Monday, February 17, 2025

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is one of the building blocks of equal citizenship for disabled people in America.

Meghan Schrader
By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is an autistic person who is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is a cornerstone USA disability rights law that has existed since 1977. During the Biden administration, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was updated to include new provisions, collectively referred to as The Final Rule. Among many important stipulations that have nothing to do with human sexuality, the Final Rule includes defining gender dysphoria as a disability for which people must receive reasonable accommodations. This change, has helped incentivize 17 states to file a federal lawsuit to block the implementation of the Final Rule. Some people who have filed the lawsuit have stated that it applies only to the Final Rule regulation about gender dysphoria, and some of the press coverage implies this as well.

But that’s not what the lawsuit says. Count 3 of the lawsuit reads:

DEMAND FOR RELIEF Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court:

a. Issue permanent injunctive relief against Defendants enjoining them from enforcing the Final Rule;

b. Declare that the Final Rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act;

c. Hold unlawful and set aside (i.e., vacate) the Final Rule;

d. Declare Section 504, 29 U.S.C. § 794, unconstitutional;

e. Issue permanent injunctive relief against Defendants enjoining them from enforcing Section 504

“Hold unlawful and set aside (I.e., vacate) the Final Rule,” “Declare Section 504, 29 U.S.C. 794 unconstitutional” and “issue permanent injunctive relief against the defendants enjoining them from enforcing Section 504” indicates that the lawsuit would vitiate the whole Final Rule and Section 504 itself, not just the part of the Final Rule about gender dysphoria. In the lawsuit the states argue: “Section 504 is coercive, untethered to the federal interest in disability, and unfairly retroactive.” The lawsuit also asserts: “The Rehabilitation Act fails to provide clear notice to States, preventing States from voluntarily and knowingly exercising choice in accepting federal funds…Section 504’s universal scope unfairly surprises States by retroactively adding conditions to pre-existing federal spending programs.”

Section 504 is the legal scaffolding for society’s moral obligations to people with disabilities. As a disabled person, Section 504 has been one of the only ways that I have been able to protect my civil rights, such as when I was integrated into mainstream classes during my K-12 education and went through the process of earning two Master’s degrees. Section 504 forms the foundation for the Americans with Disabilities Act, Olmstead and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Repealing any of these laws carries a very high risk of undermining disabled people’s access to education, jobs, social services, medical care and much more. The segregation and oppression of disabled people could increase exponentially.

Eliminating the Final Rule completely would deprive the disabled community of important new rights. The Final Rule contains new provisions to reduce disabled people’s risk of being institutionalized; it requires states to invest more resources in community supports. As someone who has had to spend a lot of time in psychiatric facilities but cannot get all of the community services I need, I promise that this part of the Final Rule is very important. The Final Rule also contains new protections for website accessibility, appropriate medical equipment and disabled parents.

The Final Rule contains a provision that is a huge boon to efforts to stop assisted suicide, coerced DNRs and other life-threatening medical discrimination against people with disabilities. The Final Rule “Requires that medical treatment decisions are not made on the basis of ableist biases or stereotypes about disabled people, assumptions or judgments that an individual with a disability will be a burden on society, or dehumanizing beliefs that the life of an individual with a disability has less value than the life of a person without a disability.” Even without the updated rules, incentivizing disabled people to die by suicide, either interpersonally or systemically, is a very clear violation of Section 504 and the ADA. That is why the United Spinal Association, Not Dead Yet and other groups have used both laws to file a lawsuit to try to eliminate the practice of assisted suicide. Eliminating Section 504 could hinder that lawsuit.

Repealing the entire Final Rule, much less repealing Section 504, could have devastating consequences for all people with disabilities. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is one of the building blocks of equal citizenship for disabled people. It contains provisions that save disabled people’s lives and provide a bulwark against the assisted suicide movement’s attacks on disabled people in the United States.

Testimony in opposition as proposed to Proposed SB 430 An Act Prohibiting Certain Conduct Concerning Drugs and Medical Devices Used to Execute the Death Penalty February 10, 2025

The following submission concerning Connecticut Proposed Bill SB 430 from Stephen Mendelsohn concerns the manufacturing of compounding drug cocktails for capital punishment. Mendelsohn argues that manufacturing of compounding drug cocktails should not be limited to capital punishment but also apply to assisted suicide and euthanasia. Alex Schadenberg

Stephen Mendolsohn press conference
By Stephen Mendelsohn

Senator Maroney, Rep. Lemar, and members of the General Law Committee:

Proposed SB 430 constitutes selective indignation with a vengeance. There is no moral reason to prohibit drugs and medical devices used for capital punishment while omitting what are often the exact same drugs and devices used for euthanasia and assisted suicide. I speak as a disability rights advocate who has repeatedly testified here in Connecticut and in other states opposing legislation that, no matter how well-meaning, constitutes lethal disability discrimination.

Medically assisted suicide and euthanasia constitute capital punishment for the “crime” of being old, ill, and/or disabled, with far less transparency or oversight. All of the legitimate arguments against the death penalty—opposition to state-sanctioned killing, the corruption of the medical profession by turning doctors into agents of death, the wrong people dying for the wrong reasons, racial and class inequities, the inability of medical science to guarantee a quick and painless death—apply all the more so to assisted suicide and euthanasia. If the state has any legitimate reason to take any life, it should be the lives of those like Linda Mai Lee (f/k/a Steven Hayes) 1 and Joshua Komisarjevsky who by their murderous actions have forfeited their moral right to live. Connecticut needs to take a strong stand against exposing vulnerable elders and disabled people to an ableist system of state-sanctioned medical killing.

