Fix how we care for the most vulnerable. No to assisted suicide.

The following article by Zubir Ahmad was published by the Guardian on August 25, 2026.

Usually we comment on an article, but Dr Zubir Ahmad it was better to simply republish this article. The British parliament will once again vote-on an assisted suicide bill on September 11, 2026. The new bill is nearly identical to the previous bill.

Dr Zubir Ahmad

By Dr Zubir Ahmad 

As a doctor, I have spent much of my professional life caring for people at some of the most vulnerable moments they will ever face. I have seen the anxiety that surrounds the prospect of dying, and the desperate wish of patients and families to avoid unnecessary suffering.

Naturally, we all want people facing the end of life to be treated with kindness and respect. But when considering the debate on assisted dying, true compassion demands that we ask a more fundamental question. What kind of society are we building if, before we’ve fixed the systems designed to care for people, we introduce a system designed to help them die? As a former health minister who has seen the system from the inside, I am able to say it is not ready or equipped to answer this question.

Andy Burnham has been right to raise this as a priority issue at the start of his tenure as prime minister. Speaking at a care home recently, he explained that assisted dying should not be introduced while Britain’s palliative care and social care systems remain under such strain. A choice between death without adequate care and a death prematurely self-induced is not a real choice.

Indeed, as parliament prepares for yet another vote on assisted dying in England and Wales on 11 September, I fear that the offering has been somewhat mis-sold to the public. A state-controlled medicalised dying process is still a process – one where there remain risks of complication and suffering. The reality of assisted dying is more complex than the promise of a perfectly controlled death.

Many people imagine a system where a person facing a terminal illness can choose the exact moment and manner of their death, free from distress. But the legislation does not and cannot provide that certainty. A patient who self-administers medication to begin the dying process may still experience complications. The process may take time; it may require medical intervention. It may not happen where or when the person imagined. The promise of absolute control can therefore become something different in practice: an appearance of choice that does not always deliver the agency people expect.

I am far from the only medical professional to be worried about the prospect of assisted dying being available on the NHS. Among those raising concerns about the bill’s dozens of flaws have been the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Complex Life and Death Decisions (CLADD) group from King’s College London, the Royal College of Pathologists, the British Geriatrics Society and numerous other medical bodies and care authorities. The same concern comes up again and again: is it really a “free choice” when palliative care and social support fall short?

A person’s wish to die does not happen in isolation from their circumstances. It can be shaped by whether they feel supported, whether they fear becoming a burden, whether their family is coping and whether they have access to the care they need. That is why the state of our care systems cannot be treated as a separate issue from assisted dying. Timely access to palliative and social care remains too often determined by where someone lives rather than what they need. For some families, excellent end-of-life support is available; for others, particularly in rural areas as well as constituencies experiencing high inequality, the experience is one of waiting, uncertainty and having to fight for services that should be guaranteed.

A Labour government founded the NHS on a principle that remains as important today as it was at its creation: that healthcare should be there when people need it most, regardless of their circumstances. A postcode lottery in care cannot be ignored while debating a new legal pathway for people at the end of their life.

In Scotland, this concern has been expressed clearly, and was an important reason why, in March, 85% of Labour MSPs voted against the legalisation of assisted dying in Holyrood. The bill introduced in Westminster by my colleague Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, in October 2024 did not fare much better: too many concerns about patient welfare meant the House of Lords would not rubber-stamp the flawed text. And yet, on 11 September, MPs will be faced with yet another vote on assisted dying before the care systems are improved to a level which even makes that debate appropriate. Andy Burnham has his priorities right: this is the wrong debate at the wrong time. This is why I, and many others, will be voting against this bill, in pursuit of comfort, dignity and appropriate care for people who are vulnerable and dying.

Zubir Ahmed MP is an NHS vascular and transplant surgeon, and served as the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Care from 6 September 2025 to 12 May 2026.

VSED is part of the assisted suicide agenda.

Gordon Friesen

By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

One of our great friends and allies, Wesley J. Smith, has recently written about the British Medical Association's newly minted policy and other bioethics articles which require doctors to collaborate with patients who are attempting to kill themselves through hunger and thirst.

This practice is commonly euphemized as ‘voluntarily stopping eating and drinking’, which ungainly expression is then replaced with the more slick-sounding acronym ‘VSED’. However we must unfortunately note (as usual) that the most important facts of this matter are absent from that deceptive formulation: first, the primary fact of suicide does not appear at all; and second, a misleading confusion is suggested between this specific method, of suicide, and traditionally familiar practices of fasting.

To be clear on this score, our subject has nothing to do with fasting (even to the point of death). For our bodies are well adapted to suffer the naturally frequent periods of famine to which we have been exposed throughout our evolution.

That is what makes fasting so comparatively easy (as long as fluid intake is properly maintained). For after a brief period of normal hunger (familiar to all occasional fasters), our bodies literally hunker down to wait out the interruption of nourishment.

Indeed, dying of hunger takes approximately one day for every pound of fat on our bodies, followed by another day for every three pounds of muscle. Hence, suicide by fasting is relatively painless, but takes a very long time, which generally provides plenty of opportunity for second thoughts.

