Assisted suicide lobby launches court case to force Colorado to permit suicide tourism.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On May 22, the assisted suicide lobby filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Jeff McComas and two Colorado physicians challenging the state assisted suicide law residency requirement. 

The complaint argued that the Colorado assisted suicide law residency requirement violates the U.S. Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause which “prohibits State officials from restricting non-resident visitors’ access to medical care within its borders absent a substantial State interest and restrictions narrowly tailored to those interests.”

The assisted suicide lobby made the same arguements in Oregon, Vermont and New Jersey. Oregon and Vermont have subsequently removed their state assisted suicide law residency requirements whereas New Jersey has successfully defended their state assisted suicide law residency requirement in the court.

Jeff McComas's rights are not being infringed by Colorado's assisted suicide law being limited to state residents.

First: Oregon and Vermont will assist the suicide of out-of-state residents. McComas has access to assisted suicide in Oregon and Vermont, therefore his constitutional rights are not being violated.

Second: Assisted suicide is not a form of medical treatment or care therefore the Privileges and Immunities Clause does not apply to assisted suicide.

Colorado legalized assisted suicide by passing Proposition 106 during the November 2016 election. In 2024, Colorado passed Senate Bill 24-068 expanding their assisted suicide law by: 

• allowing advanced practice registered nurses to approve and prescribe lethal poison, 
• reducing the waiting period from 15 days to 7 days, and
• allowing doctors or advanced practise registered nurse to waive the waiting period if the person is near to death.

The original version of SB 24-068 allowed non-residents to die by assisted suicide in Colorado but this amendment was rejected by legislators.

The 2024 Colorado assisted suicide report indicated that there were 510 lethal poison prescriptions written in 2024 up by 28% from 398 in 2023. 18 of the lethal poison prescriptions were based on the person having an eating disorder.

Massachusetts Committee delays vote on assisted suicide bill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Massachusetts Public Health Committee is delaying their consideration of the state assisted suicide bill by 30 days. Chris Lisinski reported for Yahoo News on June 3, 2025 that:

Legislators last week asked for a 30-day extension on a bill that would authorize physician-assisted suicide (H 2505), according to the House clerk’s office, keeping it idling in the Public Health Committee through a Tuesday event that drew both supporters and opponents of the long-debated policy.

Backers of the proposal, which has stalled out without a House or Senate vote for multiple terms in a row, argued they made “historic progress” last session by winning support from both the Public Health Committee and Health Care Financing Committee.

Lisinski reported that Senator Jo Comerford told an opponent of the bill that:

“This is not an easy conversation to have, yet in this State House, we welcome democratic engagement, we welcome debate, we welcome dissent,” the Northampton Democrat said. “If we weren’t asking important questions about whether or not assisted suicide could be made safe — and I do believe it’s made safe in this bill, I do believe that — we wouldn’t be doing our jobs. This is too important a bill for us not to engage seriously with, so you are welcome here.”

“If there are ways to make this stronger, let’s do it together, friends. We are not railroading this bill through the State House,” she added.

As stated by one of the signs at the Public Health Committee, Assisted Suicide Cannot Be MAiD Safe.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition urges our supporters to continue contacting their elected representatives in Massachusetts to oppose the bill. We oppose killing people.

Stephen Mendelsohn was a fierce opponent of assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

We mourn the death of the great Stephen Mendelsohn (Link).

Jesse Leavenworth with The Stamford Advocate wrote an article that was published on June 3, 2025 promoting a memorial event for Stephen Mendelsohn, who recently died in an accident. The memorial event was on June 3rd.

Mendelsohn (63) was an amazing genius and focused disability activist who worked tirelessly to oppose assisted suicide as a member of Second Thoughts Connecticut and as a member of the EPC - USA board has died.

Leavenworth wrote:

WEST HARTFORD — Stephen Mendelsohn of New Britain, who was hit and killed by a car in West Hartford Sunday, was remembered for his passionate activism and remarkable memory. He was 63.

Often quoted by media in the state, Mendelsohn, a fierce opponent of legalizing assisted suicide in Connecticut and the nation, was active with Second Thoughts Connecticut, an organization focused in particular on preventing suicide among people with disabilities, and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which lobbies against aid-in-dying legislation in the U.S. and Canada.

Coalition Executive Director Alex Schadenberg said Tuesday that Mendelsohn was a detail-oriented researcher who kept the organization up to date on laws and proposed bills throughout the U.S.

"We depended on him," Schadenberg said.

Stephen Mendelsohn was one of the many heroes who have worked tirelessly to oppose assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide activist appears to have died by suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Florian Willet with Philip Nitschke

Florian Willet, who was the co-chair of the last-resort suicide organization, reportedly died by suicide last month in Cologne Germany “with the help of a specialised organisation”.

