Brendan invites activist Wanda Franz to discuss her efforts against legally assisted suicide.
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Life Matters
The following commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff and management of WBCA or the Boston Neighborhood Network. If you would like to express another opinion, you can address your comments to Boston Neighborhood Network, 302-5 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02119. To arrange a time for your own commentary, you can call WBCA at 617-708-3215 or email radio at BNNMedia.org. Hello. Welcome to Life Matters. My name is Brendan O'Connell. Well, today we have a very special guest who was the past president for 20 years at National Rife to Life Committee. That must have been something with 50 seats at the table, at least when they had a quarterly meeting. And she's also been a professor at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. And now she's heading up the West Virginians for Life. She's the president and West Virginians for Life. So welcome, Wanda Franz. Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Wanda, let me ask you, there's an amendment one on the ballot in West Virginia for a vote on it on November 5th. What is that amendment all about? This is an amendment that was -- began in the legislature as a bill that was designed to prevent assisted suicide euthanasia and mercy killing from being used in the state of West Virginia. And so it was designed to protect our vulnerable people in the state of West Virginia from these circumstances of direct killing from being susceptible to direct killing from other people. And during the time that it was in the process of going through the legislative system, there was a decision made to change it into an amendment and actually amend the Constitution. And of course, that required more than just a 50-50 vote in the House and Senate. It required a two-thirds. And so we were wondering whether we'd be able to get that, whether there were that many people who really were concerned about this issue in the legislature and willing to support it. Indeed, they were, they passed it, and it became an amendment that is going to be -- that will be on this November ballot, which says that the purpose of the amendment is to protect the people of West Virginia from the dangers of assisted suicide euthanasia and mercy killing. And so we are very anxious to get the word out to educate our public because, of course, that now the people of the state of West Virginia have to vote on it. And it's a concept and an issue that really hasn't been a major issue here in the state it's never been addressed or dealt with in a direct way. And so it's really important to us that we get out as much education as we can to the folks out there who are going to be voting on it in a few weeks now. And who are the people that are most vulnerable to medically-assisted suicide euthanasia? It is really amazing that we -- we want our doctors instead of the healers to become killers. You know, I think that once you have something like a physician-assisted suicide or medically approved suicide, you are in a situation where you're asking the doctors to prescribe -- in most cases -- to prescribe deadly drugs so that the patient can take them. And this is a very damaging thing in general for everybody. The idea that you begin to distrust your doctor. You begin to wonder, you know, what is actually his intention when he comes into the room. You know, how much can you really trust him to be a caring doctor at that moment and not a killing doctor. So I think it really affects everybody in that respect, in that regard. And there are a number of doctors who have gone, you know, on record saying that this is very damaging to their practice and to their relationship with their patients. But then beyond that, we have the difficulty that when you're an elderly person who feels like they're a burden to their family, they need all of this medical care, they can't take care of themselves, they have -- you know, their family members have to sacrifice so much in order to be there for them. And I think that especially where women are concerned, they begin to feel like they're a burden and that they feel like they should just commit suicide and take away all of the discomfort and problems that the family is having. And they're very vulnerable to the idea of assisted suicide and especially, I think, they begin to feel depressed, they're isolated, sometimes they're alone more often than normally. And I think this whole issue of depression is a very important one when people begin to feel like there's just no hope, one has to assume that they are depressed and that they need intervention for the depression, not the offer of assisted suicide. And so I think that elderly people are very vulnerable to that. And the other population that we don't always just think about, but in fact is a very vulnerable population are veterans who are committing suicide anyway at a very high rate. And so the -- you know, there are so many different kinds of programs out there to try to help to prevent suicide among our veterans. And if you pass a law that allows for suicide, all of a sudden you open the door to that and makes it very difficult to counter the possibility of asking for assisted suicide when it's legal in your state. The third group, and this is a group that actually has come out 100% in opposition to any kind of assisted suicide, and that's the disability population. And just about all of the disability rights organizations have very strong statements pointing out that people with disabilities have difficulty getting medical treatment oftentimes, you know, in any case. And if you then have assisted suicide, it becomes very easy to begin to say, well, you know, this person has so many needs and they're -- you know, life doesn't seem to be worth living, and therefore will just offer them assisted suicide instead of the treatment that they need, and they're asking for. So are insurance companies, would they have an incentive to pressurize people to kill themselves versus getting medical treatment? Well, it certainly has become the case in those states where it has been legalized that the insurance companies definitely do look at the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment for somebody who's in need, you know, at the end of