“Dignity” Bill in in New Jersey OKs Starving Dementia Patients to Death

New Jersey lawmakers have introduced Senate Bill 4186, the “Dementia Dignity and Advance Care Planning Act.” It is wrong on many, many grounds.

Wesley J. Smith wrote about this legislation in National Review Online on May 18^th. He warns that “moves are afoot in bioethics” that could allow dementia advance directives to be used either to authorize euthanasia where legal or to require withholding food and water from patients who can no longer provide current consent, even when they may still appear willing to eat or drink.

Supporters frame the bill around autonomy, quality of life, and reducing emotional and financial burdens. They argue that it allows individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias to create “Dementia Specific Advance Directives” (DSADs) while they still have “decisional capacity.”

No one disputes the devastation of dementia. Many of us have watched helplessly as memory, speech, and independence faded in someone we loved. Legislators invoke that suffering to justify this bill.

What they do not advertise is that this creates a potential dangerous structure in which withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration becomes routine in certain cases.

Compassion and Choices Suffers Damaging Court Loss in New Jersey

By Ian McIntosh 

For some it may be unthinkable at any time of the year, let alone during the holiday season, that there is a cadre of relentless professional assisted suicide advocacy organizations seeking more efficient ways for people with disabilities to kill themselves during this national moment when Medicare, SNAP, and “streamlined” federal departments (i.e. HUD ) poised to present increased difficulties to for our country’s most vulnerable population to live as 2026 looms.

Against this harrowing backdrop, some great news: Our co-plaintiff’s sister organization, the Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF), provided the following encouraging update:

 “A federal appeals court has delivered a damaging blow to the Compassion and Choices lawsuit seeking to eliminate New Jersey’s requirement that only residents have ability to request lethal drugs under its assisted suicide law. The denial of this request upholds the decision by a district court judge earlier this year to maintain New Jersey’s residency requirement.