A woman named Katie Buck from Iowa is featured in a new Vimeo video which details how her sincere heartfelt desire to send well-wishes to Brittany Maynard, the young cancer patient who ended her life on November 1, was used by Compassion & Choices to advance their own agenda.
Maynard affiliated herself with Compassion & Choices, an organization which emerged in 2005 from a union between The Hemlock Society and Compassion in Dying. Compassion & Choices broadly publicized Maynard's struggle with terminal brain cancer and used her decision to move to Oregon in order to end her life legally as a way to launch the subject of physician assisted suicide back into the nation's consciousness.
In the process, an enormous outpouring of sympathy flooded Maynard's site from people on both sides of the assisted suicide debate who were genuinely touched by her story. What Katie was soon to learn, however, is that Compassion & Choices was using this outpouring of support to pad the number of signatures on a petition in support of assisted suicide that they intend to use to pressure lawmakers into introducing new legislation. The signers of Maynard's sympathy card were never told that their signatures were being automatically added to the petition - whether they consented to it or not.
"Compassion & Choices not only tricked me into putting my name on their list for email marketing, they also put my name on a petition saying that I am in favor of legalizing assisted suicide in my state," Katie said. "This sympathy card was a nationwide thing. How many people signed this card not knowing they were being put on a petition?"
A representative of Compassion & Choices confirmed to Katie that the petition was going to be sent to lawmakers but she says the underhanded way they gathered signatures means that "in no way can legislators look at this petition and say that it accurately represents the citizens of their state. It's completely invalid because the information was obtained under false pretenses."
Katie was able to confirm that her name was on the petition by calling the Denver office of Compassion and Choices who confirmed that her name was on the list of supporters. Her husband and a friend then signed the sympathy card and, with cameras rolling, she called the office again and recorded the conversation in which an employee confirmed that their names had also been added to the petition even though they had only signed the sympathy card.
What does Compassion & Choices intend to do with the petition? Use it to show lawmakers how popular assisted suicide is among their constituents - even though potentially thousands of the people whose names appear on the petition had no idea they were signing it.
"We can show them a stack, then we can show them a bigger stack, and then we can show them a bigger stack," the employee says. "The chance of something [legislation] being introduced in 2015, we don't know if that will happen."
What can be done about it?
"I was duped by Compassion & Choices," Katie says. "If you were duped too, call them and say you want off of their petition."
The number to call is 800-247-7421.
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