By Phil Riske, managing editor | Rose Law Group Reporter
(Disclosure: The editor and his brother were asked by their dying brother if they would assist his suicide if he decided to take his own life. It did not come to that, however.)
STATE CAPITOL — Live or die: That is the question.
Arizona lawmakers are dealing with two highly moral issues this session as legislation dealing with assisted suicide and rights of a terminally ill patient make their way through the legislative process.
House Bill 2565 sponsored by Rep. Justin Pierce, R-Mesa, seeks to make it easier to prosecute people who assist someone in committing suicide. Pierce says his bill will make it easier for attorneys to prosecute people for manslaughter by more clearly defining “assist.”
The bill, which the House Judiciary Committee forwarded on a 6-2 vote, says assisting suicide means offering and providing the physical means used to commit suicide, such as a gun.
The bill was prompted by a case when prosecutors tried four Final Exit Network members in 2011 in the death of Jana Van Voorhis, who committed suicide in her Phoenix home on April 15, 2007. Authorities initially thought Van Voorhis had died of natural causes, but an investigation revealed she had been in contact with Final Exit Network members online, and they provided her instructions on how to commit suicide.
Juries acquitted two members because they did not clearly understand what it means to assist.
Pierce told AP, “Frankly, I think it’s immoral and wrong, and that’s what is motivating me in this bill.”
Last Hope Drugs
If passed, House Concurrent Resolution 2005 would place before the voter in the next General Election the question of whether an investigational drug, biological product or device may be made available to eligible terminally ill patients. The legislation, however, does not require a drug company to do that.
Christina Corieri of the Goldwater Institute told the House Reform and Human Services Committee that for patients suffering from terminal illnesses, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the arbiter of life and death.
Patients suffering from diseases with little chance of recovery, she said, might benefit from investigational drugs not yet approved by the FDA.
“To access these treatments, patients must either go through a lengthy FDA exemption process or wait for the treatments to receive FDA approval, which can take a decade or more and cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” she said.
“Sadly, over half a million cancer patients and thousands of patients with other terminal illnesses die each year as the bureaucratic wheels at the FDA slowly turn.”
Rep. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, a cancer survivor whose father and brother died from cancer, voted against the resolution,
“It is a compassionate bill . . . [but] it preempts federal law,” she said.
The committee voted 5-3 to advance the bill to the full House.
Statement by David Weissman, Rose Law Group health care and employment attorney: “These are difficult and controversial issues, and there are good arguments both for and against each of these proposed measures. On one hand, amending the definitions within the manslaughter statute to more clearly define what type of conduct is unlawful would seem to be a good thing, both for lawyers and the public in general.
“On the other, the impact of this revision to the law on terminally ill patients and their ability to make their own choices may not be so positive. As for the ballot resolution, it seems hard to argue with a proposal that provides certain individuals with the opportunity for a possible cure or at least a chance to prolong life, so long as it can be reconciled with federal law. At the end of the day, let’s hope that our state’s legislators and voters take steps that strike a balance between adequately protecting our citizens and easing the pain and suffering of the terminally ill.”
