What do you think?

This is the start of an article in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer. And the opening sentence does sum it up well, but there is much more to it. It is Pennsylvania news but the issue is one that could happen almost anywhere and that is certainly worth thinking about.

The Philadelphia nurse charged with assisted suicide for giving morphine to her terminally ill, 93-year-old father has been suspended from her job without pay, run up legal fees of $90,000, and often can’t sleep because she feels so angry and hurt, her husband said in an interview.

In this case, the criminal act appears to be simply handing her terminally ill father his morphine with which he attempted suicide. The morphine had been prescribed for the terminally ill man for pain relief.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that patients have the right to self-administer as much medication as needed for pain, even if it hastens death. But it is apparently still not a right in Pennsylvania.

The suicide may have been successful if the state and not intervened to revive him despite his do-not-resuscitate order and the expressed desire of his health care proxy (his daughter, the Philadelphia nurse later charged with assisted suicide).

The patient did die after several days but I haven’t seen any evidence as to weather the cause of death was the suicide attempt, the treatment, the pre-existing terminal illness, a combination of these, or something else entirely.

This is from another account:

(Pottsville, Pa. – Sept. 17, 2013) Defense attorneys for Barbara Mancini, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of “assisted suicide” for allegedly handing morphine to her dying father, today filed a motion to dismiss the case based in part on two U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In both cases, Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill, the nation’s highest court recognized that states cannot erect legal barriers to aggressive treatment of end-of-life pain and suffering, even when it advances the time of death (for more details, see pages 5-7 of the motion atwww.compassionandchoices.org/pennsylvania-v-mancini/).

I think the state is clearly in the wrong here and I don’t understand why the Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is prosecuting Barbara Mancini. But what do you think about the rights of the patient and his daughter?

If you would like see or sign the online petition to stop this prosecution, please click here.