One need not point to Canada’s extremely expansive euthanasia laws, where disabled people are routinely being denied lifesaving medical care and social supports while being offered euthanasia instead, and where euthanasia is now the fifth leading cause of death, to understand why we need to strongly push back. There are far too many documented problems and abuses in U.S. states that have laws permitting medically assisted suicide. People whose sole diagnosis is anorexia nervosa have been deemed terminal and prescribed the lethal dose in both Colorado and Oregon. A woman with early stage dementia, who did not qualify as six months terminal and may not have been mentally competent, died under Oregon’s law after using voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) to be deemed terminal. If VSED qualifies one for medically assisted suicide, than every adult, and especially those with long-term disabilities, becomes eligible for state sanctioned death.

All three current sponsors of SB 430 are, unfortunately, leading proponents of assisted suicide in Connecticut. Indeed, one of them, Representative Josh Elliott, has openly admitted he wants to pass a “limited” assisted suicide bill only to expand it later. We are witnessing continuous expansion in the several states that have already legalized assisted suicide. In 2024, a state senator in California promoted a bill, SB 1196 to expand that state’s law to non-terminal patients and those with dementia, and to permit lethal injection. A leading sponsor of an earlier assisted suicide bill opposed that new bill merely on tactical grounds as “pushing for too much too soon.” Expansion is not merely a “slippery slope” but a paved road to what Canada now has.

Regarding the specific drugs used for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment, it must be noted that historically we are often talking about the same drugs. Barbiturates like pentobarbital and secobarbital have been used for both assisted suicide and capital punishment. When these barbiturates became prohibitively expensive nearly ten years ago, in part due to opposition to their manufacture from opponents of capital punishment, assisted suicide proponents began experimenting with other lethal combinations of drugs. KFF Family News noted:
The first Seconal alternative turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients — and up to 31 hours in one case.
It gets worse. In an article titled “The Complicated Science of a Medically Assisted Death,” Quillette reports on one example of an agonizing death from assisted suicide in Oregon:
Jeff drank the lethal cocktail through a straw. Within 20 minutes he was asleep. Twelve hours later, Ada saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye and looked over. Jeff was sitting up and awake. Then, he started vomiting profusely….

After he awoke, scared and confused, Jeff was admitted to the hospital. When Ada visited Jeff the next day, she found him in the “comfort care” ward. Nurses had given him a mild tranquilizer to help with his nausea and vomiting. Over the next four days he declined rapidly. Ada was with Jeff when he died. As he lay flailing in his hospital bed, yanking at the sheets, she held his hand. “He didn’t die peacefully,” she said, her voice almost breaking. “It was a terrible death.”
The Oregon Death With Dignity Act 2023 Data Summary includes on page 18 one case of someone who took 137 hours—nearly six days—to die after ingesting a combination of digoxin, diazepam, morphine sulfate, amitriptyline, and phenobarbital (DDMAPh-1). I have yet to hear of a case of capital punishment where the condemned prisoner took an agonizing 137 hours to die. If we cannot guarantee a painless death from lethal injections used for capital punishment, how can we possibly claim orally ingested lethal concoctions can guarantee a peaceful death? And conversely, if ingesting these compounded drugs supposedly results in the painless death the assisted suicide lobby claims it does, then why has it never been used in states which retain the death penalty (in the manner that Socrates was forced to ingest hemlock when he was executed)?

Because of the self-administration requirement in U.S. assisted suicide laws, doctors are prohibited from directly hastening death to alleviate suffering when there are complications from the ingested lethal compound. This is a major reason why expansion to active euthanasia is inevitable. In foreign jurisdictions like Canada where there is a choice between lethal injection euthanasia and oral self-administration, doctor-administered euthanasia is nearly exclusive.

Moreover, when an execution is botched, there are witnesses, and we are likely to hear about it. With assisted suicide, there are no required witnesses. Prolonged and agonizing deaths, as well as coercion, are easily covered up. The death certificate is intentionally falsified by law or regulation to list the underlying terminal illness rather than the lethal dose as the cause of death, and natural causes as the manner of death. This last provision caused the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice to testify in opposition to bills seeking to legalize assisted suicide in our state in 2015, 2019, and 2021, as this provision covers up a potential murder prosecution.

Finally, Absolute Standards in Hamden, which Senator Anwar and Representative Elliott protested against last year, no longer produces pentobarbital for executions, and we know of no other company in Connecticut that does so. The threat is very real and immanent that these same legislators will work to legalize medically assisted suicide and invite Connecticut-based compound pharmacies to compound DDMAPh and other lethal cocktails whose sole purpose is to kill people. We in the disability community have been here at the Capitol nearly every year since 2013 to defend our lives from this menace. Help send a strong message that our lives matter at least as much as convicted murderers on death row.

