UK PM Andy Burnham seeks to delay assisted suicide debate

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Prime Minister Andy Burnham

The new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, while speaking with reporters after a speech at a Jewish Care facility about social care reform commented on the upcoming assisted suicide debate. Burnham stated at (11:34):

"I take the view that the debate, and I don't say that there shouldn't be a debate at some point about those issues, personally I think that there is something that needs to happen first and that's the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care. 

I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care.”

Burnham did not say that he opposes assisted suicide but he did say that improvements to end-of-life care should be dealt with first, before the UK considers assisted suicide.

These comments are important because on June 17, 2026 Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a similar version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill that recently died in the British House of Lords. MPs are scheduled to vote on the Edwards assisted suicide bill at second reading on September 11, 2026.

On November 29, 2024; the UK House of Commons voted 330 to 275 at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill, which was nearly identical to Edwards bill

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is convinced that Edwards introduced a nearly identical assisted suicide bill as the Leadbeater bill in order to invoke The Parliament Acts, which allows the House of Commons to forgo approval from the House of Lords when passing two nearly identical bills within consecutive parliamentary sessions.

The Parliament Acts has only been used seven times since 1911 for Government legislation, and it has never been used for a Private Members’ Bill. Edwards assisted suicide is a private members bill.

Prime Minister Burnham's comments along with the fact that he has given members of his Labour party the right to vote with their conscience means that the Edwards assisted suicide bill will more likely be defeated on September 11.

Free online film screening of Prescription Poison on August 4.

Register for the free online screening of Prescription Poison: Averting Assisted Suicide in America 

Tuesday August 4 at: 2 pm (Eastern Time) / 11 am (Pacific Time).

The Prescription Poison film is produced by Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Frank Panico with Xs in the Sky films.  

Topic: Prescription Poison

Tuesday Aug 4, 2026 2 PM Eastern Time/11 am Pacific Time.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link). 

Prescription Poison is 43 minutes long. The screening will be followed by a discussion.

Prescription Poison is ground-breaking documentary exposing the expansion of assisted suicide in America.

Prescription Poison seeks to awaken America to the growth of assisted suicide and is a warning to Americans that, unless stopped, the Canadian system of killing will become a reality in America.

Purchase the Prescription Poison film for $10 US (download) or $15 DVD at: Prescriptionpoison.com

Watch the Prescription Poison Trailer:

Topic: Prescription Poison - Averting Assisted Suicide in America.

Tuesday, Aug 4, 2026 2 pm Eastern Time/11 am Pacific Time.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link).

Event in Jordon Ontario - Exposing Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia in Canada (August 13)

Lessons on opposing MAiD in Canada

Rachel Parker Live and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition are sponsoring an important event in Jordan Ontario

Date: Thursday, August 13 at 7 pm.

Location: The Jordan Hotel

(Purchase tickets) 

Use discount code: RP FOLLOWER 

An evening with: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Executive Director, Alex Schadenberg, podcaster Rachel Parker and author / activist Jonathon Van Maren.

The evening provides excellent speakers and an incredible opportunity to focus-on and share what needs to be done to change Canada's future. 

(Purchase tickets) 

 

 

Swiss assisted suicide leader dies while climbing Mount Fuji

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Mount Fuji Japan

Bernhard Sutter, who was the leader of the  Exit assisted suicide/euthanasia group recently died in Japan while climbing Mount Fuji

Sutter was a colleague of Philip Nitschke, the death activist who developed the Exit Bag and the Sarco Pod as well as promoted suicide substances on the internet.

Elizabeth Beattie reported on July 23, 2026 for The Japan Times that:

The managing director of one of Switzerland’s most prominent euthanasia firms died while climbing Mount Fuji during a family vacation.

Bernhard Sutter, 58, collapsed while ascending Japan’s tallest mountain with his son via the Fujinomiya route – the shortest, most direct way up the mountain. At around 3,010 meters above sea level, he felt unwell and stopped at a mountain hut, where he lost consciousness and stopped breathing.

The Japan Times reported that Sutter was involved with assisted suicide since 2007.

Sutter, who lived in Zurich with his family, had since 2015 worked as the managing director of the largest assisted dying firm in Switzerland, Exit. He joined the firm in 2007.

Philip Nitschke, the director of Exit International and the developer of suicide devices, such as the Sarco pod and the Exit bag, offered condolences to Sutter's wife and family stating that he had known Bernhard for more than 15 years and that Sutter was instrumental in launching the German edition of Nitschke's suicide instructions Handbook in 2011.

I personally remember meeting Sutter many years ago in Switzerland when I attended a euthanasia conference organized by World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

EPC offers condolences to the family and friends of Bernhard Sutter, but we also mourn the many people who died with the assistance of Sutter and his staff. Many people have been abandoned to death under the guise of compassion.

