8th.
But Nevada Right to Life director Melissa Clement told LifeNews the state Senate is adjourning without approving the bill, which a Senate committee had passed.
“While the official death certificate will not be printed until midnight, the Nevada Senate has adjourned until 11am tomorrow. Further action can not be taken until that point, which is after the deadline for bills to pass the first house,” she said late Tuesday.
Clement thanked the pro-life advocates who took time to call and email in opposition to the bill.
“This victory was hard fought. It took each of your calls, emails, texts, online votes, and powerful testimony. It was humbling to watch and it was incredible to be a part of. Thank you,” she said. “The odds were stacked against us. The votes were not ours. At the beginning of the session, many of us feared the worst. But we took action, remained flexible, adapted, stayed positive, and built a strong coalition. We took not a single vote for granted and talked to every senator, at least once. And. The. Votes. Changed.”
“Time and again, when presented with the truth of assisted suicide, the general public and legislators are shocked. Please continue to educate yourself and others about assisted suicide. Let’s make it unthinkable,” she told LifeNews.
Seven states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont) and Washington D.C. permit the dangerous practice of allowing physicians to write lethal prescriptions to certain groups of persons to kill themselves.
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Patients Rights Action Fund’s Executive Director, Matt Valliere told LifeNews that assisted suicide often targets the learnedly and disabled.
“People with disabilities, the economically disadvantaged, and terminally ill patients are at greatest risk – dangerous public policies often ignore the voices of the vulnerable,” he said. “They are already at a disadvantage when they try to gain equal access to healthcare, and this law will only increase the challenges they face.”
He added: “In other states where assisted suicide is legal, it has proven impossible to regulate and leaves the door wide open for abuse and coercion.”
Oregon was the first state to legalize assisted suicide and the number of patients have been killed since then continues to increase.
In Oregon, there were 168 reported assisted suicide deaths in 2018, up from 158 in 2017. As 249 lethal prescriptions were obtained, and the “ingestion status” is not always known, the actual number of deaths may be higher.
The relief of unbearable suffering is the most common argument put forward for euthanasia and assisted suicide, but the data from Oregon shows that it is not the primary reason people chose to end their lives. The three most frequently reported end-of-life concerns were loss of autonomy (91.7%), decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (90.5%), and loss of dignity (66.7%). Inadequate pain control was mentioned by only 31.2%.
In fact, the data from Oregon adds to the concerning evidence that assisted suicide deaths are not the peaceful end promised by advocates, but slow and painful. The report says that the time of death after taking lethal drugs ranged from 9 minutes to 14 hours. When dying from DCMP2 (a lethal drug cocktail that was invented when the preferred alternatives became too expensive), death took an average of 2 hours, with the longest time taking 21 hours.