In short, I request that this committee reconstruct SB 430 to prohibit the manufacture, compounding, sale, testing, distribution, dispensing or supply of any drug or medical device for the purpose of euthanasia or assisted suicide, and not just the death penalty. Unless and until the bill is so revised, it should not move forward.
  1. I am cognizant of the transgender community’s opposition to deadnaming. However, when this person committed one of the most heinous crimes in Connecticut history, this is the name that appeared in the news and is what is most familiar to the public.
Stephen Mendelsohn 171 Hartford Road, #19 New Britain, CT 06053-1532

Friday, February 14, 2025

Washington state Bill HB 1876 permits non-doctors to assist suicides.

Alex Schadenberg
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Washington State Bill HB 1876 will expand the state assisted suicide law by permitting physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses to participate in assisting suicide by expanding the definition of "attending qualified medical provider." The bill also permits the "attending qualified medical provider" to waive the 7 day waiting period within the law to enable a same day death.

The assisted suicide lobby is trying to expand assisted suicide laws in Vermont, Oregon and Washington state by expanding who can assist a suicide and to waive the waiting periods. 

The good news is that Montana Senate Bill 136 that will reverse Montana's assisted suicide acceptance and once again prohibit assisted suicide passed in the Montana Senate on February 7 and will soon be debated in the Montana House. If SB 136 passes, Montana will be the first state to reverse assisted suicide and prohibit it again.

On January 30, I published an article concerning Vermont Bill 75 that expands Vermont's assisted suicide law for the third time by allowing (non doctors) naturopathic physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to participate in assisting a suicide.

On February 12, I published an article concerning Oregon Bill SB 1003 that expands Oregon's assisted suicide law for the third time by allowing (non doctors) physician assistants and nurse practitioners to participate in assisting a suicide. SB 1003 also reduces the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours while enabling the "providing prescriber" to waive the waiting period to essentially allow a same day death.

The assisted suicide lobby is responding to the fact that very few doctors are willing to be involved with killing patients. By adding physician assistants and nurse practitioners they increase the number of providers who are willing to be involved with killing.

The assisted suicide lobby is wanting to eliminate the waiting periods for assisted suicide to enable a "same day death." No need to wait to pick up your lethal poison cocktail, no chance to change your mind.

When the assisted suicide lobby is trying to legalize assisted suicide they sell the "safeguards" in the bill. This is the "bait and switch" sales technique that is used by the assisted suicide lobby. 

Once legal, assisted suicide laws inevitably expand (Article Link). 

In 2025, assisted suicide legalization bills have already been introduced in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.

The assisted suicide lobby is focusing on Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Misdiagnosis exposes a key flaw with assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The UK is debating the legalization of assisted suicide. An article by Peter Sefton-Williams that was published in the Spectator on February 11, 2025 concerns him being misdiagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in January 2024.

Sefton-Williams tells his own story. He states:

Perhaps the strongest argument against the reintroduction of capital punishment is the possibility that mistakes, once made, cannot be rectified. In the 20th century, such errors – even with legal safeguards in place – were not uncommon. Infamous cases, such as those of Timothy Evans and George Kelly, are a testament to that. It is ironic, therefore, that MPs who would strongly oppose capital punishment can, at the same time, enthusiastically support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill brought before parliament by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.

The same argument applies. If a mistake is made, and a person opts for assisted dying based on incorrect information, that mistake cannot later be rectified. Supporters of the Bill talk about the rigorous safeguards that would surround the decision-making process. But, as with the legal protections surrounding capital punishment, these can fail. It’s also deeply troubling to learn this morning that one of the key safeguards in the Assisted Dying Bill – that cases have to be signed off by the High Court – may no longer apply.

Sefton-Williams tells his personal story:

For me, this is no theoretical debate. In January 2024, I was diagnosed with suspected Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Three months later, this diagnosis was confirmed. I was suffering badly from fasciculations (or twitching and cramping) in my hands and arms, and I had noticeable weakness and muscle wastage in my right hand.

The first doctor who diagnosed my condition did so after a barrage of tests and said that, although he had written “suspected” in my report, he wanted me to know that there was no doubt about the diagnosis. He explained there was no single, definitive test for MND, so he would send me to a senior specialist at a London teaching hospital for a second opinion. He also told me there was no cure and that death usually came between eighteen months and four years after diagnosis, but that the end could come much more quickly. Finally, he advised me not to make any plans beyond six months.

The senior specialist to whom I was referred examined me at the start of April and confirmed the diagnosis. He told me that, while I could live for a further five years, he had known cases where people had died within two months of diagnosis. Both doctors also warned that the degree of muscle wastage in my hand suggested I had already lived with the condition for some considerable time. 

Upon first being diagnosed, I was struck by fear and panic. I knew broadly how the end would come with MND. Muscle strength gradually fades until speech, movement, swallowing and breathing become increasingly difficult. Although I have many good friends and a supportive family, I am single and live alone. I felt I was in an impossible position and would not be able to cope with such a decline. And so, on the day after my initial diagnosis, I filled in the forms to join the Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Dignitas. I also considered other ways of terminating my life, perhaps by throwing myself off a cliff.

The Dignitas literature stressed that patients needed to administer the fatal chemicals themselves. Where patients had conditions such as MND, I determined that the procedure could not be delayed until the disease had progressed to the point of debilitation. I therefore felt under pressure to act.

Sefton-Williams received good news when he learned that he had been misdiagnosed with MND and that he actually had a treatable condiiton:

Yet as spring turned into summer, it became clear that my health was not worsening as expected. I was sent for further nerve conduction studies. These revealed that my condition was much more likely to be Multifocal Motor Neuropathy, a mild condition that is not terminal and which, in most cases, is treatable.

