State Rep. Matthew Bierlein today voiced his opposition to new bills in the Legislature that devalue life and could take advantage of Michigan’s most vulnerable.

House Bills 5825-28 make assisted suicide legal in Michigan by allowing terminally ill adults to receive prescribed, lethal medication from their healthcare providers.

“Life is precious, even in life’s hardest moments,” said Bierlein, of Vassar. “I have significant concerns about conversations with patients that involve inducing someone’s death. If a person is a senior or disabled, would he or she feel compelled to “choose” assisted suicide to not be a burden? These bills say if the medical opinion is that the patient has six months or less to live, a patient can go forward with receiving assisted suicide drugs. But we have seen instances where patients live beyond a projected timespan, sometimes by months or years. These bills raise numerous moral and ethical questions and ultimately put our sick, elderly and disabled – our state’s most vulnerable – in a difficult spot.”

Bierlein noted similar plans have been introduced in past legislative terms and not gained support. A ballot measure in 1998 that would have allowed physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medications to terminally ill adult patients also failed, with over 70 percent of voters rejecting it.

“This is a fringe proposal that has been discredited by medical professionals throughout our state,” Bierlein said.

Both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Michigan State Medical Society’s policy manuals state that “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”

“Right to Life of Michigan stands with vulnerable citizens across the state of Michigan in opposing any and every effort to legalize the dangerous practice of assisted suicide,” said Right to Life of Michigan President Amber Roseboom. “Abandoning patients in their hour of greatest need runs counter to the core mission of healthcare, ultimately denying vulnerable patients true dignity and compassion. House Bills 5825-5828 would repeal the state’s longstanding safeguards against assisted suicide, putting thousands of Michiganders at risk under the guise of saving the state resources. We must demand more of our healthcare system, comfort and care, not a cheap lethal alternative.”

Michigan was once at the center of a high-profile assisted suicide case in the late 1990s. Jack Kevorkian, who was a physician in Oakland County, became a public advocate for the practice and said he had assisted over 100 patients. In 1999, he was convicted of second-degree murder.

“The potential for missteps and misinterpretations with this supposed end-of-life “care” is extremely troubling,” Bierlein said. “The ramifications of those missteps will be devastating for people’s loved ones. For those reasons, I strictly oppose these bills.”