Deprivation of fluids, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. In this case, death follows in a few days only. And for that practical reason, our bodies are not adapted to quietly suffer thirst. Indeed, thirst is a biological emergency, and our bodies ring the alarm on this emergency through the communication of insufferable discomfort.

It is this unbearable discomfort, in turn, which death-friendly doctors happily propose to alleviate, through the provision of various medications (which also heavily impair critical thought). In other words: because suicide by dehydration is virtually impossible to endure, it is only the assistance of doctors which make such deaths possible, by numbing both the body and the brain.

For that reason, so-called ‘VSED’ is clearly an instance of assisted suicide, not mere comfort care and because doctors are professionally responsible for their acts in a way that ordinary people are not, it is also a form of medical homicide.

In truth, while so-called ‘VSED’ might appear very similar to terminal sedation, it is also much more problematic. For palliative sedation is only to be used in the most difficult of medical cases. But suicide by dehydration may be chosen, by any person, for any reason. It thus represents a truly radical departure from accepted norms, by providing suicidal persons with a voluntary entry point to the practical equivalent of palliative sedation, but without the need of medical justification. 

In reporting on the decision of the British Medical Association (to force the collaboration of doctors with this practice) the headline message has quite properly been centered upon the serious attack, thus produced, upon individual and institutional rights of conscience. For dissenting doctors, and institutions, are thus robbed of that crucial medical status, of independent moral agent, upon which all patients rely for proper care.

It is also worthwhile, however, to recall the importance of medically assisted suicide by dehydration, even in those jurisdictions where no such compulsion has yet been contemplated.

In the simplest of terms: so-called ‘VSED’ is definitely a form of medically assisted suicide, and yet its practice is legal in all States. Which means that even if you live in a State where assisted suicide is illegal, medically assisted suicide (VSED) is still being practised, in your State.

Furthermore, all of the terrible harms of medical homicide are enabled through this practice. For if there is nothing illegal about informing patients of the dehydration suicide option (and there is not) then there is similarly no check on any death-practitioner's ability to energetically market their product, and thus to professionally deliver as many people from the pains of human existence, as they possibly can.

In fact, unlike any other form of medical homicide (in the US or even in Canada) medically assisted suicide by dehydration is already available for dementia patients, through professionally solicited advance requests (similarly legal in all States).

Such, then, is the portrait of that formidable Trojan Horse, medically assisted suicide by dehydration (aka ‘VSED’).

Becoming aware of this practice, as yet another finger on the hand of medical homicide (and by no means the least of these) is a powerful first step in pushing back.

And while we may understand the zealous actions of fully devoted death-cult physicians, it is less easy to understand why our leaders, as in this latest British example, are so keenly committed to the promotion, and facilitation, of that extreme death agenda.

Bioethical Advocacy to Compel Medical Help in Dehydration Suicides

This article was published by National Review online on August 31, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Many Western countries and jurisdictions are legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. That opens up a problem for the death pushers. Since states aren’t going to get into the wet work of the actual killing, medical professionals and caregivers are going to be conscripted to do the deadly deeds — even if that means violating their religious beliefs and moral consciences.

Instead of resisting this rank authoritarianism, the medical and bioethics establishments are increasingly going along. This proposed coercion includes requiring doctors’ participation in suicides when patients starve and dehydrate themselves to death — known as VSED for “voluntary stop eating and drinking.”

As I wrote a few weeks ago here, the British Medical Association just so opined. And now, following closely in that guidance’s wake, a major article in the Journal of Health & Biomedical Law argues similarly — using dementia patients as the prime example — that doctors have to both inform patients about their right to commit suicide by VSED and ease the process by providing palliative care against the agony that killing oneself in that manner causes.

(It is important to emphasize at this point that we are not discussing the common phenomenon of patients who stop eating as a natural part of the dying process when the body can no longer assimilate nourishment. That isn’t suicide. VSED is. That’s a big difference both morally and factually.)

The article’s definition of VSED is skewed to promote the propriety of facilitating such deaths (citations omitted):

VSED is “a deliberate, voluntary, self-initiated action to hasten death by a patient with decision-making capacity who is suffering from an irreversible illness or prolonged dying that the person finds intolerable.”

But as the BMA guidance stated, refusing food and water onto death isn’t limited to dementia cases but can be decided upon for any reason at all. Indeed, the euthanasia pushers Compassion and Choices used to advertise this method of suicide for elderly people who are not seriously ill but “simply done.”

The article claims that clinicians have the obligation to inform patients who inquire about the process of committing VSED:

Health care professionals are ethically obligated to inform their patients of relevant health care information. This is to help patients make informed decisions: “Respecting the principle of autonomy oblige the physician to disclose medical information and treatment options that are necessary for the patient to exercise self-determination and supports informed consent, truth telling, and confidentiality.”

But eating and drinking isn’t a medical act. Receiving nourishment orally in a health-care context isn’t a treatment. In fact, the VSED itself isn’t any more “medical” than asphyxiating oneself by running a car in a closed garage. Should doctors have to teach patients how to die by that means? Of course not. Nor should they with VSED.

