Pledge to ‘do no harm’ and say no to physician-assisted suicide

I’ve spent the past 20 years of my career as a physician assistant saving lives in the emergency department. On a daily basis, I pledge to “do no harm” to my patients as I care for them and render lifesaving aid.

As a medical provider, the greatest harm I can imagine is being responsible for ending my patient’s life. That is why I am deeply troubled by ongoing conversations at the Minnesota Legislature to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

This proposed legislation goes against the fact that a health care providers’ obligation is to care for their patients — not to assist in killing them — no matter the circumstance.

Minnesota has some of the best health care in the world. We have wonderful hospice and palliative care available in our state to care for patients until their natural death. Dying with dignity in our society is made possible by the delivery of compassionate, supportive and expert care by medical providers — not by turning them into agents of assisted suicide.

It has been shown that in places where assisted suicide is legal, hospice care has fallen below national standards and progress in palliative care has stagnated. We can’t afford for this to happen in Minnesota as our population ages. There are currently more Minnesotans over the age of 65 than in our K-12 system. Now is the time to advance access to proper services — not create new standards of medical care that support ending life.

It is also evident that limits on assisted suicide erode over time. These laws often begin with eligibility limited to terminal illness and a six-month life expectancy; however, countries like Belgium, Netherlands and Canada have gradually expanded criteria to offer assisted suicide to people with depression, disability and chronic pain, as well as people with limited income. Patients often seek assisted suicide out of fear of becoming a burden. Legalizing it reinforces harmful misconceptions that people experiencing chronic illness are a burden and encourages people to end their lives prematurely. And euphemisms like “medical aid in dying” make it more palatable for people to accept this as okay, masking the fact that medical professionals are prescribing medication that results in suicide.

Like many Minnesotans, suicide is also a deeply personal subject for me. My dad ended his own life when I was 12 years old. Most people would say that my dad’s death at age 35 was a tragedy. They’d say we should try our best to prevent suicide. I agree.

I also lost my mom to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis when she was only 62. This proposed legislation tells us that it would not have been a tragedy for my mom, with the assistance of her medical provider, to end her own life prematurely. Instead, this legislation says it would have been the caring thing to do. I disagree.

Both situations are absolute tragedies. In both scenarios, a person should have access to supportive, person-centered care — not a legal path to suicide.

Is physician-assisted suicide really how we want to care for patients in Minnesota? As a physician assistant, wife, mother — and as an orphan daughter — my answer is a resounding ‘No’.