Californians Against Assisted Suicide: Assisted Suicide 'Study' From Biased Author is Questionab...( SACRAMENTO Calif. Sept. 27 /- The...),Health

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The following was released today by Californians Against Assisted Suicide:

A new "study" released Wednesday by Death with Dignity National Center (an assisted suicide advocacy group) board member Margaret Peggy Battin, attempts to show that many vulnerable groups are not "disproportionately" impacted by assisted suicide legalization in Oregon and the Netherlands. However, given Battin's twenty-year plus record pro-assisted suicide advocacy casts a serious shadow over any of her "study's" conclusions.

Battin's advocacy in support of assisted suicide is chronicled extensively in the book Deadly Compassion (Wm. Morrow and Co., 1993, pp 148-152) authored by Rita Marker of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide:

Below is an excerpt from the book Deadly Compassion, (Rita Marker, New York: Wm. Morrow and Co., 1993, pp. 148-152.):

Among those who suggest that suicide advocacy may be a legitimate

counseling position has been philosopher Margaret Pabst Battin. A

speaker at many ethics conferences in the United States and

throughout the world and the author of numerous articles and books,

Battin has served as philosopher in residence at a Veterans

Administration medical center and travels around the country giving

ethics seminars for medical students. She has also spoken very

persuasively for more than ten years about the benefits of suicide.

In April 1981 she urged those attending meetings of the American

Association of Suicidology to consider making suicide advocacy a

component of suicide prevention programs. She said that such

advocacy would add a "new sensitivity" to the work of suicide

prevention. Her paper was reprinted in the January 1982 edition of

the Hemlock Quarterly.

Although she acknowledged that suicide prevention was praiseworthy,

Battin said that it "may very well not
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