The British assisted suicide bill is back - And so is Not Dead Yet.

The following message was sent out by Not Dead Yet UK on July 23, 2026.

By now you'll know that the assisted dying bill is back.

On 17 June, Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a new version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. MPs will vote on whether it should proceed at its second reading on 11 September 2026. That's less than two months away.

So what's new?

Honestly? Not much.

This is the same bill Kim Leadbeater brought forward in 2024 — the one that spent months being picked apart in the House of Lords, generating more than 1,300 amendments before running out of time in April. The bill fell not because it was defeated, but because Parliament was prorogued. Now it's back, with two minor Lords amendments incorporated.

The first is a technical Wales amendment. Because delivering health services is devolved to the Welsh Government, the bill now requires the Senedd to give its approval before Welsh Ministers can set up the regulations for assisted dying in Wales. It's a constitutional housekeeping change. It doesn't alter what the bill actually does.

The second concerns people with eating disorders. This one is more serious. During the Lords debates earlier this year, peers raised concerns that someone with anorexia could potentially stop eating — deliberately — in order to reach the six-month terminal threshold and qualify for an assisted death. A minor amendment was added in the Lords to address this. But experts who work with people with eating disorders say it doesn't go far enough. The loophole, they argue, remains. We agree.

Everything else about the bill — its safeguards, its eligibility criteria, its scope — is unchanged. The concerns we have always raised remain. Disabled people face cuts to their independence, support, and care. Palliative care is under-resourced. In that environment, telling people they have the option to end their lives early is not compassion. It is a profound risk to people who already feel like a burden.

Even the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has acknowledged this. He has said he supports the principle of assisted dying — but only if hospices are "properly funded and sorted out" first. "You can't have this law change with an underfunded hospice movement," he said. We agree. And that underfunding hasn't been fixed.

What we're doing about it.

We are meeting very shortly to put the final touches to our campaign strategy for September. Our main goals are:

• Persuading MPs to vote against the bill at second reading on 11 September.
• Organising a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on the same day.

We will be in touch with full details as soon as they're confirmed — including how you can write to your MP, join us in person, or support the campaign in other ways.

We know many of you have been with us since the beginning of this fight. Your support matters enormously. We are not done yet.

Catholic Sisters challenge New York state assisted suicide law.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Madeleine Long reported in The Free Press on July 17, 2026 that several orders of Catholic sisters are challenging the New York assisted suicide law. This law requires the sisters to inform their patients that they can have assisted suicide and the New York law conflicts with the federal law which prohibits federal funding for assisted suicide.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the assisted suicide bill into law in February which will take effect on August 5, 2026.

Long reported that:

A coalition of Catholic healthcare providers filed suit in federal court in Albany on Friday, arguing that New York’s new assisted dying law would force them to choose between their faith and their ability to provide care for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of New York, names 13 plaintiffs, including multiple congregations of nuns such as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Rockville Centre and Catholic Health, a network of five Long Island hospitals, are also named.

Long explains how the law contravenes the federal law prohibiting funding for assisted suicide:

The law works in tandem with an existing New York statute, the Palliative Care Information Act, which requires doctors and nurse practitioners to inform terminally ill patients of all their end-of-life options. Now that assisted dying is one of them, medical professionals must proactively raise it with patients—whether or not the patient asks.Catholic healthcare has always refused to participate in assisting suicides.

Long further explains that:

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the Medical Aid in Dying Act unconstitutional and block its enforcement before it takes effect next month. At its core, the complaint argues the law violates the First Amendment by compelling doctors and nurses at religious facilities to counsel patients about assisted dying and by interfering with the Church’s ability to govern its own healthcare institutions. It also states that the law conflicts with federal statutes prohibiting the use of federal healthcare funds for assisted dying—a claim that applies to several plaintiffs who receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Noncompliance carries significant consequences, according to the complaint, including civil penalties of up to $2,000 per violation, potential loss of operating licenses, and criminal liability resulting in up to a year in prison for willful violations.

New York’s law includes a provision permitting religious facilities to opt out of prescribing or administering lethal drugs on their premises. But according to the sisters’ lawyers, the opt-out is among the narrowest in the nation, narrower than similar laws in California, Oregon, and Washington, where religious providers can opt out of all participation if their faith requires it.It is important to note that Catholic healthcare is challenging their obligation to participate in assisting a suicide as well as they are challenging the use of federal money for assisting a suicide.

EPC believes that the court should recognize the conscience rights of care-givers and strike down the law based on federal assisted suicide funding restrictions.

For those who believe that assisted suicide is a choice, then they should also acknowledge the choice of others to not participate in assisted suicide. Participation is wider than the actual act of prescribing or directly assisting the suicide.

Further to that, assisted suicide is not about "autonomy" since it requires the direct involvement of medical professionals who are complicit with a person's suicide.