If assisted suicide were legal, Sefton-Williams states that would have died needlessly. 

The Bill currently before Parliament requires that two doctors independently assess and confirm that a patient has a “terminal illness” and is “reasonably expected to die within six months”. It sounds fail-safe. But in my case, I was told by two eminent specialists that I had a terminal condition and that, in the worst scenario, death could come within months. If I had had a fixed intention to terminate my life, I would surely have been a candidate. After my suicide, friends and family would perhaps have talked about my bravery in opting for a dignified death. They would have known nothing of my misdiagnosis. They would have not been aware that my death had been needless.

The question is - how many people are being killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide who have been misdiagnosed or not diagnosed?

According to Brian Mastroianni who published an article in healthline.com on February 22, 2020 medical misdiagnosis is more common than you think. According to the data: 

In February 2022, Meredith Bond reported for CityTV news that:

After 17 years suffering from chronic pain, Jennifer Monaghan began researching medical assistance in dying (MAiD), but a miracle diagnosis saved her life.

Monaghan, a Canadian, was considering euthanasia but then learned after 17-years of chronic pain that she had “Small fiber sensory neuropathy,” which is a treatable condition. Monaghan is alive today because she was fortunate to have been diagnosed with a treatable condition.

Bad news: Tuscany Italy has legalized assisted suicide.

Alex Schdenberg
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Those who follow the assisted suicide debate in Italy know that the Italian Constitutional Court opened the door to assisted suicide with a court decision in September 2019

Since then the Italian govenrment has grappled with the issue of assisted suicide. The current government has decided not to legalize assisted suicide. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition agrees with the Italian government's decision.

The assisted suicide lobby has turned their attention to the regional parliaments and on February 11 Reuters reported that Tuscany is the first Italian region to legalize assisted suicide. Reuters reported that:
Tuscany's regional law, which passed by a 27-13 majority, spells out how assisted suicide requests should be handled, including an obligation for a medical panel to consider applications within 30 days. 
If the criteria are met, the regional health service must provide the necessary medication and healthcare personnel within 10 days, unless the patient wants his own doctor to carry out the procedure. 
The law allows doctors to refuse to participate on moral or ethical grounds.
The Reuters article continues by stating:
Healthcare in Italy is largely a regional competence. Tuscany is ruled by the centre-left, but at national level Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's rightist coalition is broadly against euthanasia. 
Last year, however, a right-to-die bill was discussed in the regional assembly of right-wing ruled Veneto, and failed to pass by just one vote as both the centre-left and centre-right camps split on the issue.
The pro-euthanasia Luca Coscioni Association is trying to legalize assisted suicide in all 20 Italian regions.

More articles on this topic:

UK Veteran in Crisis Illegally Offered Assisted Suicide

This article was published on February 12, 2025 on substack by Kelsi Sheren.

MAiD is 100% illegal in the UK.

This should never have happened. Yet, before the law has even changed, a doctor dangled death as an option to a struggling veteran.

What You Need to Know


MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) is illegal in the UK.

A 25-year UK combat veteran was in crisis and asked for help.

A UK doctor suggested assisted suicide illegally.

The police have been contacted, but will they act?

This is not healthcare. This is not compassion.
This is modern-day eugenics.

Why This Matters to Me

This one hits close to home.

I served in the Canadian Armed Forces as an Artillery Gunner in Afghanistan. During my deployment, I was sent outside the wire to work alongside the British military in OP TORA ARWA.

That mission changed my life.

I was injured and medically released in 2011 with PTSD, hearing loss, and a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Today, I live as a 100% disabled combat veteran.

So when a UK veteran reached out to me today—shattered and heartbroken—I knew I had to speak up.

What Happened in the UK


This is his message to me:
"On Feb 4, 2025, after being offered therapy, counseling, and medication by my GP at Queensway Medical Centre, I had another breakdown at the start of February and was taken to Kettering A&E Hospital. I was seen by a Dr. A, who discussed other treatments to assist me. After I told him nothing seemed to be working, he mentioned MAiD as a suggestion. I was shocked. I immediately asked to be discharged. After they released me, I stormed out of the hospital and took a cab home."
This man is 25 years old.

He did the bravest thing possible—he asked for help.

Instead, a doctor offered him death.

This is illegal. This is a violation of medical ethics.

I have spoken with this veteran, and he is devastated. The Northamptonshire police have been contacted, but whether they will act remains to be seen.

History Repeating Itself

This isn’t the first time.

Since 2016, Canada’s government—with pro-death lobbying groups like Dying with Dignity—has slowly expanded MAiD.

At first, they swore it would only be for the terminally ill.

By 2021, they added Track 2—allowing MAiD for people who are not dying.

Now, it’s being offered to the homeless. To the disabled. To struggling veterans.

In Canada, a veteran called the crisis hotline for help and was offered MAiD.

Now it’s happening in the UK—before a single bill has passed.

We were told this would never happen.
We were told there would be safeguards.
We were told this was about compassion.

They lied.

And if Canada is any indication, this will not stop with terminal patients.
It will not stop with veterans.
It will not stop.

Politicians Said This Would Never Happen—Where Are They Now?

Kim Leadbeater and other UK officials have claimed MAiD would never be misused.

Yet here we are—before any law has passed—and doctors are already pushing euthanasia on those they should be helping.

