Death Rhetoric in the U.S.A. 1938 to 2017

Rhetoric can be used to convince people of either truth or falsehood. Purveyors of the “right to die” are like the snake oil salesmen of old. These groups all make claims that appeal to the emotions but that are not backed by facts. They use nice sounding words like rights, compassion, dignity, self-determination, and choice, but every one of them sprang from the Euthanasia Society of America and the Hemlock Society—deadly names for deadly organizations. They know their agenda won’t sell if accurate language is used, so they continually change their names and rhetoric to peddle imposed death.

1938 The Euthanasia Society of America (ESA) was founded to promote legalization of both voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, but was unsuccessful in changing laws until changing tactics in the 1960s.

1967 ESA established the Euthanasia Educational Council (EEC) which introduced the “Living Will,” a document drawn up by lawyer Luis Kutner and regarded by ESA as the first step toward winning social and legal acceptance of euthanasia.

1969 The Indiana Law Journal published Kutner’s “Due Process of Euthanasia: The Living Will, A Proposal.” Kutner, spelling out the “right to die” agenda, presented the living will as “limited in its initial creation to adult patients who are capable of exercising their will” and as a means to “permit inaction termination of a patient’s life.”

1975 ESA changed its name to the Society for the Right to Die (SRD).

1976 The California “Natural Death Act,” the first Living Will law in the U.S., was enacted.

1979 EEC changed its name to Concern for Dying (CFD) and split from SRD.

1980 Derek Humphry founded the Hemlock Society (HS) to promote death-on-demand—both euthanasia and assisted suicide. (Hemlock was the poison used in ancient Greece for executions and state-approved suicides.)

1986 At a conference named “A New Ethic for the New Medicine,” the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs endorsed imposing death by starvation and dehydration: “Even if death is not imminent, but a patient’s coma is beyond doubt irreversible...it is not unethical to discontinue all means of life-prolonging medical treatment (including) medication and artificially or technologically supplied respiration, nutrition and hydration.”

1987 32-year-old Nancy Ellen Jobes—who, according to the testimony of two neurologists, was aware and responsive—died of starvation and dehydration after the NJ Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that surrogates may refuse medical care without clear evidence of a patient’s wishes. Within a few years, similar court decisions would set “right to die” precedent in a number of other states.

1990 The U.S. Supreme Court, in its first termination of food and fluids case, Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health, upheld Missouri’s requirement that there be “clear and convincing evidence” of an incompetent patient’s wishes. Nevertheless, 33-year-old Nancy Cruzan was starved and dehydrated to death after a lower court found new evidence—an alleged conversation she had 12 years prior—to be “clear and convincing.”

1990 The federal “Patient Self-Determination Act”—forcing healthcare providers to promote Living Wills—was enacted. Most states had already

enacted Living Will laws. (By 1994, all states would have advance directive laws.)

1991 SRD and CFD—having merged in 1990—renamed themselves Choice in Dying.

1991 The influential New England Journal of Medicine lent an air of legitimacy to physician-assisted suicide (PAS) by publishing Dr. Timothy Quill’s article detailing how he assisted the suicide of a 45-year-old woman with leukemia. He would be neither convicted for this criminal act nor held accountable for his breach of medical ethics.

1993 Compassion in Dying (CID), an HS spin-off, was created to provide information and assistance to sick people who want to die and to promote so-called “aid-in-dying” laws.

1994 Oregon voters approved the “Death With Dignity Act” and the Death with Dignity National Center (DDNC) was born. The DDNC works alongside CID promoting PAS laws in other states.

1997 Dr. Timothy Quill, the lead plaintiff in Quill v. Vacco, challenged laws against PAS as being “unconstitutional.” This case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Quill.

1997 After wending its way through court challenges and another popular vote, Oregon’s assisted suicide law took effect—doctors legally began to write prescriptions for suicide.

1997 Last Acts, a coalition of more than 100 prominent organizations, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was established purportedly to improve the quality of end-of-life care. (“Improving care” is often code for hastening death.)

1999 Choice in Dying became Partnership for Caring (PFC). PFC managed the Last Acts program.