Nevada's dangerous assisted suicide bill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Nevada state legislature.

In May 2023, EPC sent out an alert urging Americans to contact Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo to veto assisted suicide Bill SB 239 after it passed in the Nevada Senate by a vote of 11 to 10 and in the Nevada House by a vote of 23 to 19. 

In June 2023, EPC sent out a Thank You email after Governor Lombardo vetoed assisted suicide Bill SB 239. Lombardo stated in his veto that legalizing assisted suicide was not necessary based on modern improvements in pain management.

Recently three Nevada legislators introduced assisted suicide Bill AB 346. Most assisted suicide legalization bills are more moderate. The goal of the assisted suicide lobby is to get the bill passed and then expand it later. But AB 346 has several dangerous elements to it. For instance AB 346:

• Allows the "practitioner" to be either a physician or an advanced practise registered nurse to approve and prescribe the lethal poison drug cocktail.
• Requires a 15-day reflection period, but it allows the practitioner to waive the 15 day reflection period.
  
• Defines assisted suicide as a form of palliative care. The assisted suicide lobby is trying to change the definition of palliative care to include killing people. If assisted suicide is a form of palliative care, then assisted suicide is also a form of medical treatment.
• Requires the death certificate to name the cause of death as the disease or the sequence of causes resulting in death, but must not list lethal poison drug cocktail (assisted suicide) as the cause of death.
• Requires the "practitioner" to self-report the assisted suicide death but only requires the report to include the name and date of birth of the patient (person who died), the date on which the patient died and a statement of whether the patient was receiving hospice care at the time of death. This level of reporting is incredibly minimal.
• States that deaths by assisted suicide do not constitute mercy killing, euthanasia, assisted suicide, suicide or homicide. Therefore, if the person who died but did not self-administer (it was done to them, as in euthanasia) it would not be considered a euthanasia or a homicide. In other words, this bill allows for euthanasia/homicide through the back door.
• The bill defines assisted suicide as medical treatment by including in the definition of medical treatment: Dispensing a medication that is designed to end the life of a patient pursuant to the provisions of sections 5 to 33, inclusive, of this act. Once assisted suicide is defined as a medical treatment then it becomes the right of a person to be informed of the "option".
  
• The bill not only deems advance requests for assisted suicide as unenforceable and void, but it also deems advance requests prohibiting assisted suicide to be unenforceable and void.

So why are these concerns important? Nevada assisted suicide proponents claim that Bill AB 346 has effective safeguards. But when one reads the language of the bill you notice that AB 346 is a dangerous assisted suicide bill.

In fact, AB 346 is the perfect cover for homicide.