Activists who are pushing more states to adopt assisted suicide laws for terminally ill patients are framing their agenda using the same “bodily autonomy” argument abortion activists use to convince Democrat lawmakers to pass legislation.
These assisted suicide activists, whom The Washington Post calls “aid-in-dying advocates” claim that if a lawmaker supports a woman’s “right” to control her own body with regards to pregnancy, “the same logic should apply to a terminally ill patient’s right to end his or her own suffering,” according to the Tuesday Post report.
“It’s a choice issue,” said Lorrie Rogers, an 83-year-old activist who was protesting with three friends at the Maryland Senate office building. “My body, my life, my death, my choice.”
The strategy is a “new approach” to a “long-standing campaign” to allow terminally ill Maryland residents the option to legally end their lives, according to the report. Assisted suicide activists are employing “a similar strategy” in New York and Connecticut, “where advocates pushing to align arguments for abortion and end-of -life rights are hoping to replicate the nation’s first aid-in-dying bill, passed in Oregon in 1997,” the report states.
Activists in Maryland are focused on targeting state lawmakers who voted to expand abortion efforts last year, but voted against a 2019 bill that would have allowed doctors in the state to prescribe terminally ill patients a lethal dose of medicine.
Donna Smith, the campaign director for Compassion & Choices Action Network in Maryland, said:
If you are in support of abortion because of bodily autonomy issues, I don’t see how you could not be in support of this. All these people at the end of life have to go through a number of hoops to ensure that this is their choice and they’re making this independent decision, and that’s not required of women getting abortions.
Since Oregon passed its assisted suicide law in 1997, nine other states and Washington, D.C., have followed suit. New York and six other states are also weighing whether to pass their own doctor-assisted suicide laws in the coming months, the Daily Mail reported in February.
“[S]ome of the ten states that already allow medical aid-in-dying (MAiD) are loosening their rules, by cutting wait times, letting nurses join doctors in prescribing lethal drugs, and by letting out-of-staters visit to end their lives,” according to the report.
A campaigner with the group Not Dead Yet told the outlet that the loosening of assisted suicide rules is “frightening.”
“We’re going to see more cases of people using assisted dying because they’re poor or disabled, and more pressure and coercion, as it’s all normalized into law,” the campaigner named Cameron said.