Cappy and Mark Nunlist live in Lebanon.

HB 1283, the Medical Aid in Dying Bill (MAiD), has passed the NH House by a slim margin and is now before the Senate. The three primary objections to the bill are one, the bill will morph into a mandate to coerce people with disabilities to use MAiD; two, suicide is a sin (pushed by the Catholic Diocese and other religious groups); and three, passing the bill would lead down a “slippery slope.”

It is likely that the bill will not pass the Senate, but a majority of New Hampshire residents support the right to have a peaceful solution at the end of their lives and the bill will continue to come back until the will of the people is heard. In the meantime, I would ask people on both sides to contemplate the following.

Is HB 1283 a threat to the disability community? No. Wheelchair-bound Charmaine Manansala has worked for Compassion & Choices for ten years in a leadership position and supports the bill. She stated in a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing that there is no data to support the argument that MAiD will lead to coercion of the disabilities community in any of the states that have passed MAiD laws. She also stated that she would never work for an organization that would advocate for a position that might harm her or other people with disabilities. Charmaine was articulate, knowledgeable, and credible. She should be trusted.

Is Medical Aid in Dying suicide? Suicide is the taking of one’s own life and therefore, clearly, the answer is yes. Unfortunately, a common assumption is that “suicide” is always a tragedy, but it is the desperation behind a suicide that makes it tragic. We should do all we can to alleviate the pain of addiction, mental illness, poverty, and other factors that cause people to take their own lives. Medical Aid in Dying is not tragic. Rather, it is a gift – release from suffering when the cause of suffering cannot be eliminated. I recognize that some believe that suicide is a sin, but that is a personal, religious perspective. Many do not share that belief and in America, one is not permitted to impose religious beliefs on others. I personally believe that unnecessary suffering is a tragedy and death is peace. Suicide is justified when patients are fully informed about their options, competent to make decisions regarding their health, and the act will end their suffering near the end of their life, all conditions of the MAiD bill.

Will passing this bill send us down a slippery slope? That depends on what slope you are talking about. If you believe that offering the relief of Medical Aid in Dying to a greater number of people who are enduring pain that is otherwise unable to be relieved, I hope so. Why not? However, if you believe that this bill will lead to reducing the safeguards that currently ensure the decision to use MAiD is uncoerced and informed, I would certainly hope not. This would be unacceptable to all those who support this bill, whose only goal is to allow each individual the right to make their own uncoerced decision based on their own situation and moral beliefs.

There is another “slippery slope” that is far more dangerous that neither side has addressed. I constantly read about four issues in which legislatures or courts are interfering in decisions that should be made exclusively by patients in consultation with their doctors: the banning of all abortions except those to save the life of the mother; medical abortives; Medical Aid in Dying, and gender-affirming procedures in children. (Interestingly, those who wish to ban the latter procedures, requested by parents as best for their children, are the same people who insist that teachers reveal information provided by kids in confidence, on the basis that “parents know what’s best for their children.”)

This trend to involve legislatures and courts in personal medical decisions is, indeed, a slippery slope. What if the court decides that morphine or pain-reducing medicines should be banned because those medicines, just like those used in Medical Aid in Dying, also hasten death? Or that certain surgical procedures that have a higher chance of resulting in death during the operation than success, should be banned because taking that risk is a form of suicide? Or allowing blood transfusions only if the donor and the recipient are the same race? The right of the state to intervene in medical decisions based primarily on religious or moral beliefs is the precedence that is being made by these cases. That is a slippery slope that should scare all of us.