The suicide death of Willet is tragic, but I recognize that Willet was not terminally ill or physically suffering, but rather it was stated that: “Florian’s spirit was broken.” after serving 70 days in jail after being arrested in the "suicide pod" death of a 64-year-old unnamed American woman.

On September 24, 2024 I published an article stating that the Swiss police had made arrests related to the Sarco suicide pod. Willet was one of the participants who was arrested and held in jail in the Sarco suicide pod death, while Swiss police investigated.

The Sarco suicide pod kills a person by releasing nitrogen gas into the pod causing the person to die of asphyxiation. On September 29, 2024 I published an article explaining why the Sarco suicide pod method constitutes torture.

Miriam Kuepper and Elena Salvoni reported for the Daily Mail, on October 28, 2024 that strangulation marks were found on the 64-year-old American woman who died in the Sarco death pod. 

The investigation related to the strangulation marks ended when the strangulation marks were attributed to the jerking of the victims muscles and her arms while she was dying of asphyxiation.

An article by Adam Sage that was published by the Times on June 3, 2025 stated that:

A euthanasia activist who was arrested for providing a suicide pod in which a woman took her own life in Switzerland last year has died after developing a psychotic disorder.

Florian Willet, 47, is thought to have taken his own life. He was a “broken” man after spending 70 days in custody in connection with the death of an American woman in a specially-designed capsule in a Swiss forest, according to The Last Resort, the right-to-die association he jointly chaired.

Sage further explained that:

Swiss prosecutors initially suspected Willet of murder after discovering strangulation marks on the neck of the first user of the capsule — a 64-year-old American suffering from skull base osteomyelitis. He was the only person beside the pod when she died.

Although he was released from detention in December when prosecutors discounted the murder allegation, the investigation has continued into claims that he and other people close to The Last Resort incited the pod user to take their own life.

The Last resort assisted suicide group claimed that Willet was a victim. Sage wrote:

The Last Resort sought to depict Willet as a victim of Swiss justice. A statement from the organisation said: “He knew that he did nothing illegal or wrong, but his belief in the rule of law in Switzerland was in tatters. In the final months of his life, Dr Florian Willet shouldered more than any man should. Florian has now paid the ultimate price — his life — for his compassion.”

Willet's death is tragic but he was not a victim and certainly not a hero. His death underlines the goals of the assisted suicide lobby. He died with the assistance of a "specialised organization" even though he was not terminally ill and was experiencing a treatable condition. The goal of Philip Nitschke and the assisted suicide lobby, as stated by Wesley Smith is:

Death on demand, for any reason, at any time, by anyone — with the possible exception of children — and assisted by whomever for any reason. This is the ultimate destination of the euthanasia movement, whether by design or simple logical consequence.

The Sarco suicide pod was invented by Philip Nitschke, who had lost his medical license in Australia. A 64-year-old American woman died in the Sarco pod in connection to The Last Resort Swiss assisted suicide group that was led by Florian Willett, a former spokesperson for the euthanasia group Dignitas and Fiona Stewart, the wife of Philip Nitschke.

We mourn the death of the great Stephen Mendelsohn

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have terrible news.

The amazing genius and focused disability activist, Stephen Mendelsohn (63), worked tirelessly to oppose assisted suicide as a member of Second Thoughts Connecticut and as a member of the EPC - USA board has died.

According to a media report Stephen Mendelsohn died when he was hit by a car on Sunday evening (June 1).

Mendelsohn will truly be missed.

Mendelsohn was an incredible researcher. He would read through legislative texts and uncover specific language variations that may not have been noticed immediately. Also, the interventions that he wrote opposing assisted suicide bills often used new talking points and ways to oppose killing by assisted suicide.

Mendelsohn followed assisted suicide leglislation closely and regularly sent updates to leaders to inform us on state bills.

Mendelsohn was an activist who was willing to let it be known why he opposed assisted suicide.

Stephen Mendelsohn cannot be replaced. I hope that another active focussed and caring researcher / thinker will soon come forward.

I cannot express enough the loss EPC and others are experiencing in the death of our friend Stephen Mendelsohn.

Zekher tzadik livrakha

Some articles by Stephen Mendelsohn:

• Connecticut bill to prohibit drugs for capital punishment must also prohibit drugs for assisted suicide (Link).
• Testimony in strong opposition to Minnesota End-of-Life options act (Link).
• Strong opposition to Connecticut assisted suicide bill (Link).
• Connecticut assisted suicide bill is defeated again (Link).
• Disability leader testifies against Connecticut assisted suicide bill (Link).
• Assisted suicide lobby spreads falsehoods to promote systematic ableism (Link).

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition works to Protect Your Life.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) offers several ways to protect you from euthanasia and assisted suicide.

EPC asks you to share your personal stories related to euthanasia or assisted suicide. Many people have family or friends who died by euthanasia or assisted suicide under questionable circumstances. By sharing your story, you open the door to other people sharing their story.