This is not a slippery slope.

The slope is gone.

What Happens Next?

Make no mistake: If this is happening now, before the law has changed, what will happen once assisted dying becomes legal?

If you're reading this, you are now a witness.

Now the question is—will you do something about it?

Call to Action—Speak Up Before It’s Too Late

This cannot be ignored. Share this now—before it’s too late.

Email your MP. Contact the media. Make noise.

If we do nothing, more vulnerable people will be targeted.

Veterans, This is Personal.

If this can happen to one of us, it can happen to any of us.
We must speak up before it’s too late.

This is not compassion.
This is not healthcare.
This is eugenics.

For more on this subject please go listen to my series about MAID on The Kelsi Sheren Perspective and listen to my most recent podcast on Triggernometry available here.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

How many times can you vote on the online "consultation" on euthanasia by advance request?

One supporter told me that he completed the online "consultation" for euthanasia by advance request more than 20 times.
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On December 19, 2024 EPC published a Guide to answering the online "consultation" on euthanasia by advance request. EPC created the Guide to answering the online "consultation" since some of the "consultation" questions were a sham with the wording to those questions implying support for euthanasia by advance request.

Today, I was contacted by a supporter who told me that he had completed the online consultation more than 20 times. If he completed it more than 20 times, then others must also have done so.

Obviously, the consultation is more of a sham than first thought.

We are still encouraging our supporters to complete the "National conversation" on advance requests for medical assistance in dying but we recognize that the online consultation results will not be accurate.

The "National conversation" on advance requests for medical assistance in dying is open until February 14, 2025. The online consultation link is found on the Consultation website below the words - Join in. (Consultation Link).

Before completing the online consultation, please read our EPC guide to answering the online consultation. (Link to the EPC consultation guide).


Oregon bill would expand assisted suicide law again. Non doctors could prescribe death.

Alex Schadenberg
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Will there ever be enough killing?
Will there ever be enough killers?

On January 30, I published an article concerning Vermont Bill 75 that expands Vermont's assisted suicide law for the third time.

Oregon are also debating a bill to expand their assisted suicide law for the third time. Oregon assisted suicide bill SB 1003 will allow non doctors to prescribe death.

SB 1003 changes the term "attending physician" to "prescribling provider" and "consulting physician" to "consulting provider."

Provider means: 

(a) A physician licensed...,
(b) A physician assistant licensed...,
(c) A nurse practitioner licensed...

Therefore SB 1003 will allow non physicians, such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners to participate in killing.

The weak link for the assisted suicide lobby is that very few doctors are willing to be involved with killing their patients. By adding physician assistants and nurse practitioners they will increase the number of providers who are willing to be involved with killing.

SB 1003 also reduces the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours while enabling the "providing prescriber" to waive the waiting period to essentially allow a same day death.

SB 1003 also requires hospices and hospitals to publicly disclose their assisted suicide policy. Hospices and other healthcare facilities will be required to inform patients of their assisted suicide policy and post their assisted suicide policy online.

SB 1003 is the third time that Oregon is expanding their assisted suicide law.

In 2019 Oregon passed Bill SB 0579 which allowed doctors to waive the 15 day waiting period. 

In 2023 Oregon passed Bill HB 2279 which removed Oregon's assisted suicide law residency requirement.

The 2023 Oregon assisted suicide report indicates that there were 367 reported assisted suicide deaths up by 21% from 304 in 2022. Will there ever be enough killing?

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Canada's euthanasia deaths continue to rise.

EPC predicts that there were approximately 16,600 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2024 representing 5% of all deaths.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Canada's Ministry of Health released the 2023 MAiD date on December 11, 2024, with the Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying. This report indicated that there were 15,343 reported euthanasia deaths representing 4.7% of all deaths in 2023. The number of reported euthanasia deaths was up from 13,241 in 2022 and 10,092 in 2021.

Recently EPC obtained the 2024 Ontario and Alberta euthanasia data.

Based on the 2024 data from Ontario and Alberta EPC predicts that there were approximately 16,600 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2024 representing 5% of all deaths.

How did we make these prediction?

The Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario released the December 2024 MAiD data which indicated that there were 4,957 reported euthanasia deaths in 2024 which is up from 4,641 in 2023 and 3,934 in 2022. Ontario represents almost 40% of Canada's population.

The data indicates that, as of December 31, 2024, there have been 23,333 Ontario euthanasia deaths since legalization. The City of Alliston had a population of 23,253 in 2021.

Alberta Health Services released their MAiD data indicating that there were 1,116 reported euthanasia deaths in 2024 which is up from 977 in 2023 and 836 in 2022. Alberta represents almost 12% of Canada's population.

Since there was an 8% increase in euthanasia deaths in Ontario and Alberta and since both provinces represent more than 50% of Canada's population and considering the fact that Québec has had the highest euthanasia rate of increases, I conservatively estimate that there were at least 16,600 euthanasia deaths in 2024.

The Chief Coroner of Ontario has attempted to institute greater oversight in Ontario. Greater oversight may have led to a slowing euthanasia growth rate.

In October 2024 the Chief Coroner of Ontario released the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee report indicating that between 2018 and 2023 there were euthanasia deaths driven by homelessness, fear and isolation and that poor people are at risk of coercion and Canadians with disabilities are needlessly dying by euthanasia. The data from the report indicated that there were at least 428 non-compliant euthanasia deaths between 2018 and 2023 and 25% of the euthanasia providers violated the law.
 
