We're not forcing anyone to do anything. Right!

The State of Washington has decided that it's OK to go ahead and give a terminal patient a lethal dose of medicine if the patient wants it and is certified to have less than six months of life left. Dr. Stu Farber is against the law and says he will not assist his patients in committing suicide. Other doctors who opposed the measure have argued that a six-month terminal diagnosis is never a sure thing. "There is no question in my mind that, if this is too easy of a task, people will die prematurely," said Dr. Linda Wrede-Seaman, a family physician and palliative care specialist in Yakima. There is an opt-out provision in the law for doctors and pharmacists. "We're not forcing anyone to do anything," Dr. Larry Robinson said. For now, that is.

It was interesting to me that I found this news item just a couple of days after I came across the one detailing how Obama will more than likely reverse conscience protection provisions for doctors and other health care workers. Under the Bush administration, a Health and Human Services regulation reinforces the right of health care workers to refuse to provide abortion and contraception if it violates their conscience or moral precepts. It also protects doctors like Dr. Vicki Duncan. She testified last fall that she was pressured by her insurance provider to provide artificial insemination for a lesbian couple or lose her coverage. "I contacted my malpractice carrier for legal advice, and was told that if I refused for them, but did so for a married, heterosexual couple, I would likely be sued, and they would not provide coverage. It also extended to a non-married couple. That was when I decided to no longer perform intrauterine inseminations,” Duncan said. Obama says that doctors should not be able to refuse abortions, because that is discriminatory and denies equal access to health care.

If they can force doctors to perform abortions and other procedures they find morally repugnant, it's only a short time before they will force them to assist in suicides.

There is another slippery slope assisted suicide leads down. What if Obama decides he should be making the decision on whether or not you should hang around any longer to be a drain on the health care system? It is now to the point that the doctor is not in control. I'm afraid it will come to the point that the patient will no longer be in control. That's the point when "assisted suicide" becomes "government mandated murder."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090301/ap_on_re_us/assisted_suicide
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44255