Last year’s legislative session ended with a number of unresolved issues regarding physician-assisted suicide. The bill was deferred because of concerns over a lack of safeguards to protect Hawaii’s most vulnerable patients and proposed policies that violated the conscience of physicians.

We listened to stories about the importance of patient autonomy over and over throughout the session but, when pressed by legislators about potential abuse if assisted suicide were to be legalized, proponents seemed to shrug these questions off as irrelevant. They pointed out there is no data from other states that documents any abuse.

No surprises there. All data collected in Oregon, on which the proposed Hawaii law was modeled, destroys all records each year — by design — to protect patient confidentiality.

Since no physician is required to be present when patients take the lethal drugs, no one knows if the drugs were taken by the patients on their own of if the drugs were taken against their will. By definition, “self-administered” could include having a family member or friend “help” patients ingest the drugs to end their lives.

And physicians are not allowed to indicate the true cause of death on these death certificates of these patients. They would be required by law to lie to protect patient privacy.

Legalized assisted suicide opens the door to more elder abuse in our islands. In Honolulu alone, the Elder Abuse Justice Unit of the City and County’s prosecutor’s office reports nearly a 300 percent increase in the number of elder abuse cases it has investigated since 2008. The attorneys in this unit are on call 24/7 to work with law enforcement officials for victims who are 60 and older.

Assisted suicide would remove legal protections for Hawaii’s fast-growing kupuna population and make detecting abuse nearly impossible. Imagine this scenario: A family caregiver suffering burnout and facing financial challenges may convince her frail, terminally ill mom that it would be better off dying to at least leave some kind of compensation for her daughter instead of exhausting all sources of funds to pay for ongoing care.

The mom, not wanting to be a burden, may feel obligated to dutifully comply with her daughter’s wishes. This is death but not with dignity. It does not allow every individual to feel valued, no matter what their physical and cognitive condition.

“Doctor shopping” will become commonplace, with families searching for a physician who will give them the answer they want, namely, that assisted suicide is the right thing for their mom or dad.

Already, we see the chilling effects of health-care policies and insurance plans that have aligned their benefits policies with their state’s legalized assisted suicide laws. Stories abound of patients in other states where assisted suicide is legal who are declined treatment and offered assisted suicide as their only option as a cost-containment measure.

Assisted suicide law would also adversely impact those with disabilities. At a time when we should be advocating for more rights for those with disabilities and stronger integration in the community, assisted suicide would be a major setback. Instead of empowerment and self-determination, those with disabilities will be further marginalized for taking up resources for “normal” people.

We can expect proponents of physician-assisted suicide to continue their advocacy efforts in the 2018 legislative session. But this time around legislators will be looking for answers to the questions they raised in the previous session. As a state, we tend to rush into passing laws before carefully thinking through the mechanics of implementation. With the lives of different classes of people at stake, we hope our legislators will continue to ask the right questions.

Walter Yoshimitsu is executive director of the Hawaii Catholic Conference; Eva Andrade is president of the Hawaii Family Forum.