Medical professionals should never be involved with killing or assisting suicides since it changes the nature of care. For ethical healthcare to survive, there must be a commitment to always care and never kill.

More articles on this topic:

• New York is opening a pandora's box with assisted suicide (Link). 
• New York Governor to sign assisted suicide bill (Link).

UK assisted suicide bill will go to a vote on September 11, 2026

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The UK Leadbeater assisted suicide bill that failed to pass earlier this year in the House of Lords has been revived by Lauren Edwards MP with nearly identical language as the failed Leadbeater bill.

On November 29, 2024; Members of the UK House of Commons voted 330 to 275 at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition urges the UK to Kill the bill not the patients.

The Care Not Killing Alliance stated in their July 17 report that:

Yesterday, Lauren Edwards MP published her Private Member’s Bill. We say “her” bill, but it is essentially the same as the one which foundered in the Lords earlier this year: they could have taken this opportunity to reflect and respond to the many concerns of experts and professional groups, but the clear priority is to leave open the door to use of the Parliament Acts, and so you can be sure that there will be strenuous efforts to prevent MPs from seeking amendments to the Bill.

The House of Lords debate exposed serious flaws with the Leadbeater assisted suicide bill and yet Edwards insists on pushing the same flawed bill because, if passed by the House of Commons, it would not be required to be debated by the House of Lords, where strong opposition to assisted suicide exists.

The Parliament Acts have only been used seven times since 1911 for Government legislation, and it has never been used for a Private Members’ Bill. Edwards assisted suicide is a private members bill.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is convinced that Edwards, who is a Labour MP for Rochester and Stroud, has introduced a nearly identical assisted suicide bill as the Leadbeater bill in order to invoke The Parliament Acts, which allows the House of Commons to forgo approval from the House of Lords when passing two essentially identical bills within consecutive parliamentary sessions.

A similar parliamentary tactic was used in France where the National Assembly passed identical euthanasia bills on June 30 and July 15 that enabled them to ignore the opposition to the euthanasia bill in the Senate, even though France's Senate is elected.

California also legalized assisted suicide in 2015 with a similar tactic.

Concerning California, on August 18, 2015 we wrote:

The assisted suicide lobby has renewed their push to legalize assisted suicide in California after their previous assisted suicide bill, SB 128, was stopped in the Health Committee.

The assisted suicide lobby is taking advantage of the special legislative session called by Governor Jerry Brown to address shortfalls in healthcare funding. The new assisted suicide bill AB 15 is nearly identical to SB 128, but AB 15 will not be heard by the Health Committee.

In other words, SB 128 was stopped in California's Health Committee, then Governor Brown opened a "special session" to examine shortfalls in healthcare funding that included Bill AB 15, an identical assisted suicide bill to SB 128, which passed in the special session and became law.

 

Edwards appears to be using the same playbook that was used recently in France and in 2015 in California.

 

Kill the bill, not the patients. 

US Senators urge Health and Human Services to monitor assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Senator James Lankford

There are now 13 US states as well as Washington DC that have legalized assisted suicide. A press release from US Senators James Lankford (R-OK) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) to Health and Human Services  (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. urging HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) urges them:

to establish reporting requirements in the hospice program to monitor physician-assisted suicide for discrimination against individuals with disabilities, older adults, and other vulnerable populations.

The letter warned Secretary Kennedy that assisted suicide:

“raises significant informed consent issues as well as concerns about disability and age discrimination” and noted that the vast majority of patients receiving physician-assisted suicide are enrolled in hospice.

Senator Tim Kaine

The Senators further stated:

“We urge HHS and CMS to establish reporting requirements to monitor physician-assisted suicide for discriminatory practices and oversee compliance with federal funding restrictions within hospice programs. All hospice patients—regardless of disability, age or financial means—deserve compassionate end-of-life care that is free of coercion and discrimination.”

The Senators were joined by US Representatives Greg Murphy, M.D. (R-NC-03) and Lou Correa (D-CA-46).

Link to the letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (Letter Link).

Rep Greg Murphy

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) shares the concerns of Senators Lankford and Kaine and Representatives Murphy and Correa. We are particularly concerned with the formulation and use of poison drug cocktails for assisted suicide that are not approved as "safe" by The Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The letter from the Senators and Representatives states:

Physician-assisted suicide drugs are not approved for the purpose of ending human life. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved drugs indicated for physician-assisted suicide. These drugs would not meet the criteria as "safe" for the purposes of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Instead, medical practitioners prescribe drugs approved for other indications to be used "off-label" for physician-assisted suicide. As the Atlantic reported in 2019, "[I]n states where the practice is legal, state governments provide guidance about which patients qualify but say nothing about which drugs to prescribe." With "no government-approved clinical drug trial, and no Institutional Review Board oversight," physician-assisted suicide drug prescribers are left with little oversight in assisting end-of-life patients"