The article argues that people diagnosed with dementia should not be encouraged to pursue that means of death but should be provided written information about VSED among other data provided, which really means encouraged subtly, as the text below makes clear:

Referenced sources in such a compendium can then direct patients and their families to the more detailed information they should consider, such as, for example, that simply stating in an advance directive that they do not want artificial nutrition and hydration may not be adequate to ensure care and support during VSED. Links and references to VSED should include an explanation of the importance of a VSED-appropriate advanced directive if patients plan to VSED as well as templates for such advanced directives. The referenced sources should direct individuals to prepare a video explaining why they chose to VSED, and how they want their health care proxy and caregivers to respond if the patient asks for food or fluid as they become befuddled during their VSED process.

By “befuddled,” the author means: Even if the patient asks for food or drink it should be refused if previously instructed, an idea also being pushed in bioethics advocacy as “VSED by Advance Directive.” Can you imagine forcing caregivers to deny patients who ask for nourishment? Because that is what is being increasingly advocated here and elsewhere in bioethics discourse.

The article further claims that doctors must palliate the agony that comes with starving and dehydrating oneself to death — even when it violates their moral consciences — based on the principle of non-abandonment: 

The second limitation on providers’ right to conscientiously object to providing patient care is the principle of non-abandonment. No provider is permitted to abandon a suffering patient: “The duty to relieve pain and suffering is central to the physician’s role as healer and is an obligation physicians have to their patients.” Providers are ethically and legally obliged to provide care to a suffering patient even if doing so violates their personal beliefs unless they assist the patient in transferring to a provider who will provide such proper care.

But surely patient autonomy has its limits. If a patient wants to burn themself with cigarettes, are doctors require to numb the flesh to make that easier? No.

We may not be able to legally prevent VSED deaths. Nor can we prohibit doctors from palliating such cases. Indeed, VSED is often touted by activists as a loophole to get around laws banning assisted suicide.

But requiring doctors to participate is to force them to assist in suicide. And that is just plain wrong. I can’t think of a more efficient way to drive pro-life and Hippocratic Oath medical caregivers out of the professions. In fact, I believe that is a big part of the point.

Where next with this darkness? Once the false premises of VSED are accepted and such suicides become normalized, people will eventually say, “Why make people die slowly by something as awful as self-starvation? Just get it over with by allowing doctors give them a lethal jab” — and ethical guidelines will soon require doctors to do that too (already the case in Ontario, Canada).

Finally, people sometimes ask why I pay such close attention to the discourse in professional journals. This particular article is a good example of the importance of that focus. Its opinions are justified by citing earlier pro-VSED journal articles, thereby bootstrapping the author’s opinions to greater authority. And the next such article will likewise cite this piece to add to its authority. And on and on it goes.

That is precisely how radical proposals in bioethics discourse move from hypothetical examples to implemented public policy. Once the “experts” reach a consensus, the law tends to go along.

Previous articles on this topic:

British Medical Association requires doctors to help patients commit suicide by dehydration (Link). 

Sellling euthanasia (MAiD) at the bedside.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Do not ask me about euthanasia. I am not interested.

I was contacted by a woman who called us on behalf of her elderly Aunt who was receiving treatment in a hospital in London Ontario.

The Aunt wanted to know if there was anything that could be done to stop the MAiD team from asking her if she wanted MAiD.

The woman told me that her Aunt was asked, if she wanted euthanasia twice, in a pretty persuasive manner, and she said NO.

The woman told me that her Aunt was very upset because the person in the bed next to her was sold euthanasia at the bedside. Her Aunt told her that the MAiD team sold euthanasia as a beautiful death and made the person in the bed next to her, who was not asking for euthanasia, fear that she would otherwise have a terrible death.

The Aunt was concerned that the MAiD team might do the same to her, when she was going through a difficult time.

I told the woman to order the Life Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care for her Aunt.

The clear language in the EPC Life Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care is designed to protect her life.

EPC sells the Life Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care for $10 + taxes. Order the Life Protecting Power of Attorney (Order Link) or call EPC at: 1-877-439-3348 or info@epcc.ca

I asked if they wanted our new Do not ask me about euthanasia. I am not interested card.  

 

EPC will send this card with any donation amount (Donation Link) or by emailing us at info@epcc.ca.

EPC will also send you the Do Not Kill Me. I oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide card upon request. Just email us at: info@epcc.ca.

MAiD teams are selling euthanasia at the bedside. This is a form of coercion.

Euthanasia is medical homicide.

Support Alex's half-marathon fundraising run by donating to CCC and/or EPC

Alex Schadenberg and Marcel Lemmen are running a half-marathon on September 27, 2026 to raise money for the Compassionate Community Charity (CCC) and/or the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

This is the seventh consecutive year that Alex and Marcel are running the half-marathon fund-raiser for CCC and EPC.

The total money raised for CCC from the previous 6 half-marathon runs combined has been almost $90,000. 

Donations from the half-marathon (21.1 km) run are very much appreciated. 

 

The Compassionate Community Care (CCC) charity operates a help-line, a training program for visiting seniors, an advocacy training program and a calling service for lonely seniors.

Charitable donations can be made to Compassionate Community Care at: (Donation Link).

 

You may also consider donating to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

 
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition informs, educates, and supports opposition to killing by euthanasia and assisted suicide and endorses proper care for people in need.

Donate to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which is not a charity, at: (Donation Link).

