By Moe Wosepka, Executive Director
Montana Catholic Conference

A friend this morning mentioned that during the weekend, she overheard the comment that no public policy is without unintended consequences. It’s true. All public policy has unintended consequences. Some consequences are harmless and others dangerous. When public policy affects life or health, those consequences are of even greater concern. To get a glimpse of what can happen, all we have to do is look at how the medical marijuana law is getting out of control.

This past weekend, I attended a Helena conference about end-of-life issues. One of the presenters was Ann Jackson, former director of hospice for the state of Oregon. Her presentation was on how well Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law works, and how beneficial the work of Compassion & Choices (the primary sponsor of efforts to legalize assisted suicide) is for those who choose to die, as Jackson described it, “with dignity.” She highlighted every supposed advantage, and minimized every problem.

Jackson spoke of many patients who are terminally ill and request the lethal drug but do not take it. She told us they have it in on hand for “peace of mind,” in case they reach in their lives a point at which they feel the need to take the drug and end their suffering. Some die on their own, without taking the drug.

When asked a question about disposition of the drug if it is not consumed, Jackson told us there is a problem with all medications left when people die. She told us this is not the only drug that creates problems for disposal, and it should not be singled out. However, I believe disposal of this drug is of greater concern because this one is intended to cause death. It is not blood pressure medication, or another drug that may be managed through emergency medical treatment when an accidental overdose occurs. This drug is designed to kill people.

What controls are there in Oregon and Washington, another state that has legalized physician-assisted suicide, to prevent a grandchild or the surviving spouse from taking the unused drug? None. There are no specific safeguards applied to this drug once it is in the possession of the person who requests it. A problem also exists if the drug is dumped into the sink, goes through our treatment plants and then into rivers or soils.

The multitude of other concerns includes the adverse effect assisted suicide could have on the ways that insurance companies make treatment decisions; problems of misdiagnosis; effects of depression; and inequity in health-care access.

The Montana Catholic Conference will be expanding its Web page with fact sheets, copies of editorials, statements and videos that will provide the Catholic position on physician-assisted suicide, as well as addressing some of the problems with the Oregon and Washington laws. These materials will be useful for discussion groups in your parishes, by councils and in prayer groups. We also will have a section describing how you can be involved. Compassion & Choices has a multimillion-dollar media budget. We will have to depend on local efforts, such as letters to the editor. We expect the first of our information to be on the Web by the end of April, and we will add more in the months leading to the 2011 Montana legislative session.

Moe Wosepka is executive director of the Montana Catholic Conference. He may be reached by phone at 406-442-5761 or by e-mail to director@montanacc.org.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 25, No. 12, December 18, 2009.