Brochure of the Month

Brochure of the Month:  February 2020

Killing the Pain, Not the Patient: Palliative Care vs. Assisted Suicide

         Palliative care can alleviate pain with powerful opioids, without risk to life, and generally allowing the patient to remain alert. Palliative care also addresses psychological, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient.  When a patient inquires about assisted suicide, they are rarely evaluated for treatable depression.  Many patients consider suicide not because of intractable pain, but because of feelings that they are a burden to others. Offering assisted suicide reinforces that feeling, and abandons care of the patient for simply ending the patient’s life.  Optimum palliative care requires training and experience. A doctor in the Netherlands observed that assisted suicide “becomes a substitute for learning how to relieve the suffering of dying patients.”  During a period when 1,832 hospices opened in other states, only 5 opened in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal. Seriously ill patients deserve our love and every effort to meet their needs, not encouragement to end their lives.

The brochure is available at the Hospitality Desk in the Church and in the Ave Maria Family Life Center. Links to the text on the USCCB website are here: 
                                   English      and      Spanish. (these links are to 8.5 x 11 inch format.)