life. And the small amount of money that is necessary to put together a package of deadly pills, it becomes very obvious that the insurance companies are going to start offering assisted suicide. That's also been the case in virtually all the states that have legalized abortion, but also in other countries, for example, Canada is very active in the assisted suicide area. Thousands -- tens of thousands of people have died in Canada since they legalized assisted suicide, and there are so many stories about people who have, you know, gone for treatment, cancer treatment and been told that, well, we're not going to be able to -- the insurance company isn't going to prove the treatment for cancer, but they will allow, you know, pay for the assisted suicide. And I think this is one of the most deadly and frightening aspects of this whole movement in the end. It is really trying to eliminate people who seem to not -- who aren't being productive members of society, and it's such a terrible indictment of our culture that we've given up on human beings as people with inherent dignity and inherent rights and the inherent right to life, which is in our -- in our national constitution, our Declaration of Independence, that we have the right to life, and I think that the -- this whole movement is part of that lack of faith and unwillingness to recognize God-given rights and the dignity that God gives to each person. Now, the Hemlock Society, which changes its name a lot, last I knew what was called Compassion and Choices. That's right. That's the group. Are they -- now, this amendment one, the interesting thing about this is it's about preserving the dignity of life till natural death, whereas most of the other ones are let's have assisted suicide and vote on it. Is the Compassion and Choices side, Hemlock Society, pouring lots of money into trying to defeat Amendment One in West Virginia? Well, it's really -- we've been very fortunate that we seem to have been able to kind of float under the radar, our educational efforts have gone out to a lot of our -- a lot of our efforts have gone into getting the information to the -- our membership and the people that we know are pro-life, and we're just now beginning in the last couple of weeks to get the publicity out there about what Amendment One is all about. So, we've been able to avoid the scrutiny and have not had the kind of intrusion that other states probably have had from Compassion and Choices, and we just recently heard that they have noticed that West Virginia has this amendment, and it truly is a groundbreaking effort to put something in the Constitution that prevents people like from Compassion and Choices that would prevent them from coming into the state and trying to pass laws. So, it's actually a protective measure, and so we're asking for people to vote for their own protection against these kinds of intrusions that have come into the various states, and of course, as you point out, they come into the states asking for bills that will put these sorts of activities in law, and this is an attempt to kind of get ahead of the game and prevent them from coming in. So, we are the first to come up with this kind of approach, and I think that if we do pass it, and I'm just really hopeful that we will be able to pass it here in West Virginia, that it will become potentially a direction that other states might choose to go. Now, we have up on the screen a website caring, not killing. What is that about, or can that help people understand the issues? It's an excellent website that is filled with so many excellent articles and information about what actually happens when these laws are passed in other states that allow for consistent suicide, and what happens is they, compassion choices goes into the state, and they include all kinds of protections for people, for example, waiting periods so that the person might ask the doctor, might have a momentary feeling of depression, but might get over that, and then decide they really don't want to have, you know, the doctor prescribes the pills. They have requirements that they be seen by a psychologist to treat for depression, and so on. A lot of those sorts of safeguards, but then as soon as the bill's are passed, within a couple of years, they're back saying, "Well, this is a hindrance to people getting the right to assist a suicide," and all of a sudden it becomes a right, and then they start removing all of these protections, and that's happened in the states, Oregon was the first state, to legalize assisted suicide, and if we look at Oregon's situation right now, there's virtually no safeguards left after little by little, they've chipped away at them, and we're down to just, there's just a few percentage of the people who commit, who go with the assisted suicide, who actually are seen by a psychologist and are treated for depression, and so, you know, 98% of the people are very likely depressed, and just have never been given the opportunity to go to a doctor for that treatment because there's no requirement of it anymore in the law. Well, I was going to ask Oregon any question. One other question. I was up in Canada, both for the Canadian March for Life in May, and then this summer I was up in Canada, and I was informed that Quebec has a lot of euthanasia, mercy killing, whatever, going on in Quebec, are you, do you have anything or know anything about that? Well, the entire country has become a very dangerous place to be. It is shocking what has happened, and I think that the Canadians, first of all, have government run healthcare, and so as soon as you have government run healthcare, and then you add assisted suicide to it, what you end up having is government policies that say, "Okay, well, if the patient has reached x point, you offer them assisted suicide, and they could just decree these kinds of rules that require that the patients be offered assisted suicide instead of treatment." And so the numbers have just shot up almost from the beginning, whereas in the other states such as here in our country, there was a slower rise in the number of people asking for assisted suicide, but in Canada it just took off, and it's really very depressing, very sad, and so many, a lot of these bad stories about the mistreatment of patients by the system, because assisted suicide is available, is just really horrifying. Well, I'd like to shift