Humane care debate not over

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=1673&u_sid=2234721

Published Friday
September 1, 2006

Humane care debate not over

BY LESLIE REED

WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - Opponents of a proposal requiring that Nebraska patients be given food and water until death were relieved Friday that the measure failed to qualify for the November election ballot.

Supporters, however, weren't ready to give up, and a court challenge could loom.

The so-called "humane care" amendment failed to gain enough valid petition signatures, said Secretary of State John Gale.

Jonathan Krutz, spokesman for the Nebraska Hospice and Palliative Care Partnership, said opponents will not have to gear up for an expensive campaign to fight the proposal.

Krutz said the proposal, although it raised legitimate concerns, was too intrusive.

"There is a place for artificial nutrition and hydration, and there are places where it is not appropriate," Krutz said.

"The whole situation at the end of life - we see people really struggle, families struggle, the health care providers struggle. The amendment would have made the situation even more difficult by adding that legal threat."

A key backer of the proposed constitutional amendment said supporters may go to court to try to revive the measure.

"If we need to go farther with this, we probably will," said Laird Maxwell of Boise, Idaho, chairman of a Montana group that funneled $835,000 into the petition drive for the amendment.

"There's a lot of people that signed that petition, and we'll do what we can to get it done," Maxwell said.

The measure would have required water and nutrition unless a person had a valid advance directive or living will that authorized the withholding of such care.

Paid petition circulators submitted about 137,200 signatures in July.

But election officials in all 93 counties validated only 109,780 signatures as those of registered Nebraska voters. That was about 4,000 short of the required 113,693, or 10 percent of registered voters. About one of every five signatures was thrown out.

Neal Erickson, deputy secretary of state, said most were rejected because the signers were not registered voters. Others were thrown out because they were duplicate signatures, suspected fraudulent signatures or illegible.

Krutz said opponents also were concerned because the amendment was pushed by groups from outside Nebraska.

Many of the supporters have ties to Americans for Limited Government, a Chicago-based group whose members have backed petition drives in the United States since the early 1990s. ALG made the single largest donation to America at Its Best, Maxwell's group.

Krutz said the Nebraska Hospital Association, the Nebraska Health Care Association, the Nebraska Medical Association and the Nebraska Coalition for Compassionate Care had been planning to campaign against the amendment.

"But not with any great excitement," he said. "We're glad not to have to do that."

Amy Haddad, director of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics at Creighton University, said she also was relieved that the proposal is not headed for the ballot.

Even so, she said, the petition drive shows that people need to learn more about death and dying.

"It was a real educational process to learn about all the misconceptions people have - and how complicated this is to explain," she said. "Maybe this opens an opportunity for people to talk about death and dying. It's such a taboo issue."

Contact the Omaha World-Herald newsroom

[the observationist]

1. Confused

Honestly I don't know much about this amendment but it reminds me of Terri Shaivo (sp?). Was this amendment an attack on people that chose to remove people from life support?

[Omaha Steve]

2. That is a good way to put it

I know I didn't want any part of it here.