1. The Life-Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care will protect you when you cannot make medical or personal care decisions for yourself.

This legal document enables you to appoint someone you trust to be your Power of Attorney for Personal Care (language differs based on jurisdiction). This document makes clear statements about euthanasia, assisted suicide and medical treatment options and guides medical practitioners and the person you have appointed to make medical and personal care decisions that protect your life, when you are unable to make decisions for yourself.

The Life Protecting Power of Attorney uses a basic format that is legal within most jurisdictions and also has available specific formats for jurisdictions with special requirements.

Canadians purchase the Life-Protecting Power of Attorney from EPC for $10 + taxes. 

Americans purchase US State versions from EPC-USA for $15  (Purchase link) or contact EPC at: 1-877-439-3348 or info@epcc.ca.

2. EPC suggests that you write a straight forward letter to your physician explaining that you oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide and have that letter added to your medical file.

3. The Do Not Kill Me wallet card is available from EPC upon request or with a donation. The card provides further protection when sign and date, with a witness, on the back of the card.

EPC will send you Do Not Kill Me wallet cards by contacting us by email: info@epcc.ca. or at: 1-877-439-3348. 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition yearly friendship fee is $30 (individual) or $50 (group). Pay for your friendship online.

 

Donations can be made to EPC by (Online Donation Link) or (Paypal Donation Link) or send E-transfer donations to:  info@epcc.ca or call the EPC office at: 1-877-439-3348.

EPC works with the Compassionate Community Care charity (CCC) that offers practical advice and information for people when they or a loved one has questions related to medical treatment options or are concerned that a loved one is considering or being pressured to be killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide.

CCC developed a community based Visitor Training Program to provide training for you to visit people who are lonely and isolated. CCC also developed an Advocacy Training Program to help you to provide medical or personal care advocacy for people you know. CCC has also established a calling service to contact people who are lonely, isolated and vulnerable. Contact CCC at: 1-855-675-8749.

Physicians for Compassionate Care Testimony against Oregon Assisted Suicide Law expansion bill.

Testimony in opposition to Oregon SB 1003
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation
Expertise: Pediatric Anesthesiology/Critical Care, Medical Ethics
Senate Rules Committee June 2, 2025

I am Dr. Sharon Quick, President of the Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation. We advocate for the vulnerable terminally ill, promoting good palliative care. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesiology, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose SB 1003-A Engrossed. Please see the following reasons for our opposition.

1. Reducing the waiting period to 7 days from 15 days (p. 5, lines 27-31, 40-43) does not allow adequate time to fully assess a patient who may be suffering from complex emotional/mental health/existential problems that can worsen physical pain. Mental health problems and deficits in decision-making capacity are common in the terminally ill but often missed by physicians. This bill devalues vulnerable patients suffering from disabilities—such as mental health problems, lack of capacity, psychological distress over loss of function—that will not be uncovered due to inadequate time for assessment. Nor is there time for patients to change their minds, which they often do.

a. It is unclear why there is a need to reduce the waiting period. No dying patient should have unbearable pain. Such a complaint indicates the clinician lacks knowledge about the management of complex pain—an unawareness that is far too common. Lethal drugs are a poor solution for lack of education of clinicians. Furthermore, patients in significant pain have compromised capacity to choose, invalidating consent for lethal drugs.
b. Lethal drugs do not guarantee a peaceful death; there are many contraindications and side effects to these mouth-burning, experimental concoctions. Palliative care can ensure a peaceful death to a far greater degree than lethal drugs.

2. There are good medical reasons to DISALLOW lethal drugs the closer a patient gets to death, but this bill authorizes the opposite (waiving the waiting period for patients close to death)—and allows this difficult determination by one clinician, without any defined expertise, and without a second opinion. (p. 5, lines 44-45 to p. 6, lines 1-4) PATIENTS WITHIN A WEEK OF DEATH USUALLY HAVE COMPROMISED MENTAL CAPACITY AND INABILITY TO INGEST LIQUIDS, MAKING CONSENT UNLIKELY AND INGESTION DANGEROUS.

3. Shortening and/or eliminating the waiting period provide a mechanism for anyone, whether terminally ill or not, to access lethal drugs through voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED). This is happening in OR, but physicians have not been sanctioned for this abuse.

a. Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) has been used as a “bridge” to prescription of lethal drugs in Oregon. In 2023, Oregon resident Cody Sontag, decided to commit suicide via VSED to prevent her dementia from advancing. On her fifth day of VSED, a physician assessed Cody as “terminally ill” due to dehydration, and a consulting physician concurred through telehealth. The physician determined that Cody would die within 15 days and waived her waiting period; she died by lethal drug ingestion 2 days later. This action is in clear violation of Oregon’s law which defines terminal illness as an “incurable and irreversible disease.” Dehydration is neither incurable nor irreversible, nor is it a “disease.” Additionally, dehydration reduces cognition, and this is worsened by a baseline of dementia; it is unlikely that Cody had sufficient decision-making capacity to make her consent valid. VSED could potentially be used in this way for any adult for any reason. In 2024, 179 patients (29% of those who received lethal drug prescriptions) had their waiting periods waived. How many of these patients had an induced “bridge” to lethal prescriptions like Cody? No one, including physicians, should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless and to assist with termination of those so judged.

