Senate Committee Considering Physician Assisted Suicide Bill!
Please urge your Senator on the Senate Education and Health Committee to OPPOSE physician assisted suicide. Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D-Chesterfield) for the second year in a row has introduced a bill (SB 930) that would allow a so-called medical doctor to prescribe medication that would end the life of the patient diagnosed with a terminal condition.
Urge your Legislator to OPPOSE Physician Assisted Suicide!
This bill is scheduled to be heard on Friday, January 20 but there is always the possibility the committee chairman could bypass the subcommittee process and bring the bill before the full committee for consideration tomorrow. Last year, Senator Hashmi’s bill to legalize physician assisted suicide, failed in the full Senate Education and Health Committee on a 7 – 7 tie with Senator Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) abstaining.
Allowing physician-assisted suicide would undermine the most basic principles of our civil society by exploiting those who are weak and vulnerable, and are most at risk of being devalued.
There are untold dangers and potential abuses associated with PSA. For example, in Oregon and California, insurance companies have already been documented telling terminally ill patients that the treatments that might save their life aren’t covered, but doctor-prescribed suicide is.
The very objective of PSA runs contrary to the very purpose of the practice of medicine and those within the profession to care for and extend life, not purposefully end it. Simply put, medicine that’s used to heal should not be used to intentionally accelerate death, which only devalues the person.