“Euthanasia And Arbitrary Institutionalization Are Both Immoral”

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader
Meghan is a disability activists and a member of the EPC-USA board.

As I’ve said, I think that one of the most effective ways to prevent euthanasia is for euthanasia opponents to be thinking about what kind of world we want people with disabilities to live in, and do what we can to link euthanasia prevention to creating a better world. 

Hence, I think it’s valuable for euthanasia opponents to be aware of the trend towards broad re-institutionalization that is happening in the United States right now, especially since we know that coerced institutionalization contributes to euthanasia.

Institutions often smell like pee. The odor of urine hangs in the air. If you live in an institution you might get the chance to do something fun once in a while, like make a craft or watch a TV show, but your options for recreation are limited. Your loved ones and friends might come visit you at designated hours. You eat whatever food the institution serves. Often if you want to go to the bathroom, an orderly will have to unlock the door for you. Maybe the person living in the room next to you screams constantly. Maybe your roommate died from a bedsore that became infected because there weren’t enough staff to take care of his needs. 

In many ways living in an institution is like living in prison, except the residents generally aren’t criminals.

So, as a euthanasia prevention advocate, I’m disturbed that apparently, that’s the world that Texas, Florida, Alaska, and the Department of Justice want for some disabled people.

As I’ve noted, a 1999 SCOTUS precedent called Olmstead LC. generally requires states to provide community supports to disabled people who would be unnecessarily institutionalized without them. Ie, SCOTUS held that there may be some people who do need institutionalization in a humane setting, like if they are homicidal, have no ability to care for themselves whatsoever or prefer to live in an institution. But within reason, states can't put disabled people in institutions because states prefer that to community support. This determination created Olmstead’s “community integration mandate,” which helps protect disabled people from living in institutions just because that’s where the supports are.

But now, Texas, Florida, Alaska and the DOJ are fighting to let states design their home and community support systems in a way that would make many disabled people unable to receive the support they need without living in an institution.

This would be the case even when the disabled people aren’t a threat to themselves or others.

Florida, Texas and Alaska are the three states still clinging to the aforementioned Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit. The lawsuit threatens euthanasia-preventing healthcare protections for disabled people, but especially takes aim at simple, straightforward 2024 guidance about how to implement Olmstead’s mandate that disabled people who aren’t a threat to themselves or others be able to receive services in their communities.

These guidelines were also outlined by DOJ guidance in 2011 and 2020 and aren’t complicated: they define what community integration means and what states must do to achieve it. The regulations define what it means to be at risk of unnecessary institutionalization, and clarify that disabled people need not wait until they are unnecessarily institutionalized to invoke their right to community support. 

But the remaining Texas vs. Kennedy plaintiff states complain that implementing the updated community integration guidance will “add new regulatory burdens and imposes substantial costs on the state.”

(You know, like how the Canadian government sees disability services as a burden, so it’s incentivizing its disabled citizens to die by (MAiD) euthanasia?)

The Department of Justice has been conferring regularly with these states, and despite community integration being enforced by every administration since the Clinton administration, including the President’s first administration, the DOJ is apparently poised to give these states what they want and more.

Repealing the 2024 guidelines would be destructive enough, but the DOJ has now said that longstanding legal interpretations of Olmstead's community integration mandate are null and void: there is no community integration mandate; states don’t have to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.

For instance, having declined to enforce Olmstead, the Department of Justice has asked the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to vacate its ruling that Florida illegally withheld the community services necessary for medically fragile children to live at home with their families. A recent court judgment found that Texas violated the law by unnecessarily placing intellectually disabled adults in nursing homes, and the DOJ would like that ruling to be reversed. Alaska, the third state still pursuing the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, was found by the previous administration’s DOJ to have unnecessarily withheld community services from emotionally disabled children. The DOJ will likely seek to nullify that judgment as well.

Hence, the DOJ is failing to protect the same vulnerable people whose flourishing mis being undermined by the euthanasia movement, because that’s what the states of Texas, Florida and Alaska want the DOJ to do.

Incentivizing disabled people to die by assisted suicide violates society’s moral duties to people with disabilities. The current government’s approach to institutionalization also violates those principles. Coercing disabled people into institutions to get your political allies out of a legal pickle is an amoral thing to do.

A lot of people in the current government make vocal appeals to family and moral values. Is forcing intellectually disabled adults to live in understaffed nursing homes that smell like pee, and depriving disabled children of the opportunity to grow up with their families, consistent with those values?

I’m not writing about this issue to shame or praise people for how they vote; my commentary on how other disability issues are related to euthanasia is meant to be nonpartisan. I’ve met people from accross the political spectrum who care about disabled persons.

But recent government choices take steps toward creating a more limited and painful world for people with disabilities. Regardless of anyone’s intentions, making it easier for disabled people to be unnecessarily institutionalized contributes to a culture in which disabled people are so marginalized that offering assisted suicide seems normal and appealing.

It’s unjust to medicalize disabled people’s suicides in order to ease burdens on the medical system.

It’s also immoral for disabled people to shoulder the burden of living in institutions to relieve “regulatory burdens” on the state.

Author Note 1: I did an interview with moral theologian Charlie Camosy about how coerced institutionalization and assisted suicide are connected to one another. It can be read here.

Author Note: Here are the details about the updated Community Integration Mandate that is under threat. 

