By Margaret Dore, Esq, MBA
Click here to view a pdf version of this document, consisting of an index, a short memo and an appendix.
I. INTRODUCTION
I am a licensed attorney in Washington State where “death with dignity” (assisted suicide and euthanasia) is legal. Washington’s law is based on a similar law in Oregon. Both laws are similar to the proposed Act set forth in HB 1659-FN.[1]
I am also a former Law Clerk to the Washington State Supreme Court and the Washington State Court of Appeals. I worked for a year with the United States Department of Justice and have been in private practice since 1990. I am also president of Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia.
I have personally appeared and testified against assisted suicide and/or euthanasia in at least 20 US legislatures, including New Hampshire, and also internationally. For more information see www.margaretdore.org and www.choiceillusion.org.
By Margaret Dore
On March 16, 2011, the New Hampshire House of Representatives defeated an Oregon-style physician-assisted suicide bill. The bill, HB 513, was defeated on the House floor 234 to 99. The bill had previously been defeated in the House Judiciary Committee 15 to 1. The majority committee report gives these reasons for the defeat:
[T]his bill would legalize state-sanctioned suicide for people with terminal illnesses and that this is an area where government does not belong. People with terminal illnesses who may consider suicide do not need encouragement from the government. The committee further believes that this bill is a recipe for elder abuse. The committee also recognizes that doctors’ diagnoses and predictions may be incorrect; numerous cases exist where people have lived far beyond their doctor’s predictions, some of them having been cured from their terminal disease. For these reasons, the committee strongly believes that this bill represents bad policy and practice and recommend inexpedient to legislate.
House Journal, Vol. 33, No. 28 (scroll down to HB 513) .
By Margaret Dore, Esq, MBA 