You’ve got to give State Senator Fred Risser and State Representative Frank Boyle credit for persistence. What’s sad is that their determined energies are wrongly and dangerously focused. Since the mid 1990s, these two state legislators have introduced a bill that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in Wisconsin. If there were ever a bill that should not be revived, it’s this one. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of Senator Risser and Representative Boyle, this bill keeps coming back to life.

Fortunately, from the moment this physician-assisted suicide bill has been introduced in previous sessions, it has been kind of dead on arrival.

While we jest about the bulldogged determination of Boyle and Risser, this really is no trivial matter. Year after year, we see this same proposal; and year after year it is basically ignored because most of our lawmakers understand the consequences of starting our state down that slippery slope. I would love to be able to just tell you that this is no big deal, we can totally ignore it and like it has in the past, it will go away, but that’s just not the case. Not only are the bill’s proponents as motivated as ever to see this legislation through, we have a new legislative makeup to deal with in Madison now that the Democrats took control of the Senate.

I am not trying to ratchet up some sort of fear that the bill has a good chance of becoming law; physician assisted suicide supporters are still lacking political clout and numbers to do that. However, unlike in the past, this year the bill is likely to receive much more debate and attention than it had previously; it may even get a floor vote in the senate.

The bill Risser and Boyle introduced last week, Senate Bill 151, is modeled after the Oregon law. By way of reminder, Oregon is the only state in the country where physician assisted suicide is legal. Simply put, this bill would allow individuals who meet certain requirements, namely that they are terminally ill with less than six months to live, according to a physician’s determination, to make written request for medication to kill themselves and requires a physician who refuses such a request to make a "good faith effort" to refer the individual to a physician who will comply with the individual's request.

Supporters of this ill-conceived legislation like to refer to it euphemistically as the “death with dignity” bill. They also like to throw around such terms as “compassion,” when they talk about physician-assisted suicide. Frankly, I don’t see dignity in any aspect of the bill, nor do I see compassion. What I do see is government and doctors playing God.

God is the author of human life. Our lives are not our own; they are a gift given to us in trust by God. Suicide, therefore, is morally wrong. It most assuredly should not be facilitated by the state and certainly not by physicians who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.” We have no constitutional or inherent right to take our own lives before our natural time.

Physician-assisted suicide is not a suitable replacement for proper medical care. Patient suffering is increasingly unnecessary given the sophistication of modern drugs. A competent, caring doctor is almost always able to relieve the pain associated with terminal disease, removing the need for any kind of suicide. Our attention should be focused on ensuring that everyone receives high-quality treatment rather than on legalizing the killing of suffering patients. That’s dignity and compassion.

Such bills smack of secular humanism—a religion that denies the existence of God and puts total faith in man as the only source of reason, order, knowledge and power in the universe. Secular humanists want to control all of the things that belong to the Divine including life and death. They say it is man who should decide when a life comes into the world. The result? Legalized abortion. They say it is man who should decide when a life leaves the world. The result? Legalized physician-assisted suicide. They want control of the things that have always and will always rest solely with God, the Creator and Sustainer of Life. Because in their minds, if they can wrest these things out of His hands, they are able to free themselves of an obligation to recognize God for who He is and to honor Him for what He has done. Our job as Christians is to keep reminding people everywhere, including state legislators, that man is not God, be he in the form of a legislator or a doctor.

So, while we can in a weird sort of way commend the perseverance of Senator Risser and Representative Boyle, we can in no way commend their motivation nor their bill. This year’s version of the physician-assisted suicide bill is just as bad and just as wrong as the version first introduced over 10 years ago. We can only pray that our elected officials will continue to ignore the rhetoric and keep the bill buried.

For Wisconsin Family Council, I’m Julaine Appling reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”