4. The bill removes the requirement for the second opinion to include evaluating patient capacity, absence of coercion, and a fully informed decision. (p. 3, lines 42-43; p. 4, lines 35-40) These are potentially more difficult assessments than determining the presence of a terminal disease, and a second opinion should be mandatory for those assessments.

5. Requiring health care facilities and hospice programs to publicly disclose their positions on participation in assisted suicide may be a conscience violation. Assisted suicide is not considered a medical procedure but unethical patient abandonment by most physicians and health care practitioners in the world. Requiring health care facilities or programs to make statements about their degree of involvement with it has the effect of making those facilities appear to agree that assisted suicide is a medical practice, even when they do not agree that it is. This is a conscience violation.

6. Changing the word “physician” to “practitioner” is confusing and unnecessary if only physicians are allowed to prescribe lethal drugs. The obvious reason for this word change is to set the stage to allow non-physicians, such as nurse practitioners or physician assistants to prescribe lethal drugs by a simple definition change of “practitioner” in line 42 on page 2 (p. 2, Sec. 3, lines 8-9, 15-17, 42). Vulnerable patients wanting to hasten death with lethal drugs risk their lives on the decisions made--they deserve the highest level of expertise from physicians. Reasons to not open the door to non-physicians:

a. Proponents have stated that rural areas lack physicians willing to prescribe lethal drugs, and advocate allowing non-physicians to participate to expand access in these areas. However, both rural access to palliative care and the number of palliative care prescribers are estimated to be insufficient to meet Oregon’s needs.1 It is a disservice to patients to potentially make lethal drugs more accessible than palliative care.
b. Medicare requires that a physician, not other types of clinicians, certify that a patient is terminally ill for hospice admission.
    i. Although physicians are frequently wrong about a 6-months prognosis, there is evidence that physicians are more accurate than nurses in prognoses.
    ii. Physicians often miss depression2 and deficits in decision-making capacity3; those with lesser qualifications should not make such judgments.
    iii. The training of physician assistants (PAs) is insufficient in end-of-life care, evaluating a patient’s decision-making capacity, determining prognosis for terminal illness, or deciding that death is imminent.4

7. Given the current abuse of Oregon’s law, allowing it to function as a mechanism for termination of people who may not be terminally ill or may be under coercion, please oppose SB 1003, which drops further safeguards. Instead, perhaps further safeguards and better oversight need to be put in place.

a. VSED, as described in #3 above, is being used as a way for non-terminally ill patients to obtain lethal drug prescriptions.
b. In Oregon, patients are getting lethal prescriptions for diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, and arthritis (Oregon 2021 Data Summary, p. 14, footnote 3)—diagnoses that are not terminal by themselves—but there is no process for challenging physician actions. Oregon, California, and Colorado have unethically provided lethal drugs to patients with eating disorders.
c. Thomas Middleton, a terminally ill Oregon resident, moved in with the trustee of his estate and then died by physician-assisted suicide in 2008. The trustee sold his house and deposited the money in her account; she was arrested on theft and criminal mistreatment charges, but whether physicians had inappropriately prescribed lethal drugs (by not properly investigating coercion) was never investigated.

NOTES
1. Only 40% of rural and 32% of suburban areas have access to hospital-based palliative care—numbers which are below both the national and Pacific region averages. (Link)
2. Oregon patients with depression have died from lethal prescriptions. Ganzini, L., E. R. Goy, and S. K. Dobscha. "Prevalence of Depression and Anxiety in Patients Requesting Physicians' Aid in Dying: Cross Sectional Survey." Bmj 337 (2008): a1682.
3. One study found that about 90% of cancer patients had deficits on some subscale of decision-making capacity, but the majority of physicians missed these deficits. Kolva, E., B. Rosenfeld, and R. Saracino. "Assessing the Decision-Making Capacity of Terminally Ill Patients with Cancer." Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 26, no. 5 (May 2018): 523-531. (Link).
4. As of 2023 only 227 PAs (0.2%) in the nation had specialty training in hospice and palliative care. This bill does not distinguish between PAs with experience/expertise and those without. (Link), p. 6

The callous cruelty of euthanasia in Canada.

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

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

The New York Times Magazine has a very long article out today highlighting cases of nonterminally ill people being killed by doctors in Canada. It is too long to comment on the whole thing. (Please take the time to read it.) But one story described was so starkly abandoning, I have to bring it to your attention.