The Ontario MAiD Death Review report has three parts (Part 3) (Part 2) (Part 1).
 
The Ontario (MAiD) euthanasia report shows that the number of reported MAiD deaths increased by approximately 7% in 2024.

Alberta had a 14% increase in euthanasia deaths in 2024, double Ontario's rate of increase.

We have hope that Alberta's euthanasia growth rate will slow down as Alberta considers changes to their rules for approving euthanasia.

On January 30, during an interview with the John Bachman Now show, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith indicated that her government plans to tighten the rules for approving Albertan's for euthanasia.

Alberta has had the case of the 27-year-old autistic woman, who was approved and scheduled to die by euthanasia on February 1, 2024 until her father challenged the euthanasia approval in court. There was also a case of a Calgary man who couldn't get experimental treatment for cluster headaches but could get approved for euthanasia.

Alberta's Justice Ministry held a consultation on changes to the application of euthanasia in their province. The final decision has not been released yet.

Similar to last year, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will be trying to obtain the provincial euthanasia data to provide insight into Canada's experience with killing.


Monday, February 10, 2025

Montana Senate passes bill that will stop assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An article by Darrell Ehrlick that was published in the Bozeman Daily Chronical on February 7 covered the debate on Montana Bill SB 136 that passed by a vote of 29 to 20 (one abstained) on February 7 in the Montana Senate.

Contact members of the Montana House and urge them to vote YES on SB 136. (List of legislative members). Bill SB 136 known as the doctor patient restoration act will restore the trust relationship between doctors and patients.

Article: Montana bill to stop assisted suicide passes in the Senate (Link)

Ehrlick reported what Senator Carl Glimm, the sponsor of SB 136 stated:
Senator Carl Glimm
“It will just keep growing and growing,” Glimm said, citing cases where a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder “was talked into suicide.”

Glimm said he worried that others with physical or intellectual disabilities would be targeted, a concerned shared by other members of his caucus.
Ehrlick reported the following comments by Senator Daniel Emrich:
“That this is a peaceful way to go out is a fallacy. The drug cocktails they give them contain paralytics and these, without other drugs, will make them suffocate and die,” said Sen. Daniel Emrich, R-Great Falls. “The reason they give them paralytics is to cover up these people would be flailing in place.”

He said the message the Legislature is sending is even more dangerous:

“We’re telling them they’re not worthy to be on this earth. That they should just go away because they’re inconvenient. That they have some disability or ailment or we just don’t want them any more because they’re wasting away.”
The comments by Senator Bob Phalen were also interesting. Ehrlick reported:
Sen. Bob Phalen, R-Lindsay, questioned how the Montana Legislature could halt lethal injections for death row inmates out of a fear that the drugs would cause suffering or prolong death, but support physician assisted death.

“It is inhumane then, but now it’s OK?” Phalen asked.

SB 136 prevents assisted suicide by clarifying that consent is not a defense for homicide or assisted suicide. SB 136 states:

(3) (a) For the purposes of subsection (2)(d), physician aid in dying is against public policy, and a patient's consent to physician aid in dying is not a defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician.  
(b) (i) For the purposes of this subsection (3), "physician aid in dying" means an act by a physician of prescribing a lethal dose of medication to a patient that the patient may self-administer to end the patient's life.  
(ii) The term does not include an act of withholding or withdrawing a life-sustaining treatment or procedure authorized pursuant to Title 50, chapter 9 or 10."

Contact Montana State Senators and urge them to vote YES on SB 136 at the third and final reading. (List of legislative members).

One notorious doctor admits to having a need for sex after euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition


Dr Philip Nitschke, also known as Australia's Dr Death, has built a business that promotes euthanasia and assisted suicide and sells items related to killing.

Nitschke recently carried out the first Sarco pod assisted suicide death in Switzerland that even the Swiss government had problems with.

Margaret Simons reported in August 2013 in the Sydney Morning Herald that in his autobiography, Damned If I Do, Nitschke wrote that:
"After performing my role in those deaths, I had an urgent and pressing need for sex," he wrote. He was having an affair with a journalist and the sex, he says, was "frantic and sometimes desperate".
Simons, who interviewed Nitschke about his autobiography was further reported that:
Nitschke says the partners of the dead sometimes have the same feelings. Why be so frank when it will doubtless be used against him? "I haven't seen anyone else even mention it, and I thought it was worth mentioning."
Simons then reports Nitschke as stating:
Leaving the houses in which he had presided over a death, he says he felt sadness and a heavy sense of responsibility. Then he would look into the sunlight. "There was this immense feeling of being alive. And then taking a deep breath ... and almost immediately, this sexual urge. It was a way I could demonstrate to myself that I was alive. It wasn't me that was dead."
Nitschke promises to bring his Sarco suicide pod to Britain and Scotland if they legalize assisted suicide.

Dr Ellen Wiebe may be the most notorious Canadian euthanasia doctor (Link to articles on Dr Wiebe) but she is not the only notorious euthanasia doctor.

Sign and share the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) petition demanding a review of Dr Ellen Wiebe's euthanasia practise. Link to the EPC Petition (Petition Link).

Links to articles concerning Philip Nitschke (Articles Link).