gears now for a moment. I'd like your thoughts on how is it that a state that used to be very democratic became a Republican, that's West Virginia, and then could you apprise us as to important elections going on in West Virginia coming up in a couple of weeks in November? Well, here in West Virginia we began as a labor state. The main, the most important work activity here in West Virginia was mining and coal mining, it was a very, the labor unions were very powerful, very important, and so when we first, when Roe v. Wade was passed or came down from the Supreme Court in '73, that was our situation. We had, I think, one Republican in the Senate maybe, and I mean it was just totally a democratic controlled state, and what happened sadly over time was that the mining industry started to simply disappear because the mines were mined out, and they would just, after a hundred years of mining, there wouldn't be any coal left, and so little by little these mines were closing, and so the hold of the labor unions on the political leadership was lessened, and there were fewer and fewer people that were really looking to the labor unions for their, you know, assistance in their jobs, and so they became less important, and fortunately we were there at the time working in the legislature, and we worked very well with the Democratic leadership, and we were able to begin to re-elect because of our PAC activities, our political action activities, we were able to begin to elect pro-life people to the legislature, and little by little we became the group that people looked to for their voting. They feel very strongly here in West Virginia, that families are important, children are important, and they were just horrified by the idea that abortion was legal here in the state, and so everything that we did to try to protect people from choosing abortion when they become pregnant, all of the various bills and so on that we passed that helped people to be, not be forced into abortions, I think the people of West Virginia just respond very positively to those things, and I believe that most of the West Virginia people today was 70 percent, would say that the number one thing is that you have to be, you have to care about life, that's the basic, that if you're not alive, you're not none of the rest of the things you do to help people really matter because you're not there to receive the social services, so I think that message has been very well received here in the state, so at this time we really have reversed almost flipped the way elections occur, and now we have mostly Republicans, and the Democrats who were in the Democratic Party who were pro-life began to feel really attacked and isolated by their own party because they were pro-life and the party, of course nationally, drifted into the pro-abortion camp, and so many of even our Democrat friends who were pro-life, you know, would tell us that it just, it wasn't worth coming, you know, being elected and coming into the party and fighting against both the Republicans and the Democrats, they were almost entirely isolated, and so little by little dropped out and just didn't run again, or we were able to defeat them. Now you have a gubernatorial race coming up, and was the primary more important than the general election then? I'm sorry, I didn't understand. You have a gubernatorial race, I think, election, and was the primary more important than the general election, and as far as choosing a candidate? Well, that's what happens when you have a single party. When we first came here to West Virginia, you had to be a Democrat to vote in the primary because that's when the decision was essentially made, you know, the Democrat, well, whoever won, the Democratic seat was going to win the general election. Now it's same thing only reversed that most of the important races occur in the primary, and we were very, we had all of the candidates who were running for office were pro-life and had in various different ways had, you know, expressed their pro-life positions. Whether they were in the legislature or whether they were, you know, in business and were supportive of, you know, their local pro-life folks who were involved in pregnancy care and that kind of thing. So, I mean, they were all pro-life, but we were very, for us it was really important that the Attorney General who had worked with us over the years trying to redefine, you know, the laws involving abortion, so that we had really gone a long way toward limiting the number of abortions that were happening here in West Virginia, and it was, a lot of it was due to his help in working with us on the legislation and helping to define. And what was his name? Morrissey. And he's going to be a, he's going to be a great, a great governor and we're really looking forward to having him. I see. Yeah. Now we have right now a great governor who is running for the Senate and he has, it's pretty clear that he's going to be winning. He has, you know, an enormous lead in the popular, you know. What is, what is his name? Justice. And he's been in, he's been in the papers a lot because the family has had a certain amount of financial issues that business people sometimes have, but they've been able to take care of some of the deaths and everything, and it was justice to family who purchased the Greenbrier, the resort here in West Virginia, that is nationally recognized as a major, you know, top ranked five star facility and the people of the state value him very much. Yeah, Dr. Frons, our time has come to an end, unfortunately. You did very well. I give you an A+. Oh, thank you. And folks, we hope you enjoyed today's show and learned a lot. I know I did. And we hope that you'll tune in next week when we have another exciting guest. I don't know if it's going to be as exciting as Dr. Juan de Frons, but we'll do our best to do that. So thanks for watching and listening. My name is Brendan O'Connell. Your friend. Thank you so much, Brendan. The preceding commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff and management of WBCA or the Boston Neighborhood Network. If you would like to express another opinion, you can address your comments to Boston Neighborhood Network, 302-5 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02119. To arrange a time for your own commentary, you can call WBCA at 617-708-3215 or email radio at bnnmedia.org. [BLANK_AUDIO]