Less Than 1% of Assisted-Suicide Patients in Oregon Received a Psychiatric Evaluation Last Year

Bioethics, Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, , , ,

Data from the State of Oregon shows that last year less than 1% of patients who received a prescription for physician-assisted suicide were referred for a psychiatric evaluation.

Oregon’s 1997 “Death With Dignity Act” legalized physician-assisted suicide in the state, and since then more than 3,200 people have received prescriptions for lethal drugs.

More than 90% of the patients who asked about assisted suicide in Oregon said they were concerned about losing their autonomy because of their illness and nearly 70% expressed worries about losing their dignity. Most did not express concerns about controlling their pain.

However, doctors in Oregon rarely refer these patients for psychiatric help. Patients who are lonely and feel like they are losing control over their lives need counseling and support — not a prescription for deadly drugs.

Assisted suicide is devastating for families, and it robs patients of compassionate care.

Just like abortion, euthanasia and assisted-suicide are murder, and they violate the sanctity of human life.

Being pro-life means believing innocent human life is sacred from conception until natural death.

That’s why Family Council helped defeat a very bad bill in 2019 that would have let doctors prescribe lethal drugs to patients in Arkansas and two bad end-of-life bills in 2021. These were flawed measures that fundamentally disrespected the right to life.

You can read assisted suicide data from the Oregon Health Authority here.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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WSJ Highlights Financial Fraud Allegations in Commercial Surrogacy Cases

Bioethics, Surrogacy, ,

The Wall Street Journal recently published a column highlighting allegations of financial fraud among commercial surrogacy businesses.

Commercial surrogacy is a practice where companies and wealthy couples pay women thousands of dollars to carry children for them.

Social commentators and policymakers worldwide have raised concerns about how commercial surrogacy financially pressures women into providing children for paying customers.

Now The Wall Street Journal reports that some commercial surrogacy companies have allegedly mishandled customers’ money.

Calling the industry “almost entirely unregulated,” The Wall Street Journal writes,

Escrow companies, used in the majority of surrogacies, can handle millions of client dollars with almost no oversight, according to a Wall Street Journal review of court filings and interviews with parents and surrogates. . . .

In one case earlier this year, a surrogacy company owner pleaded guilty to wire fraud after prosecutors said she used client escrow money to fund a yoga and flotation chamber business and other personal expenses. An employee at another company stole $2.7 million to feed an online gambling habit. Yet another used parents’ funds to buy bitcoin.

As we have said before, it’s bad when commercial surrogacy goes wrong — but it’s important to remember that surrogacy never “goes right” either.

Commercial surrogacy treats women like commodities, and it treats children like products that can be made to order and sold for profit.

It denies children the opportunity to be raised by their biological mom and a dad.

In California, surrogate Brittney Pearson’s story shows some of the problems associated with surrogacy.

After Pearson was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, doctors recommended inducing labor early and caring for the baby in the NICU while she started chemo. However, that isn’t what the same-sex couple paying Brittney Pearson as their commercial surrogate wanted.

Even though she was 24 weeks pregnant and the baby might have been able to survive outside the womb, the men wanted Brittney to have an abortion. If the baby were born alive, the men asked that no life-saving measures be taken for the baby.

With her cancer having spread to her liver, Pearson found a hospital to induce birth. The child died shortly after being born on Father’s Day, June 18, 2023.

All of this was made possible by state laws that facilitate commercial surrogacy and treat the intended parents in surrogacy arrangements as the legal parents of the child.

Stories like this one underscore why Family Council has opposed commercial surrogacy in Arkansas. Unfortunately, Arkansas’ commercial surrogacy laws are very lax.

Since 2017, Family Council has supported legislation to prohibit commercial surrogacy in Arkansas. So far, those restrictions have not passed.

Human beings are not products that can be bought or sold. That’s why Family Council opposes commercial surrogacy — and will continue to oppose it.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Shattered Dreams: The High Cost of Reproductive Technology

Bioethics, , ,

A column published in The Wall Street Journal last Friday highlights the heartbreak and empty promises that assisted reproduction technology often brings.

Ruthie Ackerman writes,

I spent close to $15,000 to freeze my eggs when I was 35. I paid top dollar out of pocket at a well-respected clinic that had, as far as I knew, glowing statistics. The process allowed me to bank 14 eggs, a number my doctor enthusiastically told me could produce two children.

Yet when I returned to use my eggs six years later, none was viable. Only eight survived the thaw, and only three became embryos after being fertilized. I then waited to see if any would reach the blastocyst stage necessary for pregnancy.

None of them did.

Ackerman goes on to note how egg freezing simply isn’t the “slam dunk” or parenthood “insurance policy” that many people make it out to be. Egg freezing and in vitro fertilization can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and there is no guarantee that the eggs — or the unborn children created from them — will survive.

We have written before about the ethical problems with human egg harvesting, in vitro fertilization, commercial surrogacy, and other assisted reproductive technologies. Fertility clinics often fail to give women all the information about the risks, consequences, and alternatives associated with these processes.

Two bills filed earlier this year would have helped address this problem.

H.B. 1554 and H.B. 1795 by Rep. Alyssa Brown (R — Heber Springs) would have required fertility clinics to be licensed by the State of Arkansas and report key data related to assisted reproductive technology. Unfortunately, neither of these bills passed.

Family Council has worked for years to bring better accountability and oversight to assisted reproduction technology. We remain committed to doing exactly that.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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