[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 26 (Thursday, March 12, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              DISMAY OVER OREGON'S DEATH WITH DIGNITY LAW

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                           HON. BOB SCHAFFER

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 12, 1998

  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in dismay 
over the Oregon Health Service Commission's decision to use taxpayers' 
money to end the lives of Medicaid recipients. This decision, an 
inevitable outcome of the state's Death with Dignity law, devalues the 
lives of the poor and forces their neighbors to contribute to their 
demise. Our forefathers believed, as do I, that the value of human life 
is not found in circumstance, lest poverty or frailty diminish it, but 
from God who gives each of use the will to overcome the indignities of 
life. On this point, I want to share the thoughts of Krista Kafer of 
Colorado.
  ``The Oregon Health Services Commission's decision to spend 
taxpayers' money to finance the killing of terminally ill poor people 
will no doubt revive the debate over euthanasia. We will once again 
hear proponents talk about the need for `death with dignity.'' If 
Oregonians are shocked that they may actually help kill the undignified 
dying poor, then they should call to memory the slippery slope argument 
they once ignored. They should have questioned the concept of `death 
with dignity' a few months ago.
  ``That we should die to escape indignity or kill to alleviate it is a 
dangerous concept indeed. Of those who espouse such a morbid 
conviction, one might inquire further: When there is so much indignity 
in life, why prescribe death only to the dying? Indignities abound from 
morning to night, even in sleep, in spite of our constant, desperate 
efforts to sanitize, deodorize and conceal them. No better than our 
animal friends, we cannot escape certain realities of our existence 
from birth to decay. Indignity is inescapable.
  ``There are moments so undignified that no one dares peak of them in 
casual conversation or popular entertainment. Commercials show people 
with forks or beverages, but rarely eating or drinking, because chewing 
and swallowing are not pretty. Eating is not glamorous. Neither is 
sneezing, scratching, hiccuping, burping, nose blowing, acne, giving 
birth, and other acts that I cannot even mention. Beans anyone?
  ``Great figures in history, George Washington, Clara Barton, Mother 
Teresa, Martin Luther Kind, Jr., were men and women of dignity not 
because they did not do these things, but because they were courageous, 
benevolent, and honorable. They accomplished extraordinary things while 
remaining bound by their human imperfections. They were men and women 
of integrity and, therefore, of dignity. History judges the measure of 
men not by their physical being, but by the quality of their hearts.
  ``My uncle spent the last 3 months of his life in a hospice, dying of 
cancer. He told my parents that between visits with friends and family, 
he spent the hours praying for people that he loved. Bedridden, 
breathing oxygen through a tube, suffering with pain and discomfort, my 
uncle spent his last days thinking of others, doing what he could to 
serve them. People say they don't want to be remembered that way, but 
this is how I will remember my uncle, a selfless, kind man, whose 
dignity in death was far greater than many will possess in life.''
  Dignity is about character which is not diminished by frailty. The 
term ``dignity in death'' is simply a euphemism used to legitimatize 
the killing of the weak, the desperate, and now, the poor.

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