So When Am I Allowed to Die?

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

grim reaperIn case you missed it, Save Jerseyans, Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-West Deptford) is sponsoring Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act‘ (that cleared the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee about one week ago, by the way) to make New Jersey the sixth state in the U.S. to permit so-called “physician-assisted suicide.”

Ghoulish? You bet.

Read it for yourself. There are plenty of compelling substantive objections. I’ve got some serious questions, too.

For starters, what’s to stop the kids from killing grandma?

Not much from what I can tell, and I can read as well as anyone else! Other than criminal penalties, for example, imposed upon someone who “conceals or destroys a rescission” of the request for a fatal injection. How ANY of this guards against the possibility of foul play is beyond me.

Plenty of others agree. “A2270 is un-fixable via amendment, or in any other manner,” Marilyn Golden, Senior Policy Analyst for the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, opined in her organization’s response. “It’s the essence of legalizing assisted suicide that is so dangerous: the deadly mix with our profit-driven healthcare system, the likely risk of elder abuse, the impossibility of accurate prognoses of time of death, and the jeopardy posed to people with disabilities.”

It’s ironic that New Jersey Democrats used many of the same “guarding against error” arguments in outlawing our state’s now-defunct death penalty. They were worried about the possibility of executing a convicted murderer rapist in error. Your sick Uncle Phil? Meh; roll the dice…

More irony: examining Asm. Burzichelli’s party’s recent legislative priorities, I’m not sure exactly when I, Matt Rooney, am allowed to expire? And who can decide? And when? And how?

Consider how these same Democrats want to raise the state’s tobacco age to 21, meaning that a 3-year U.S. military veteran who joined up at 18 can’t buy a cigar on leave, and therefore doesn’t have the right to risk killing themselves by developing lung cancer, but he or she has the right to go die — on foreign soil — for a doctor to off his or her barely coherent ailing grandma? Assuming, of course, that our hypothetical solider’s mother made the decision to keep him or her during the pregnancy, ’cause our Democrat friends are fighting like hell to extend that “right” with your tax dollars in the middle of a fiscal crisis.

If you’re confused then please, don’t worry, you digested everything set forth above just fine. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s the truth of it.

So if you ever wondered why I’m stubbornly conservative, God-fearing, and Constitution-loving, Save Jerseyans, then the subject matter of this post should put the question to rest for you. I refuse to sit silently at my desk while these Trenton-types arbitrarily decide who gets to live or die, and under what conditions it’s legal, based solely upon whose vote they’re trying to buy on a given day.

 

Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8404 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.

3 Comments

  1. NJ Dems: If there isn’t a law, WE NEED ONE.
    NJ Republicans: Yes master. We hear and obey.

  2. NJ Independents, we’ve put the best alternatives out there…Get out and vote. 82% of NJ voters are NOT Republican, and 68% of NJ voters are NOT Democrat – but 49% of voters ARE Independent.

Comments are closed.