Australia's Northern Territory legalizes assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Australia's Northern Territory

I have sad news.

Australia's Northern Territory was the first jurisdiction in the world to legalize assisted suicide between 1996 - 97, and once again has legalized assisted suicide.

Joseph Hathaway-Wilson reported for ABC News Australia on August 27 that:

The Northern Territory Parliament has passed a bill legalising voluntary assisted dying (VAD) in the NT, with significant restrictions on accessing, and initiating conversations about, the practice.

The NT is now both the first and last Australian jurisdiction to legislate for VAD after a watershed 1995 law was overturned by the Commonwealth two years later.

Hathaway-Wilson reported that no one will be allowed to bring up the issue of assisted suicide and a person will need a 12 month terminal prognosis to be approved.

The Northern Territory passed the first assisted suicide law on May 25, 1995. Australia's Federal government passed An Act Concerning Euthanasia on March 24, 1997 which overturned the Northern Territories euthanasia law.

Dr Philip Nitschke, who became an international euthanasia activist, began by lobbying to legalize assisted suicide in the Northern Territory under the banner of Doctors for change. Nitschke started his killing career in the Northern Territory and was involved with 4 assisted deaths, while it was legal. When the Northern Territory law was overturned in 1997 Nitschke continued to promote assisted suicide and founded the group Exit International, that still exists today.

France's euthanasia law is disturbing.

Dr. Mark Komrad

The following comments were provided by Dr. Mark Komrad, M.D., DFAPA, ACP, Faculty of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, Tulane, and LSU

You may have heard that France’s National Assembly overrode their Senate’s objection to a proposed euthanasia law, and legalized it. A review by the French constitutional court has since upheld it, with a some of important clarifications, a couple of which are disturbing:

1. Like Canada and Benelux countries, the law allows both US style assisted suicide (oral prescription) AND euthanasia (IV lethal injection by doctor). [In all jurisdictions that permit both, typical 99%+ of patients choose euthanasia, to outsource the suicide to the physician].
2. Pharmacists retain the right to conscientious objection, and can refuse to dispense lethal meds, even when ordered.
3. Although religious institutions (Hospice’s, nursing homes) can refuse to provide the killing services, that is only if there is a nearby facility willing to provide the euthanasia. If not, then the right of religious-based objection is overridden, and the religious facility then MUST provide euthanasia to qualified patients! This resembles what we’re seeing in Canada, where some religious institutions’ conscientious objections have been overwritten on this issue.
4. Patients who lack capacity due to dementia, low IQ, etc. and have legal guardians, can be euthanized by doctors’ decision. Though the physician, who must consult the legal guardian those guardians DO NOT HAVE VETO POWER over the doctor’s decision, which is final. This is actually one of the most severe developments in the international spread of euthanasia laws.*

We are horrified by the implementation of this law in France and are gravely concerned with the countless French citizens who are now at risk of deadly harm, particularly people with disabilities.

Nitschke will bring suicide pod to Britain if assisted suicide is legalized.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Philip Nitschke, also known as Dr Death, who invented a suicide pod, stated in an interview, last year, that the suicide pod will be ready for use in Britain if assisted suicide is legalized.

Sanchez Manning reported for the Times on June 20, 2025 that:

Nitschke, who invented the pod, which uses gas to assist death, said: “As soon as we know that the final legislation is in place we’ll start enthusiastically pursuing the option of using the device in the UK.

“We’ll be looking to find UK-registered doctors to assist and of course someone who wants to use it and satisfies all of the requirements under the law.”

In September 2024, long-time euthanasia activist, Philip Nitschke, carried out the first assisted suicide Sarco suicide pod death in Switzerland.

The suicide pod is promoted as an easy and pain free death. The pod is designed in a sleek manner to make it seem like a fashionable way to die. The pod causes death by releasing Nitrogen gas resulting in death within several minutes.

The UK House of Commons will once again debate the Kim Leadbeater assisted suicide bill which passed, by a vote of 330 to 275 on November 29, 2024 at second reading, in the UK House of Commons but died on the order paper in the House of Lords earlier this year.

The House of Lords debated multiple amendments to the flawed Leadbeater bill. The debate in the House of Lords (timed-out) before they voted on the bill.

Lauren Edwards, (Labour MP) for Rochester and Strood, had reintroduced the Leadbeater bill, that is scheduled to have it's first vote on September 11, 2026. The Edwards bill is nearly identical to the Leadbeater bill and therefore may not be required to be debated in the House of Lords, if it passes at final reading in the UK House of Commons based on the rule that if a nearly identical bill passes twice in consecutive parliaments, then it is not required to be debated in the House of Lords.

More recently Nitschke has been promoting the KK suicide "collar" which, when activated, will essentially strangle the person to death.

Nitschke has become a notorious and wealthy promoter of suicide through the sale of his books and devices. He has become famous with the creation of his "suicide pod" that is designed to gain media attention.

Nitshcke is known for his support for suicide on demand. He once told a reporter that even troubled teens should have access to the "peaceful pill".

Nitshke is not an "outsider" in the euthanasia movement. He has been a leader and world-wide euthanasia activist since the mid 1990's when he became the first doctor to legally kill patients in Australia's northern territory that had legalized euthanasia in 1995 but the law was overturned in 1997.

