Bill Advances that Would Allow Health Care Workers to Starve Mentally Ill Patients to Death
This is yet another example of the absolute disrespect and disregard for life that has permeated the very soul of this country thereby leading to a massive culture rot.
On the State of Oregon’s website, they brag about how they stand for “death with dignity” having passed a physician-assisted suicide law in 1997 “which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.”
Now, it seems the godless, far-leftists who run The Beaver State believe there is dignity in starvation and dehydration because the Oregon Senate just passed a bill that will allow health care workers to starve to death those who suffer from dementia or some other form of mental illness.
The bill, Senate Bill 494, has been sold to the public as merely “updating the state’s advanced directives.” In reality, it would “remove current safeguards in Oregon’s advance directive statute that protect conscious patients’ access to ordinary food and water when they no longer have the ability to make decisions about their own care.”
So, in Oregon, a patient who is conscious can be denied food and water in order to kill them if they suffer from mental illness.
How disgustingly sick is that?
Oregon Right to Life Executive Director Gayle Atteberry made a statement about this blatant and heinous disregard for human life.
“It’s disheartening that the proponents of Senate Bill 494 have sold it as a basic ‘update’ to Oregon law. The reality is that it will remove current safeguards in Oregon’s advance directive statute that protect conscious patients’ access to ordinary food and water when they no longer have the ability to make decisions about their own care.”
Life Site News breaks down this atrocity of a bill. (Emphasis mine.)
Oregon’s current advance directive allows a person to specify types of care they will want as well as who will be their health care representative if they become mentally incompetent. The current form gives ample room for a person to write his/her complete instructions for end-of-life care including if the patient wants tube feeding or not.
Oregon’s current advance directive is a part of statute. As such, it is not just a form—the law also limits the authority of a health care representative to make decisions for a patient to only what the patient designates on the form.
SB 494 removes the advance directive document from Oregon statute. The result is that there could be situations where an incompetent person’s life may be ended according to the wishes of their health care representative, even if it’s against the unwritten or ambiguously written desires of the incompetent person.
If SB 494 becomes law, instead of a person having to opt-out of life-sustaining treatment on an advance directive, Oregonians will likely need to specifically opt-in to ensure that their health care representative does not end their life.
This bill specifically affects people who become mentally incapable of making health care decisions, such as someone with dementia who can still eat, drink and make other everyday choices. That is why it is so important that a health care representative only have the authority to make a life-ending decision if they are explicitly given that authority. The current advance directive preserves Oregonians’ ability to receive food and hydration even if they lose mental competency.
Is starving and dehydrating someone to death to save money because they have a mental impairment where we are in society now? Be certain of this, if Oregon passes this bill into law, then leftist controlled states like Washington, California, and New York will follow. Meanwhile, they will simultaneously speak out of the other side of their mouth about “rights” while attacking the fundamental right as stipulated in the Constitution…the right to life.
