Assisted suicide death ceremonies are being normalized

This article was published by National Review online on January 1, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Back in 1991 or so, I was invited by an elderly and ill suicidal friend — along with about 20 of her other pals — to gather in her apartment for a suicide party. Frances’ idea was that she would tell us how much we meant to her, we would reciprocate, and she would swallow pills.

Instead, all her friends were appalled and held an intervention. Soon, the suicide was off. (Frances did the deed the next year, after telling her friends she wouldn’t, under the influence of proselytizing literature published by the assisted suicide Hemlock Society, a sad tale recounted in my book Forced Exit.)

Back then, celebrating or otherwise honoring a suicide was unthinkable. Today, thanks to the assisted suicide movement, suicide parties and ceremonies are becoming common (and increasingly reported in the media). From a syndicated story that ran in the Rome (Georgia) News Tribune:

In early August, Christina Werner, a retired operating room nurse, met up with a close friend for a walk through the redwoods in Marin County. It’s a common pastime for many people in the Bay Area, but this walk was different, Reasons to Be Cheerful reports .

Werner and her friend went on the hike specifically to celebrate the life of a friend, an outdoor enthusiast and nursing colleague who had suffered immensely with ALS — the rare, fatal neurological disorder that causes the gradual loss of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord — and was physically unable to leave the house anymore.

Their friend had chosen to end her struggles that morning in an end-of-life ceremony held at the friend’s home, among a small group of loved ones and an end-of-life doula named Anthea Grimason.

On the hike, both women shed tears, but there was not a big sense of doom. Werner was excited that everything had gone according to her friend’s death plan, and that her suffering had ended.

“We were sad, and she will be sorely missed, but we all leave this earth, and I am happy for her in a weird way,” Werner says. “She was suffering, but she made it really comfortable for everybody. She was excited for her D-Day. It put her in control of a body that wasn’t functioning for her anymore.”

The larger story in the cited report is about so-called death cafes where people go to discuss death and dying. I certainly believe we should all remember that we are going to die as a means of focusing our faith or concentrating on how to live better lives.

But by attending a suicide party or ceremony, we validate the decision and, in so doing, become complicit in that death. This matters because even the most ill suicidal persons can, with proper prevention interventions, change their minds. By supporting the suicide choice, we may be robbing our loved one of a last chance at further life that he or she might have found satisfying and worth living.

So, if you are ever asked to attend such a gathering, I hope you will love the person enough to make what may seem the harder choice: Refuse and instead offer support in their continuing to live.

Some may accuse you of judgementalism. So be it.

Or they may accuse you of abandoning the suicidal person. But really, it is the other way around.

Assisted Suicide: Proceed With Caution.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Joel Zivot who is an associate professor of anesthesiology/ surgery at Emory University and a senior fellow at the Emory Center for Ethics wrote an article about the UK assisted suicide debate that was published by Medpage Today on December 26, 2024.

Zivot's article is based on the British assisted suicide debate but his article effectively challenges assisted suicide in general. Zivot writes:

For now, British assisted dying intends to pattern itself after the Oregon model as outlined in the state's Death with Dignity Act. Oregon assisted dying has itself come under scrutiny, including concerns about complications. However, if Britain, a U.S. state, or any other country were to pivot and follow the Canadian model, I fear the consequences would be even worse.

Zivot then comments on the Canadian euthanasia model:

In the aftermath of the Carter decision, MAID has accelerated and expanded at a pace scarcely imaginable. In 2016, the country had 1,018 MAID deaths. By 2023, that number increased more than 15-fold to 15,343, for a total of more than 60,000 Canadian deaths by MAID since the passage of the legislation. That number continues to grow every year. Canada's MAID program is the fastest-growing assisted-dying program in the world. Since its passage, the law was expanded and now, death does not need to be foreseeable. MAID is available for any grievous and irremediable medical condition. MAID is not currently available for mental health reasons, but there has been discussion of this possibility.

MAID eligibility can occur rapidly in some cases, and very few MAID requests are denied. However, wait times to see a doctor for traditional medical care can be significantly prolonged: a Canadian citizen might wait 4 months to see a psychiatrist in some parts of Canada, but in other regions, that wait can be several years. Some groups believe that MAID should be available to children under certain circumstances. MAID has also been incentivized by offering it as a pathway for organ donation, a violation of the ethical principle of the dead donor rule. MAID has been requested and granted to prisoners facing lengthy prison sentences.

Zivot explains how euthanasia in Canada is done.

