Please let President-elect Trump know that vulnerable lives are threatened by the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.
In Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, and most recently Colorado, doctors are allowed to prescribe lethal drugs to patients when they are at their most vulnerable and without adequate safeguards.
Assisted Suicide Laws:
1) Do not require patients to be screened for depression, anxiety, or mental health conditions before they are given lethal drugs. This lack of basic psychological evaluation and treatment constitutes medical negligence.
2) Disproportionately affect the poor. Patients in Oregon and California have been refused life-extending chemotherapy by their insurance companies, who instead opt to pay for life-ending drugs.
3) Communicate the message that under especially difficult circumstances, some lives are not worth living. This message will be heard by not only those with a terminal illness but also any person struggling with the temptation to end his or her life.
4) Abandon vulnerable patients to lethal drugs. To abandon suicidal individuals in the midst of a crisis under the guise of respecting their autonomy is socially irresponsible. It undermines sound medical ethics and erodes social solidarity.
5) Undermine the ability of patients to get adequate medical care. Patients with a terminal illness are extremely vulnerable to any suggestion from their physicians, their health care team, and their insurers that they are becoming too expensive to care for, or too burdensome.
Those who are pushing assisted suicide legislation will stop at nothing to advance their death-on-demand agenda.
We are asking President-elect Trump to implement policy measures that protect the vulnerable by refusing to allow taxpayer dollars to be used to promote, encourage, or provide suicide assistance. Let your voice be heard by signing the petition!
This petition sponsored by Life Legal Defense Foundation
