VOTE: NO – Died In Committee
Status (cverview) of bill:https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Measures/Overview/SB494
This bill repeals advance directive form and establishes Advance Directive Rules Adoption Committee to adopt a form. Eliminates certain clarifying definition from the law allowing principles freedom to their own directive. Creates a new Health Care Representative form.
Personal Choice and Responsibility
Patients would no longer need an advance directive, since an authorized guardian, spouse, a majority of their children, their parents, a friend, or if none is available, an attending physician can order the withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures. Bill allows a patient’s representative to remove undefined “life-sustaining procedures” if the patient has “a progressive illness,” has stopped talking, and cannot recognize family members.
Limited Government
Gives surrogates the ability to withdraw food and fluids from Alzheimer’s patients, dementia patients, and mentally ill patients by removing the definitions of tube feeding, life support, and dementia, along with all references to power of attorney from current Oregon advance directive law. But, it leaves the definitions in the advance directive form patients would fill out. The bill’s wording is intentionally vague to make everything very unclear and subject to whatever the people surrounding the patient want to do.
Oregon throws off the encumbrances of the covert "choice banner" in favor of open forced euthanasia of the mentally ill and disabled.LeaveOR
Please vote NO. I have a relative who would love to charge in and remove any life support the moment I was unable to communicate. This person is a menace to me, but because she had not done anything "recently" I was unable to get a jude to issue a Restraining Order. This relative has actually said she couldn't wait until I was helpless in a Nursing home to get her "revenge" on me. I helped her move out of a bad situation, along with her 12 year old daughter, let her move in my house, never charged her a single cent, but when her drinking became more than I could take I told her she had to move.. For this she is still harboring violent feelings towards me.
I do not want her to be able to waltz into a nursing home and shut off my oxygen. Please vote NO on this bill.
Vote NO! This bill is vague and leads to abuse of the elderly and vulnerable. It would be open to interpretation. Humans are not animals that can be put down when government or the medical and insurance feels it necessary. This bill is morally incomprehensable to me and my faith. I don't want a government agency to decide when I should die. Only God can make that decision–and you ain't god.