The sad news is that Australia's Northern Territory once again legalized euthanasia on August 27, 2026. 

Temporary injunction protects conscience rights for some Illinois doctors.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Disability leaders opposing assisted suicide

On December 12, 2025 we reported that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed assisted suicide bill SB 9 into law. The Illinois assisted suicide law is scheduled to go into effect on September 12, 2026.

On August 13, 2026 we reported that a group of Illinois physicians, a Catholic bishop and a faith-based nursing home filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block Illinois’ assisted suicide law before it goes into effect.

On August 24, 2026 Molly Sweeney reported for WCIA news that Illinois agreed to a temporary order pausing assisted suicide law for certain hospitals and doctors. Sweeney wrote:

With the temporary injunction, Catholic hospitals under the authority of the Diocese of Springfield, the Lutheran Care Center in Altamont and the four Catholic doctors named in the lawsuit will not be required to comply with the new state law while similar cases are resolved in the appeals court.

The Thomas More Society, the legal group that took the case, stated in their Press Release on August 24 that:

In the near term, the order means that when the law takes effect on September 12, the named plaintiffs may keep serving their patients according to conscience. Illinois cannot force them to tout the alleged “benefits” of assisted suicide, refer patients to someone willing to prescribe lethal drugs, log those requests in a way that triggers the state’s suicide “qualification” process, avoid engaging in whatever the state decides is “misinformation” about suicide, or falsify death certificates to conceal how a patient died. Nor may the state pursue the penalties the law otherwise threatens for refusing: fines of up to $10,000 per violation, loss of licensure, and criminal prosecution.

Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society also stated that:

“We will not rest until Illinois’s immoral and coercive assisted suicide mandate is struck down for good, and every doctor and health care ministry in the state is free to heal without fear of the State’s deadly agenda,”

The decision was entered by U.S. District Judge Franklin U. Valderrama on August 21, 2026. (Link to the decision).

Legalization of Euthanasia in France: conscientious objection and the impartiality of judges

By Odile Marcotte
Retired Professor Department of Computer Science, UQAM and a Euthanasia Prevention Coalition board member.

Previous article: France legalized euthanasia. What's next (Link).

Odile Marcotte

After the National Assembly of France adopted the law on “aid in dying,” (Article Link) five people or groups asked the Constitutional Council (the French equivalent of the Supreme Court of Canada) to state whether this law was constitutional.

In its decision published on August 14, 2026, the Constitutional Council did not reject the law or any part of it but asked for three changes (Link to the article in the Le Point magazine) (Link to the decision). 

The first concerned adults under guardianship, that is, those subject to a guardianship arrangement, who, under the initial version of the law, could request and obtain assisted dying without the guardian being consulted. The Council holds that the guardian must be consulted in such cases (see paragraph 121 of the decision). 

It also holds that pharmacists have the right to conscientious objection, that is, the right to refuse to prepare and provide the lethal substances used in the assisted dying procedure (see paragraph 166). 

Finally, the Council holds that institutions themselves (and not just individuals) have the right to refuse to perform assisted suicide or euthanasia if these practices conflict with their mission or purpose (see paragraph 188). An institution’s refusal, however, “can only be invoked if other institutions are able to meet local needs,” which greatly restricts the institutions’ freedom of conscience.

From our point of view this last point is especially interesting, since certain Canadian provinces (notably Quebec) require every hospice to include euthanasia in its “range of care.” The Maison Saint-Raphaël, for example, which is located near several Montreal hospitals, was compelled to do so. The intolerance displayed by the drafters of the first version of the French law, which did not recognize any freedom of conscience for institutions, has been sharply criticized by several authors, who call for genuine pluralism in the field of end-of-life care (Link to an article on conscience rights). 

Quebec and Canada are in great need of this pluralism! Furthermore, before the Constitutional Council issued its ruling, Ms. Nazila Ghanea, a professor at the University of Oxford and the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, reminded the French government and the Constitutional Council of their obligation to respect the freedom of conscience of healthcare professionals and institutions providing end-of-life care (Link to article). Of course Ms. Ghanea could make a similar statement regarding the Canadian situation if someone brought to her attention the legislation of the federal and provincial governments of Canada, particularly the burden on Quebec hospices to provide euthanasia.

Another important issue is the impartiality of the judges or “wise men,” as members of the Constitutional Council are called. In fact, some members of the Council had already expressed their support for the legalization of euthanasia in one way or another, and the Council received recusal requests targeting two of its members. These requests were rejected by the Council for reasons that were heavily criticized by some legal experts (Article on impartiality). The issue of the impartiality of judges also arises in Canada.

Training and normalizing (MAiD) medical homicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I was speaking to an Ontario palliative care nurse who said that she recently participated in a required (MAiD) euthanasia training session. The training session didn't force her to participate in the act but the session promoted participation in euthanasia and explained how to do it.

Euthanasia (medical homicide) is the killing of a person upon request. It is done by injecting the person with poison drugs that paralyze and put the person into coma and then prevents the lungs from breathing, which causes death.

The nurse said that she was surprised to learn, at the session, that Canadians who are not terminally ill, could be killed by (MAiD) medical homicide.