The story describes a woman named Paula, who seems to have been deeply depressed and experiencing chronic pain that could not be diagnosed. She had been abused by her father. She had attempted suicide more than once. After her mother died of cancer, she hit the skids, and she was on the verge of homelessness. Her life went into what would eventually become a literal death spiral. From, “Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?”:

Paula stopped seeing her therapists and her social workers. She stopped seeing a family doctor because she couldn’t find one. She stopped taking mood stabilizers. She didn’t have a cellphone or a computer, and she spent hours a day just talking on an old black landline phone to people back in Perth. Still, Paula said, she was managing things — she was holding it together — until the concussion.

She was beaten up by two women with whom she had been feuding at the housing complex, suffering a concussion, which caused her life to spiral even further. She wanted euthanasia. Tests showed no brain damage. But she was miserable and wanted to die. She went on a crusade to find a doctor — any doctor — who would approve her being killed by lethal injection under Canada’s “Track 2” euthanasia protocol for the nonterminally ill.

She finally found a death doctor who was willing to kill her, despite knowing that many of her problems were social:

Fundamentally, he [the death doctor] didn’t think the best way to protect poor and marginalized patients was to force them to stay alive, because in some counterfactual version of events, in which the world was a better and more just place, they might have chosen differently. That wasn’t how anything in medicine worked; a doctor always treated the patient as she was. How could it be otherwise? If only those who were rich or well connected were recognized to have autonomy and allowed to choose? . . .

He had read the report from Paula’s neurologist, which said that Paula did not have permanent brain damage and was not eligible for MAID. But he thought the specialist, who was not a MAID provider herself, misunderstood the eligibility criteria. There was nothing in the law that said that Paula’s neurological condition had to be tied to actual, physical damage to the brain. Paula’s pain was real either way. She felt it the same either way.

On the day of the homicide, Paula says she is “terrified.” Of course! She is about to be killed! A “pastor” arrives to “counsel” her. She pushes the killing! This made me regurgitate my lunch:

Then the minister walked in. Paula had spent days calling religious leaders and asking if they would come sit with her while she died. Some said they would not but that they would pray for her. Others wouldn’t even do that. But then, finally, someone agreed to come. She introduced herself as the Rev. Takouhi Demirdjian-Petro, from the United Church of Canada, and she was tall and sturdy, in a pink clerical blouse. She looked down at Paula and took stock of the tearful situation. “You’re in the hands of the everlasting love of God,” she said firmly.

Paula started to cry harder, until she was nearly convulsing. “God have mercy on my soul.”

“God is with you,” the minister said. “And he is guiding you.”

“What if I get lost?” Paula asked. “My mind doesn’t have a very good GPS. I’m scared of getting lost.”

“You won’t. I promise you, honey.” The minister told Paula that she had a vision of Paula’s mother waiting for her, like a mother might wait for her daughter at the airport. “And I’m not B.S.ing you. So just let go of this empty, empty world.”

The death doctor arrives:

For days, Paula had worried that, at the final moment, she would waver, as she did when she tried to take her life before: pick up the pills, put them down, pick them up again; wade into the river, swim back, over and over. She imagined that when Wonnacott reached for the syringe, she would flinch. But Paula was calm and still as the drugs went in. “I don’t feel anything,” she whispered.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “This is horrible. I’m just so sorry.” Paula coughed as if she might vomit. Deep, guttural hacks. After a few moments, her body relaxed. A wet tissue fell from her hands. Her skin slowly turned a pale white.

Soon, Paula is dead.

Paula is not an anomaly. I just interviewed a Canadian man named Roger Foley for my Humanize podcast. The episode will be posted in a week. He is in a hospital with a progressively disabling condition for which doctors, he says, have repeatedly pushed euthanasia on him for several years — as they concomitantly deny him the kind of care that would make his life easier to bear. I’ll link to that interview here when it’s posted.

I also included Alex Schadenberg, the founder of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, in the interview. He described how hospital “MAiD teams” visit patients who might qualify to be killed, offering their death services. Can. You. Imagine?

Euthanasia is awful “medicine” and even worse public policy. It exposes the most vulnerable among us to abandonment and death. It pretends to be kind. It claims to be compassionate. But in the end, it justifies the most callous cruelty.

Suicide helpline suggested euthanasia for my disabled friend.

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan Schrader

From my perspective as a disability justice advocate and scholar, assisted suicide is an ableist public policy that furthers systemic violence and trauma, and it is best to nip the USA assisted suicide movement in the bud and not let that movement get its foot in the door. l think that this reality is perhaps best exemplified in the story of my Canadian friend “Amy.”

I’ve heard a lot of proponents refer to assisted suicide opponents as “cruel,” and I think Amy’s story is a good opportunity for readers to contemplate which public policies are cruel and which are not, especially because the USA death with dignity movement that is pushing Oregon style laws collaborate with people who want to take the United States in Canada’s direction.

