The following is a statement by Regina Smith, Executive Director of Pro-Life Council at a Connecticut Legislature public hearing (March 17, 1994) regarding a physician-assisted suicide bill:

Active euthanasia - the intentional taking of a person's life - is currently illegal across our country. However, the prohibition against physician-assisted killing has been ignored by those who consider individual 'choice' as the ultimate value.

We must consider the outcome, if physicians are permitted to assist in the killing of their consenting patients, upon request:

• Legalized euthanasia would replace caring and curing. There would be no incentive to seek cures for the diseases that plague us such as cancer and AIDS nor remedies to improve pain control and hospice care.

• Legalized euthanasia would undermine the patient-physician relationship. People have traditionally trusted physicians as healers and helpers. Legalizing euthanasia, however, would destroy the physician-patient relationship.

• Legalized euthanasia would lead to coercion and the killing of people who do not choose to die. Patients who are poor, elderly, disabled, suffering from diseases may be pressured to 'choose' the lethal injection or they may feel compelled to spare society from the financial strain.

Once euthanasia is legalized, all persons are at risk: adults suffering from severe depression, senility, mental illness, Alzheimer's disease; infants who are born handicapped and children who are mentally handicapped or dying.

If euthanasia is legalized, no one will be safe.

Our health care systems across the nation have maintained high standards in the delivery of quality care and we must continue to strive to give quality care to each and every citizen

Every citizen in our country has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - we must, therefore, maintain the highest standards in our health care delivery system and totally reject the notion that any of us has a right to 'choose' to assist in the killing of any human being.

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