The nurse stated that she completely opposes euthanasia and would not participate in euthanasia, nonetheless, she was required to attend the "MAiD" training session.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition opposes killing people.

Normalizing killing.

Normalization is a process that reduces the natural opposition to killing. Throughout human history when a society decides that it is OK to kill a certain class of people, that process starts with propaganda and is followed by a normalization process.

Medical homicide training sessions are designed to increase the number of willing killers as well as to normalize the act.

Selling euthanasia.

We have received many calls from supporters who are shocked when a doctor or nurse asks them if they want (MAiD) euthanasia, an act that they would never consider. 

Often the person is asked, many time, if they want to be killed. They are even asked after saying NO. One supporter called and said that her husband was asked 5 times.

Asking patients if they want to be killed by euthanasia is another normalization technique as it creates the impression that euthanasia is the same as any other medical procedure and it is a way of selling euthanasia.

What was sold to the culture as being a free choice, is now being sold to the public as the choice. But to sell killing to the public society avoids the reality, that euthanasia is about killing people. 

It is not compassionate, it is not about freedom, and for many it is not about choice, it is about killing and it is often an abandonment of a person in need.

Contact the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition if you have felt "pressured" or "coerced" to consider euthanasia or if you are a medical professional who has felt pressured to participate in killing.

Your story is important, not only to inform the public, but also to give others permission to also tell their story. Change will only come after

A deeper dive into the California assisted suicide data.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On August 18 I published the article: California 2025 assisted suicide report. More deaths, Missing data which explained the 2025 California assisted suicide report data, uncovering shoddy reporting and missing data in the California assisted suicide reports.

The article reported that the 2025 California assisted suicide report indicates that there were 1,235 reported assisted suicide deaths which is up by 11% from 1,113 in 2024 and 1839 poison prescriptions written in 2025 which was up by almost 8% from 1710 poison prescriptions in 2024.

*Based on incomplete data in previous California assisted suicide reports, I predict that the actual 2025 data is around 1975 poison prescriptions and 1330 assisted suicide deaths.

Let's examine the incomplete data in the report.

The 2024 California assisted suicide report stated that there were 1591 poison prescriptions written and 1032 reported assisted suicide deaths. 

The 2025 California assisted suicide report updated the 2024 data and states that there were 1710 poison prescriptions written and 1,113 reported assisted suicide deaths.

Therefore the 2025 report increased the number of 2024 poison prescriptions by (119) 7.5% and the number of reported assisted suicide deaths by (81) almost 8%. 

Based on the 2024 data, you can understand why I am predicting that the 2026 California assisted suicide report will indicate that in 2025 there were approximately 1975 poison prescriptions written and 1330 assisted suicide deaths in 2025. This data does not include the people who received a poison prescription and whose ingestion status is unknown.

Reasons for data inaccuracy in the report.

The 2025 report indicates that there were 380 people who received the lethal poison but whose ingestion status was unknown. When the ingestion status is unknown, they know that the person received the lethal prescription, but they do not know if the person died or how they died. The 380 people, whose ingestion status was unknown, could have died by assisted suicide with no report being filed.

The 2025 report acknowledges that the data discrepencies and states the following:

Note that cumulative counts reported above do not match prior reports. These differences arise from several factors including: 

• the timing of forms received; 

• the registration of deaths; and, 

• the inclusion of duplicate records in prior reports, which have been removed.

There are problems with the timing of forms received and with the registration of deaths, but the removal of duplicate reports, does not explain how the 2025 report increased the numbers from previous years as removing duplicate reports would decrease the numbers.

Let's examine the 2021 assisted suicide death data. The 2025 report states that 3 more 2021 poison prescriptions were uncovered in 2025 and 2 more assisted suicide deaths. These three poison prescriptions and 2 assisted suicide deaths were found 4 years late. Where were these reports?

Further to that there are intentional euthanasia deaths in California, but just not reported. A supporter of ours sent us the following private message:

California is MUCH further down the road than the public understands. In 2024 I was in a 'recovery' nursing home/hospice in Sacramento. I was in for congestive heart failure (CHF). I was personally pressured, as was my family, to be compassionate and face an objective reality: "He is incurable and about to die" My death at their hand would NOT have been reported. CHF would be listed as the cause. THAT is the law and practice in California.

Other issues from the report.

The report indicates that 94.3% of the people who are approved for assisted suicide are receiving hospice and/or palliative care. This is a bold statement considering the fact that the assisted suicide doctors are encouraged to enroll assisted suicide requesters into palliative care.

It is one thing to be enrolled in hospice and/or palliative care. It is another thing to be receiving hospice and/or palliative care. In other words, the death lobby wants it to appear that nearly everyone who died by assisted suicide was also being cared for by hospice and/or palliative care.

There needs to be an independent study conducted by a doctoral student who is honestly attempting to uncover the real data. It is very likely that there is a large number of unreported assisted suicide deaths in California.

Assisted suicide is for the privileged.

The Public Policy Institute of California reported in January 2026 that California has the most diverse population in the US. The January 2026 report stated that in July 2025:

No race or ethnic group constitutes a majority of the state population: 41% of Californians are Latino, 34% are white, 17% are Asian American or Pacific Islander, 5% are Black, 3% are multiracial, and less than 1% are Native American or Alaska Natives, according to US Census Bureau estimates.