Amy is a disabled Canadian who reached out to me and another X user for help after Canada legalized euthanasia for disabled people in 2021. Amy had endured child abuse, which left Amy with PTSD and physical injuries that caused severe chronic pain. As an indigent disabled person Amy was unable to access thorough medical treatment for these disabilities, so even though Amy wanted to live and was deeply offended by Canada’s decision to expand euthanasia to people with disabilities, Amy’s suffering was so great that Amy thought constantly of dying by “MAiD.”

However, when Amy called a mental health and suicide crisis support hotline for poor people and asked the operator for help fighting against these thoughts, the operator said, “Well, MAiD is a legit and legal option. Maybe it’s something you should consider. The medical system seems to be failing you. And you are never going to get the opiate pain medication that you think you need.”

So, me and this other X user, “Rachel,” took the place of that suicide hotline. For months, whenever Amy thought about applying for MAiD or dying by some other suicide method, we would talk our companion down. The three of us became really good friends. We talked about our experiences with ableism, our struggles to access treatment for our illnesses, what toys we liked as children and our hopes for the future. Various issues had made it impossible for Amy to approach a faith leader about the situation, so Rachel and I did our best to fill that role. At Amy’s request, the three of us prayed together and talked about God.

With help from about ten different people, including the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Amy was eventually able to take a train four hours away from home and show up in the emergency room of a hospital that opposes “MAiD” and specializes in chronic pain and mental illness. Amy finally received excellent care. Although Amy sometimes still has symptoms of chronic pain and PTSD and life is still often quite a struggle, Amy’s symptoms are manageable and Amy is not planning to die by “MAiD.” It was my honor to attend Amy’s Zoom birthday party recently.

But thanks to Compassion and Choice’s friends in Canada and the systemic ableism that is enabling their cause, the Canadian medical system would have killed Amy before providing adequate medical treatment or support.

I am not sure what happened to Rachel. Rachel shared that she now has to walk past a “MAiD provider’s” office at every psychiatrist appointment, that this is traumatic and that appropriate accommodations for her physical disabilities are often not available. We have not heard from Rachel in over a year. I hope Rachel is alive.

I’ve read statements from proponents of recent assisted suicide bill's saying that their supporters are “real people with grief and loss, not hypothetical scenarios.” Well, Amy and Rachel are not hypothetical scenarios, they are my friends. I’ve read statements describing myself and other disability rights movement opponents of assisted suicide as “abusive, bullying and cruel.” 

But I can think of few things more abusive, bullying and cruel then for a suicide prevention hotline operator to tell a caller to go ahead and be killed. I don’t want to live in that world, and like others in the disability justice movement I won’t be quiet while the proponents lay the scaffolding for that to happen. 

I’m sorry if that makes me cruel.

The push to legalize and extend assisted suicide in America

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

EPC is very concerned with the threat to legalize assisted suicide in the states of Illinois and New York and the expansion of assisted suicide laws, where it is already legal.

In New York, assisted suicide Bill A136/S138 passed in the New York Assembly by a vote of 81 to 67 on April 29 and may soon be debated in the state Senate. We have urged supporters to contact the members of the New York State Senate and in particular the New York State Senate Health Committee (Link to Senate Health Committee).

In Illinois, assisted suicide Bill SB9 passed on April 9, 2025 by a vote of 8 to 3 in the Senate Executive Committee. Bill SB9 stalled but was renewed when it's sponsor attached the assisted suicide bill to a food preparation safety bill (SB 1950).

On May 29, 2025 SB 1950 passed in the State House by a vote of 63 to 42.

The good news is that SB 1950 has temporarily stalled as the Illinois Senate adjourned.

It is ironic that a bill whereby physicians prescribe a lethal poison cocktails to kill patients would get attached to a food preparation safety bill.

Oregon's assisted suicide expansion Bill SB 1003 will be heard in committee next week. Oregon assisted suicide Bill SB 1003:

1. Requires promotion by Healthcare facilities – The bill forces hospices and hospitals to publicly disclose whether they participate in assisted suicide. Hospices must tell patients upfront and post their policies online, while other healthcare facilities must at least post their stance online. In some cases, family members have pressured vulnerable patients to participate in assisted suicide. This disclosure requirement makes it easier for patients to be directed toward facilities that will not object.
2. Removes the 15-day waiting period – The current waiting period in Oregon to provides a proper evaluation prior to prescribing lethal poison drugs. The bill removes this waiting period allowing patients to be shuffled to death on demand within 48 hours.

The assisted suicide lobby has expanded existing assisted suicide legislation in nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide. 

Oregon has already allowed physicians to wave the waiting period and Oregon has eliminated the residency requirement. Vermont is permitting assisted suicide by telehealth, they are forcing medical practitioners who oppose assisted suicide to refer patients and they eliminated the residency requirement. Washington state, California, Colorado and Hawaii have also expanded their assisted suicide laws.

Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will lobby or launch court cases to expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill is designed to pass in the legislature, once passed incremental extensions will follow.

Scheduled to Die. Signed and Sealed.

The following article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on May 28, 2025.

Kelsi Sheren

By Kelsi Sheren

Canada: Home of the most efficient killers.

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program was “supposed” to be about compassion, offering dignity and choice to people at the end of their lives. Lies, it’s always been nothing but lies from the very start. It’s always been about killing. Somewhere along the way our society has taken a dark turn back to the time when eugenics was normalized. I thought this idea of killing our people for being disabled, injured or suffering was over. Turns out I wasn’t just wrong, I missed the mark completely. Eugenics has never ever stopped, it’s just been done quietly in the dark and done to people who will never be able to speak because…. Well, MAID = DEATH and you can’t complain when you're dead now can you?

Instead of a compassionate last resort, MAiD has become a symptom of our societal failure, an escape hatch offered to vulnerable individuals we’d rather ignore than support and our government wants to do anything it can to stop supporting you.

Take Kiano Vafaeian’s case. At just 23 years old, Kiano wasn’t terminally ill. He was diabetic, partially blind, and severely depressed. These conditions are profoundly challenging, yes, but are they reasons for a state-sanctioned murder? His mother, Margaret Marsilla, found out about his planned euthanasia by accident, stumbling across the approval in his emails. She wasn’t informed by medical professionals or social services. No alarm bells rang. No safeguards in place. The system simply moved forward, silent and indifferent, ready to quietly eliminate what it saw as a "problem" rather than confront the underlying issues.

Remember they DO NOT HAVE TO CONTACT FAMILY, and as Ellen Wiebe the head executioner of Canada said: 

“People ask me why and I think, well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody is more grateful than my patients now and their families,” 

Carr interviewing Wiebe

She tells Liz Carr, though that’s not always necessarily so. 

“We know that angry family members are our greatest risk” (National Post article link).

Margaret had to fight desperately to save her son's life, resorting to impersonating a patient to uncover the chilling ease of accessing assisted death. How has it come to this? A mother must battle her own government to keep her child alive? What does this say about the priorities of a system that would rather expedite death than offer comprehensive support and care? I’ll tell you exactly what it says.

WE DON’T CARE. We do not care if your son is struggling, he is a burden to our society so he must go and we will do it behind your back. Their favourite part, is there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it. You can try, but good luck.

This story isn’t isolated, not even a little unfortunately. It speaks to a profound rot within our society, a rot where the vulnerable are viewed as disposable, burdensome inconveniences rather than human beings deserving dignity and support. When a young man’s pain is so readily met with death instead of help, we have failed. We have failed Kiano, we have failed Margaret, and we have failed ourselves. We have lost sight of our shared responsibility to each other, allowing bureaucratic convenience to triumph over human empathy. I’d agree it’s no longer about convenience either, with over 1800 killers in Canada, roughly 300 do all the killing. That means in 2023 with the death tally over 13,000 people who were murdered, they were taken out by roughly 300 people.

Now if you were in the military, like I was and you had killed that many people on your own. Not only would we be questioning your mental health but questioning a lot more than that. But because these are “doctors” we say its compassion.

I call bullshit. These “doctors” are enjoying this, far far too much.

We pride ourselves as Canadians on being compassionate and inclusive, yet we’re abandoning those who need us most while we crumble under policies that have broken our country in half. Instead of investing in mental health services, social support, and disability care, our leaders choose a cheaper, colder route. MAiD = murder, once carefully bounded, now creeps into a territory where depression, poverty, and disability alone WILL justify ending a life. This isn't compassion. It's negligence dressed up as mercy.

Our society has become desensitized to suffering, choosing convenience and cost-saving over genuine care and compassion. How many others like Kiano have faced similar battles without a Margaret fighting tirelessly in their corner? How many have silently slipped through the cracks, never receiving the attention, care, or advocacy they deserved?

We need to look deeply at ourselves and our values. Are we comfortable living in a society where death is offered as an alternative to adequate support? Are we okay telling someone that their existence is too costly, too inconvenient? Are we prepared to admit our government’s failure in creating a society where people feel their lives are not worth living simply because they have been left behind by the systems meant to protect them?

So I ask you, will you stand up now

Or

Will you wait until your family finds a hidden email or letter, or when they call to say your loved one, child or friend was just murdered before you call you MP’s and say this stops NOW.

We have the power to stop this, will you help?

Kelsi Sheren, relentless in the pursuit of life and never MAID.

https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2022/09/victory-23-year-old-scheduled-for.html

https://nationalpost.com/feature/canada-maid-assisted-suicide-doctor

Dying to Meet You: Renewing Life

By Amanda Achtman

My friend Rabbi Jonathan Jaffit didn't expect euthanasia to impact him personally.