Friday, February 7, 2025

Montana bill to prohibit assisted suicide passes in the Senate.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Senator Carl Glimm
Great News. 

The Montana Senate voted 29 to 20, to pass Senate Bill 136. on February 7. SB 136 is sponsored by Montana State Senator, Carl Glimm to prevent assisted suicide.

Contact Montana State Senators and urge them to vote YES on SB 136 at the third and final reading. (List of legislative members).

Montanans have a confusing legal situation concerning assisted suicide. 

In 2009, the Baxter court decision declared that Montanans have a right to assisted suicide. The Baxter decision was appealed to the Montana Supreme Court where it was decided that there is not a right to assisted suicide in Montana but the Court found a "defense of consent" meaning a Montana physician who assists a suicide must prove that there was consent. Senate Bill 136 legislatively declares that there is no defense of consent.

Article: Physician-Assisted Suicide is not legal in Montana.

Since the Baxter decision, the assisted suicide lobby claims that assisted suicide is legal in Montana while assisted suicide remains technically prohibited. Montanans are dying by assisted suicide.

SB 136 will prevent assisted suicide by clarifying that consent is not a defense for homicide or assisted suicide. Among other things SB 136 states:

(3) (a) For the purposes of subsection (2)(d), physician aid in dying is against public policy, and a patient's consent to physician aid in dying is not a defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician.  
    (b) (i) For the purposes of this subsection (3), "physician aid in dying" means an act by a physician of prescribing a lethal dose of medication to a patient that the patient may self-administer to end the patient's life.  
    (ii) The term does not include an act of withholding or withdrawing a life-sustaining treatment or procedure authorized pursuant to Title 50, chapter 9 or 10."

Contact Montana State Senators and urge them to vote YES on SB 136 at the third and final reading. (List of legislative members).

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Medical assistance in dying and advance directives

Ruth Enns (disability rights leader and author)

Advance directives (AD) seduce us into believing that we can order up a beautifully scripted death like a latte-to-go.

However, in the July/August 2012 edition of Gray Matters, Jerome Groopman MD and Pamela Hartzband MD cited Muriel Gillick, MD, a geriatrician at Harvard Medical School and a researcher in end-of-life care, saying that “‘… the consensus … is that the directives have been a resounding failure.’” Nevertheless we are now to believe that we should be able to circumvent current euthanasia/ MAID restrictions by signing an AD even after a dementia diagnosis.

Groopman and Hartzband said the signatories “… cannot accurately imagine what they will want and how much they can endure in a condition they have not experienced.”

Caregivers tend to believe they know what care recipients experience, not understanding that their experience is of caregiving, not of receiving care. They can’t understand the recipient’s perspective any more than men who used to think they spoke for the women in their lives.

Secondly, many people change their minds after signing such a document. Would the authority figures interpreting the directive allow a change of mind or assume it is a product of the disease or disability, not to be taken seriously?

According to Richard Weikart, author of Unnatural Death: Medicine’s Descent from Healing to Killing, the first case of a physician being prosecuted in the Netherlands after euthanasia was legalized in 2001 involved a woman with an AD requesting euthanasia in the event of dementia.

But when her fears materialized, she changed her mind, rejecting the fatal injection three times. The doctor drugged her coffee. Still she struggled. Family members then restrained her to facilitate the euthanasia. Four years later, the doctor was acquitted.

In Canada, despite 428 breaches of current euthanasia/ MAID law in Ontario alone, no one has been prosecuted.

A third reason ADs don’t work is that the prevailing narrative views “disabled” people as lives not worth living.

In an American survey reported in Health Affairs in February 2021, more than 80 per cent of U.S. physicians perceived significantly disabled people’s lives as diminished, “… an attitude that may contribute to health-care disparities among people with disability.”

However, Lisa I. Iezzoni, a health-care policy researcher at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Studies of people with disability show that most don’t view their lives as tragic … and view their lives as good quality.”

But wouldn’t authority figures interpret an AD in the light of the ableist narrative reflected in the survey?

Current legislation targets people with disabilities. If the euthanasia/MAID practitioner sees disabled people as having low “quality of life,” wouldn’t that person be inclined, consciously or unconsciously, to interpret an AD differently than the signatory intended?

Since the majority of non-disabled Canadians perceive the ableist narrative as truth, anything else will be and is ignored.

Would any other marginalized group face the same legal discrimination?

A fourth strike against ADs is our current stressed health-care system. What about the interpreter’s level of fatigue, social and other pressures? Fatigue and stress make most of us less tolerant than stress-free environments.

A fifth strike, as Groopman and Hartzband said, is that ADs “cannot encompass every possible clinical scenario.”

A sixth strike is that interpreters, usually medical practitioners, may well be strangers relying on maybe a cursory examination and other people’s notes in the signatory’s medical chart. Wouldn’t a lack of familiarity with the person tilt interpretation toward prevailing biases?

A seventh strike asks: is the euthanasia/MAID provider qualified or willing to assess the reasons prompting the request?

For example, is Dr. Ellen Wiebe in B.C., an enthusiastic and vocal member of the euthanasia/ MAID advocacy organization, Dying With Dignity, qualified to assess the person’s mental health?

Does she bother addressing social and economic pressures?

She has said she determines the person’s eligibility on her assessment of their “quality of life” rather than medical assessments. “Quality of life” is a vague catch-all phrase encompassing anything from economics to end-of-life distress.