The 2025 California asssisted suicide report indicated that those who died by assisted suicide:

• 85.5% of the people were White, 
• 6.4% of the people were Asian, 
• 5.5% of the people were Latino, 
• 1.2% of the people where Black,
• 1% were Multiracial, and
• none of the people were Native American.

White people are predominantly dying by assisted suicide even though they represent only 34% of California's population.

The Public Policy Institute of California published in February 2026 that 35 - 37% of Californians have a University degree and yet the California assisted suicide report indicates that more than 52% of the assisted suicide deaths are people with a University degree.

The California assisted suicide reports have missing data and under-reporting is very likely and yet assisted suicide is a life and death issue. 

People have the right to know the assisted suicide reality in California and everywhere. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition calls on the California Department of Public Health to carry out an independent, in depth research project which would:

• do a large survey of how people in California are dying,
• examine the large number of cases where the person received the assisted suicide prescription, but whose ingestion status is unknown,
• examine more closely the reality of why people are asking for death by assisted suicide.

It is likely that an independent study would uncover unreported assisted suicide deaths and similar to the Netherlands, it is likely that the report would uncover that euthanasia (homicide) deaths are also happening in California.

Euthanasia is 'Medical Homicide' not Medical Assistance in Dying.

Gordon Friesen

Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Why euthanasia and assisted suicide are properly spoken of as ‘medical homicide’ , not ‘medical assistance in dying’

It is a great advantage to use the plain language of common speech. For simple words, themselves, enable us to clarify our thoughts, and to communicate those thoughts effectively to others.

One obstacle, for example, to building a unified worldwide campaign in opposition to medical homicide, springs from a misunderstanding of the essential unity between ‘euthanasia’ and ‘assisted suicide’. In the US, in particular, medical homicide promoters routinely claim that foreign experience with ‘euthanasia’ does not matter, because they are only trying to install ‘assisted suicide’.

Indeed, this distinction makes intuitive sense to us, because we see a real difference between ordinary ‘suicide’ (where people kill themselves), and ‘homicide’ (where they are killed by others). However, to think in this way is to misunderstand what it means for suicide and homicide to be treated as truly ‘medical’ acts. For when coherently observed from a medical perspective, there is actually no fundamental difference between them.

Medicine is an art, which is practiced according to well established rules. First the doctor makes a diagnosis. Then he (or she) will propose clinically indicated treatment. And so it is --that although all patients are free to make whatever demands or suggestions they may desire-- real choices are always limited to those measures which are actually endorsed by their physicians.

Beyond any ambiguity, therefore: physicians (not patients) bear full responsibility for any treatment proposed, prescribed or provided.

Furthermore (and again from a strictly medical perspective) it is irrelevant whether physician prescribed, pharmaceutical remedies are administered orally, or by injection. The doctor is equally responsible for both.

Hence, although administration methods may differ, the poisons necessary for medical homicide are always administered under doctor authority. And thus, when American promoters of medical homicide make a great show of limiting their legislative proposals to ‘self-ingestion’ only, the implied assertion --that patients are autonomously killing themselves (as opposed to being killed by their doctors)-- is simply unjustified. From a medical viewpoint: it is definitely doctors killing their patients, in all cases.

But these facts can only be easily conveyed when we use proper vocabulary.

To speak rationally about our subject, at all, we must always have the courage to plainly speak of ‘killing’ (not ‘assistance in dying’). However, even the term ‘killing’ is not specific enough.

‘Homicide’ is the only word in the English language which uniquely denotes the taking of human life (whether that homicide be considered culpable or non-culpable). Building from that base, the phrase 'medical homicide’, precisely denotes the killing of any person, in any fashion, for medical purposes. It is not pejorative. It is accurate. And as we have seen, it may correctly be used to denote both medically assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Unfortunately, however, just as clear thinking is enabled by clear language: vague language breeds confusion. The clarity achieved above is only possible when we honestly look at the meaning of those plain words ‘suicide’ and ‘homicide’ and then see how they are modified by adding the crucial term ‘medical’.

Most mischievously, this crucial question (of who is killing who) can never be elucidated using the artificial vocabulary of conventional debate, because politically imposed euphemisms like ‘medical aid in dying’ are designed to avoid any reference to ‘killing’ at all; and with a simple wave of that magic linguistic wand, both ‘suicide’ and ‘homicide’ are deemed to disappear.

It is under the banner of this misleading vocabulary that death friendly physicians are now busily normalizing their macabre practice --one way or another-- through the standard professional sequence of diagnosis, proposal and prescription. And in the meantime (with a complete, and oblivious contempt for truth), the promoters of new legislation continue to propose both euthanasia and assisted suicide as ‘medical aid in dying’ , but they still rely upon public gullibility to pretend that the two are completely different.

‘Medical homicide’, I believe, is the term perfectly adapted to dispel these myths, and thus, the perfect term to sustain a meaningful, unified and stable conversation, across borders, and over time.

Gordon Friesen, Montreal, August 21, 2026

Previous similar articles:

• Medical Homicide as Psychiatric Treatment (Link).
• Medical Homicide is a discriminatory oppression for the sick and disabled (Link).