“No one knows that day or hour,”* not even physicians, as confirmed by a new study highlighted by the New York Times in their 2018 Christmas Eve article entitled Misconceptions About Health Costs When You’re Older. This flies against assisted suicide advocates who want us and legislators to believe that along with a white coat comes the ability to divine whether someone is likely to expire within 6 months.  From the article . . . “Of those with the very highest probability of dying — the top 1 percent — fewer than half actually died. ‘This shows that it’s just very hard to know in advance who will die soon with much certainty,'” quoting the author of the latest study.

We all know of people who have lived longer than doctors expected.  Others, who have lived much shorter lives.  The government should not give the power to prescribe a dose deadly pills based on what honest members of the medical community recognize as mere predictions.  And frequently, and let’s be correct, bad ones.

Friends, if the thought of your elderly parents (frequently elderly moms) spending their last years agonizing over whether they should “end it all” in order to avoid inconveniencing their heirs bothers you, then there is never a bad time to talk to your legislators about your opposition to assisted suicide in our state.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out to them at the next legislator meet-up, because after all, no one knows that day or hour.

 

 

*Matthew 24:36