As of March 2023 she had “helped” 431 people into the nearest hearse and faces no legal consequences, although she is getting pushback from her own clinic and others.

But what then? How are these directives to be used? As a yes-no shortcut for medical end-oflife decision-making? As legal protection for the interpreters?

Instead of ensuring choice, doesn’t signing ADs actually abdicate choice? Who is really empowered by such directives? The signatory or the interpreter? Are they not simply a manifestation of ableism?

If ADs don’t deliver on their promises for anyone, how can they deliver those promises for those diagnosed with dementia? Doesn’t that make vulnerable people even more vulnerable?

Groopman and Hartzband said, “… there are no shortcuts around emotionally charged and time-consuming conversations that involve patients, families and physicians.”

But who has time, resources and patience for such conversations these days?

Ruth Enns writes from Winnipeg.

UK Assisted dying bill ‘is being rushed’

This article was published in The Times on February 4, 2025.

We are alarmed at the haste of the committee considering the bill for assisted dying. Three days of oral evidence seems insufficient to consider such a huge question as doctor-assisted suicide. We hope there will be much more consideration of the written evidence in the weeks to come.

A law on doctor-assisted suicide will undermine the daily efforts of psychiatrists across the United Kingdom to prevent suicide. Those who have suicidal thoughts at any time in life may be vulnerable to pressures to take their own life by the introduction of doctor-assisted suicide. Vulnerability can arise owing to external factors such as lack of decent palliative or social care; overt coercion or undue influence; and personal losses including bereavement, poor housing or financial hardship. Internal factors may include major depressive disorder, a sense of burdensomeness, loneliness and social isolation. Understanding and responding to these vulnerabilities is at the centre of suicide prevention.

The initial reluctance of the committee to see the need to call the Royal College of Psychiatrists to give evidence is in itself shocking and betrays a lacking understanding of the job that we do in understanding suicide and its prevention. This bill should be overwhelmingly rejected.

Prof Jonathan Cavanagh, consultant neuropsychiatrist, Glasgow; Prof Julian Hughes, professor of old age psychiatry, Bristol; Prof Alan Thomas, professor of old age psychiatry, Newcastle; Dr Mark Agius, retired associate specialist in psychiatry, Bedfordshire; Dr Agnes Ayton, consultant psychiatrist in eating disorders, Oxford; Dr Jenny Bryden, consultant psychiatrist in rehabilitation, Scottish Borders; Dr Elizabeth Corcoran, psychiatrist, East Sussex; Dr Larry Culliford, retired psychiatrist, South East Region; Dr Sebastian Desando, specialty registrar in forensic psychiatry, West Midlands; Dr Stefan Gleeson, consultant psychiatrist, Winchester; Dr Fiona Harrison, tribunal psychiatrist, South West; Dr Mirette Habib, consultant psychiatrist, London; Dr Mark S Komrad, faculty of psychiatry, Maryland, USA; Dr Vicki Ibbett, trainee psychiatrist, West Midlands; Dr Jessica Kirker, retired psychiatrist & psychoanalyst, London; Dr Mark Parry, consultant psychiatrist, Reading; Dr Sunil Raheja, consultant psychiatrist, London; Dr Hannah Reynolds, higher trainee, West Midlands; Dr Josie Rimmer, consultant psychiatrist, Bristol; Dr Jonathan Rogers, clinical lecturer in general adult psychiatry, London; Dr Musa Sami, consultant psychiatrist, Nottingham; Dr Carlo Thomas, consultant forensic psychiatrist, Nottinghamshire; Dr Andrea Tocca, consultant psychiatrist, Uxbridge; Dr Adrian Treloar, consultant in old age psychiatry, Bromley.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Gordon Friesen on the euphemistic language of killing.

The following article is a response to the article by David Albert Jones: The Euphemistic Language of killing (Link).

Gordon Friesen
By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I agree 100% with calling a spade a spade. And yes, in public debate we are already at the point where using the word suicide is condemned to the point where speakers before government reviews, or the writers of serious articles will be entirely discounted for using it. Murder, is just impossible to use. However, we know the truth. And by speaking to the people, we may, I believe, eventually turn the tide on this. In the end, politicians and academics are paid by the people. They are not paid to insult and belittle our convictions.

We have their food bags in our hands.

That said, in academic debate, I think we should push this distinction of Lester's "medical killing", (Link read comments) because it is separate from a libertarian "right to die". Hard core right to die activists believe that anybody should be allowed to choose to die, for any reason, at any time.

I don't agree with that, of course, but (as we are learning in Canada) medical killing is even more pernicious, because the pretense in that case is that people suffering from medical conditions have a special, reasonable, motivation to die. It therefore becomes normal to suggest that such people die. To believe that they SHOULD die. And as we see in Canada, a medical system tooling up to do just that as efficiently as possible.

In fact, the basic right to die folks believe that mental competence is absolutely necessary to the proper exercise of such a right, but the medical killing folks are setting their sights on the incapable as well.

So let us agree among ourselves that this is homicide, and let us combat it in the most articulate way we can, in language that ordinary people understand, and also, at the government and academic level, using whatever terms we must (in order to get through the door).

The main thing is to continue our work of opposition. Bring ordinary people on board. Democratically move the goal posts on what our would-be rulers can get away with in suppressing ordinary language, ordinary feeling, and common sense.

Thank you for reminding us of that.