As an Orthodox Jew, he always told me, "That's not something we do."

But one day, he got a phone call that brought the issue to him in an unexpected way.

In the newest Dying to Meet You vignette, "Renewing Life", Rabbi Jaffit shares the story and offers some poignant insights on our cultural moment.

The Renewing Life vignette is an excellent lead-in to the importance of the Compassionate Community Care program. 

To receive training in visiting, advocacy or calling people who need a friend, Contact Compassionate Community Care at info@beingwith.org

Disability Advocate: I urge you to oppose New York's assisted suicide bill.

Dear Legislators:

Meghan Schrader

As a disability justice advocate, I urge you to oppose assisted suicide Bill SB138.

I teach people with disabilities at the University of Texas at Austin and have published research on how assisted suicide connects to America’s deep history of eugenics and systemic ableism.

Although New York assisted suicide Bill SB 138 is aimed at terminally ill people, the right to die movement, that  it is attached to, dehumanizes and oppresses people with disabilities. The best way to safeguard against that oppression is not to pass assisted suicide laws. 

A disabled Canadian friend of mine with PTSD and severe chronic pain was subjected to further wounding trauma when a suicide prevention hotline operator told her that she should consider killing herself with “MAiD.” The New York bill would lay the scaffolding for the proponents to build that same world. I would be happy to talk to you more about my friend’s experience or anything else in this email. 

The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of People with Disabilities says that even assisted suicide laws that are limited to the terminally ill violate its Convention on The Rights of People with Disabilities (Link)

Compassion & Choices (C & C) acknowledged that an eating disorder specialist who published a case study about helping people with eating disorders be killed by assisted suicide abused the law (Link to Study) (Link to C & C response) and yet representatives of C & C say that these laws have never been abused. So, has the law been abused or not?

Right to die movement leader Thaddeus Mason Pope tweeted to me that he thinks it’s good for disabled people to die by suicide. (Twitter Link) The director of Compassion and Choices appeared on Dr. Phil with Thaddeus Mason Pope in January of 2023.

One proponent of this bill is a man named Christopher Riddle, who claims to be a “disability rights advocate.” Please listen to the voices of the many disability rights organizations opposing this bill instead of him. Riddle’s theories about disability rights have been reasonably criticized as lacking any empirical grounding in the experiences of disabled people. He has no experience or personal stake in the practical implications of his ideas. (Link to Book) (Link to Book Review)

Furthermore, Riddle’s scholarship dehumanizes disabled people who are harmed by assisted suicide; he frames anyone who might be harmed by assisted suicide as the equivalent of a car accident statistic. He asserts that harm that assisted suicide might cause for people with disabilities “ought not to be of special concern.” (https://philpapers.org/rec/RIDAD).

Hence, Riddle is willing to sacrifice people with disabilities for the right to die movement’s agenda; he is not the “disability rights advocate” he claims to be.

For a more accurate understanding of how assisted suicide has and will impact disabled people, I encourage you to watch a video created by disability studies ethicist Harold Braswell about disability rights opposition to assisted suicide. Braswell has studied the right to die issue extensively. (Link to Brawell research)

The American Association of Suicidology made a 2017 statement saying that assisted suicide is not suicide. But in 2023 the AAS had to retract that statement (Link to retracted statement) because it was used in the 2019 Truchon decision that expanded assisted suicide to disabled Canadians. (https://twitter.com/TrudoLemmens/status/1666067817035190272), which was opposed by the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. (CASP statement) The consequences of the AAS’s statement are an example of how green lighting assisted suicide for the terminally ill easily results in violence against people with disabilities.

Disabled people already experience a higher rate of suicide than the general population and peer-reviewed research indicates that people are more likely to think suicide is acceptable if the victim has a disability. (Link to research) 

Passing assisted suicide laws further normalizes the sentiment that disabled people’s suicides might be a good thing, and that’s a monstrous way for society to bully people in the disabled community. 

You can find videos from many disability justice leaders opposing the legislation of assisted suicide at these links:

Disabled writer Brian Koukol: (Information Link).

Professor of Musicology and Disability Studies Andrew Dell’Antonio: (Information Link).

United Nations speaker with Down Syndrome and disability justice advocate Charlotte Fiene: (Information Link).

Disability Equality in Education board member Lisa Aquila: (Information Link).

My program director Joe Tate has a long history of advocating for people with intellectual disabilities, including participating in a 2014 ADAPT protest outside a Chicago conference of the World Federation of Right To Die Societies: (Information Link).

I urge you to allow Bill SB 138 to die in this session because regardless of its content, it rewards a movement that is hostile to people with disabilities. Exacerbating the oppression that disabled people already face so that the proponents can plan their deaths is unwise and unjust.

Equality, justice, love and the equal citizenship of people with disabilities are more important than the proponents’ individual autonomy. Please do not support this bill.

Sincerely,
Meghan Schrader