The Colorado Catholic Conference opposes SB24-068 Medical Aid in Dying or MAID.
SB-68 makes expansions to the unjust physician assisted suicide Proposition 106 (2016) law. The Catholic Church opposes Colorado SB24-068 for its promotion of a culture of death, and making the bad law of physician assisted suicide even worse with expansions that are both unconstitutional and unethical.
MAID targets the most vulnerable in our society, corrupts the medical practice, and distorts the patient-doctor relationship by violating a doctor’s commitment to the health of his patients. Furthermore, physician assisted suicide disregards obligations to our elderly, disabled, or ill members of our community by viewing them as a burden.
SB24-068’s expansion on an already unjust law to reduce the waiting period to take life-ending drugs, allow nurse practitioners to prescribe life ending drugs, and remove the requirement for Colorado residency, continues to violate human dignity and equality.
We are grateful for the proposed amendments to this bill to increase the waiting period as introduced, and even more importantly, to ensure conscience protections for doctors and nurses, as well faith-based hospitals. These amendments are important to ensure constitutionality and offer a minimal buffer to life ending decisions so individuals may reflect on their choice before it is too late. Furthermore, patients near the end of their natural life are susceptible to coercion toward suicide for a variety of reasons and benefitting potentially several parties (medical, insurance, caregivers and beneficiaries).
Since 2016, participation in assisted suicide has increased by 355 percent. Access is not difficult, as proponents suggest. This number is potentially much higher as often medical providers are asked to falsify cause of death for their patients. A more prudent approach to the discussion would be to increase transparency to MAID, not expand access to the determinant of some of our most vulnerable populations, including the elderly, disabled, or ill members of our community.
This is a “die-quicker” bill, not a compassionate care bill. Indeed, often assisted suicide includes a constantly-changing overdose drug regimen that can often take hours to days to end the life of the patient, and can even be complicated by nausea, vomiting, delirium, and seizures, as documented in Oregon. That is not the peaceful, compassionate death lauded by proponents. SB-068 disregards human life, targets the most vulnerable in our society, corrupts the medical practice, and distorts the patient-doctor relationship. The Colorado Catholic Conference urges a “no” vote on SB-068.