In Canada, the majority of euthanasia is done via an injection of substantial dosages of the anesthetic agents propofol, midazolam, and the paralytic rocuronium. Propofol and midazolam are likely not the cause of death. Instead, it is most likely the rocuronium, leading to death by muscle paralysis. Once paralyzed, MAID deaths will appear outwardly calm and peaceful. However, this is essentially death by asphyxiation. The U.S. death penalty commonly uses an intravenous cocktail known as lethal injection. This cocktail is strikingly similar to Canadian MAID. Studies show lethal injection can cause rapid accumulation of fluid in the lungs -- prisoners feel they are drowning as they die. Far from dignified, death by MAID may be highly distressing.

The Luminous Veil

Zivot then compares assisted suicide to suicide.

Before MAID, a Canadian story provided such an example. In 2003, a suicide prevention barrier, the luminous veil, was installed at Toronto's Bloor Street Viaduct bridge. Once in place, this barrier blocked people from jumping off the bridge. Before this, the Bloor Street Viaduct bridge was the second most common place in North America for suicide by jumping after the notorious killer, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. After the luminous veil was installed, not only did the suicide rate from the bridge fall to near-zero (only two have taken place from 2003-2020), but the overall rate of bridge-related suicide dropped in Toronto. There was also no change in suicides by other methods.

This finding might mean that when it is harder to commit suicide, people may choose not to. Could the opposite be true, too? When suicide is more available, some people will choose it when, in other circumstances, perhaps they may not. The confluence of misery and means that leads some to suicide cannot be minimized. An effective way to prevent a person from dying by suicide is to restrict that person's access to the means of ending his or her life. This approach, known as means restriction, is utilized in a complementary fashion with mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Of note, Britain has been a leader in implementing means restriction policies. Poisoning by coal gas was the leading cause of suicide death in Britain before the mandatory switch to natural gas. In Britain, paracetamol (acetaminophen in the U.S.) has been only available in blister packs (with limited pill quantities) since 1998 to reduce the incidence of suicide by intentional overdose.

Zivot concludes:

The job of medicine is to protect vulnerable patients. The prospect of euthanizing anyone prematurely undermines public trust and degrades the medical profession. Also, the technique used in Canada may cause death in a fashion more sinister than acknowledged.

As Britain considers and debates its assisted-dying bill, it must do so cautiously. Advancing age and illness addle us all. A functioning civil society is meant to protect us when we cannot protect ourselves. Unchecked, assisted suicide risks sending the message that the sick are less valued people, better off dead than alive.

Previous articles related to Dr Joel Zivot (Link to articles)

Colorado assisted suicide deaths increase in 2023.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The 2023 Colorado assisted suicide report indicates that assisted suicide poison prescriptions and deaths have continued to rise every year since legalization.

Even though the number of assisted suicide deaths is continually increasing Colorado Governor Gary Polis signed Senate Bill 24-068 on June 5 to expand their State assisted suicide law. Nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide has expanded their law.

The Colorado assisted suicide report indicated that in 2023 there were 389 lethal poison prescriptions written, which was up by more than 22% from 318 in 2022, 218 in 2021 and 185 in 2020.

The Colorado report indicated that in 2023, 294 of the lethal poison prescriptions were dispensed which was up by more than 18% from 249 in 2022, 164 in 2021 and 149 in 2020.

The data seems confusing since Colorado collects information on the number of lethal poison prescriptions that are written and it collects information on the number of lethal poison prescriptions dispensed but it doesn't collect information on how many people actually died by assisted suicide.

We expect that the 2024 Colorado assisted suicide report will show more increases in deaths now that Colorado expanded their assisted suicide law in 2024.

The assisted suicide lobby knows that it is harder to legalize assisted suicide than to expand the law once it is legal. Nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide has later expanded their law.

The Illinois General Assembly may try to legalize assisted suicide next week.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Action Alert: 

The Illinois General Assembly may attempt to legalize assisted suicide during next week's Lame Duck session. 

The bill would be similar to SB 3499, a bill that was filed by Senator Linda Holmes in February 2024. This is not the first time that the assisted suicide lobby has tried to pass killer legislation during a Lame Duck or even Special Session. That is how assisted suicide was legalized in California in 2015.

Find your Illinois elected officials by clicking HERE.

Illinois elected representatives will have been told that SB 3499 is a tightly worded bill.

Most assisted suicide bills are written with specific "safeguard" language designed to sell support for assisted suicide among legislators. This is a bait and switch tactic to legalize assisted suicide and then expand the law later.

The reality is that nearly every State that has legalized assisted suicide has later expanded the law. Assisted suicide bills, such as in Illinois, must be defeated.

You don't want Illinois doctors to become killers.

We believe in Caring Not Killing.