Rep Lou Correa

EPC is also very concerned about abuses related to the Assisted Suicide Funding Restrictions Act that essentially restricts federal funding for assisted suicide and protects the conscience rights for medical practitioners who object to assisted suicide. The letter from the letter from the Senators and Representatives states:

We request that you establish reporting requirements within hospice programs regarding physician-assisted suicide. In doing so, please consider monitoring physician-assisted suicide practises for the following:

• Discrimination against individuals with disabilities, older adults, and other vulnerable populations; 

• Proper disposal of unused medication and prevention of drug diversion; 

• Insurance denials of life-sustaining medical care that offer to cover physician-assisted suicide drugs instead.

There are many concerns with assisted suicide laws and the practise of assisting suicides. Some of the key issues include the lack of clear oversight and the use of lethal poison drug cocktails. The drug cocktails are concerning for their use but also the abuse the occurred with their experimental development.

Jersey assisted suicide bill receives Royal Assent

The following is a media release from the Care Not Killing Alliance on July 9, 2026.

Care Not Killing deeply disappointed as Jersey’s assisted dying law receives Royal Assent despite ECHR breaches

Campaign group Care Not Killing has expressed deep disappointment following the decision to grant Royal Assent to Jersey’s Assisted Dying (Jersey) Law 2026, making Jersey the first part of the British Isles to legalise assisted dying.

The group believes the legislation breaches the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights — including Article 2 (right to life), Article 9 (freedom of conscience), Article 10 (freedom of expression), Article 11 (freedom of association), and Article 14 (freedom from discrimination) — and that this is precisely why Royal Assent had been held up for so long.

In a legal letter sent to the Attorney General of Jersey and the Ministry of Justice on 21 May 2026, Care Not Killing’s solicitors, Conrathe Gardner LLP, set out a series of concerns about the Law’s compliance with the ECHR. The letter warned that the legislation places vulnerable individuals at “severe risk of loss of life in a way that is discriminatory and impermissible under the ECHR.”

It highlighted that the law fails to adequately test for coercion, duress or undue influence — particularly in the case of disabled people — by relying on “an assessing doctor simply asking the individual if anyone has coerced them.”

The letter also noted that individuals with conditions such as bipolar disorder, depression, and autism face significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation, and that the Law makes no provision to protect them.

Care Not Killing pointed to the well-documented expansion of euthanasia regimes in other jurisdictions — noting that in Canada, one in twenty deaths is now by assisted suicide, and in the Netherlands, 5.4 per cent of all registered deaths are by assisted suicide with uptake increasing by 8 per cent every year.

The group also highlighted that even before the Law was passed, a proposition was tabled to extend it to incurable (non-terminal) conditions, and that Health Minister Tom Binet has stated this amendment will be proposed again in future. The Law also introduces so-called “safe access” zones that could criminalise prayer and sermons in places of worship near where assisted dying takes place, interfering with rights under Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the ECHR.

Dr Gordon Macdonald

Dr Gordon Macdonald commented: 

“This legislation will fundamentally alter health and palliative care on Jersey and put the lives of vulnerable people at risk, exactly as we have seen in those places that have introduced assisted suicide or euthanasia. It fails on a number of fronts, including: lack of legal protections for doctors and nurses who do not want to be involved, protections for the elderly and disabled people at risk of being coerced, will see money taken out of palliative care and has been sold to the public as a way to end suffering when we know from places like Oregon, those who take the death row drugs may suffer long and agonising death from a pulmonary oedema - where their lungs slowly fill up with bodily fluid and the drown in their own secretions.

“Importantly, as our lawyers have pointed out, this law does not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights and is not compatible with the UK’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We will be consulting our lawyers to determine our next steps and how and when this dangerous law can be challenged.”

For media inquiries, please call Alistair Thompson or Team Britannia PR on 07970 162225.

Editors Notes

Care Not Killing was founded as a UK-based alliance of human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups, and is supported by thousands of concerned individuals.

We have three key aims:

• to promote more and better palliative care;
• to ensure that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed;
• to inform public opinion further against any weakening of the law. 

*As this story is dealing with suicide, please could we ask that you include details about organisations that offer help and support to vulnerable people who might be feeling suicidal such as the Samaritans, CALM or similar - Thank you.*

New Zealand 2025 euthanasia report. Assisted deaths increase again.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The New Zealand 2026 assisted dying report (April 1, 2025 - March 31, 2026) was recently released indicating that the number of reported assisted deaths increased to 486 reported assisted deaths up from 472 in the 2025 report (April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025) and 344 reported in the 2024 report.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized in New Zealand in November 2021. The law allows doctor administered death (euthanasia) and self-ingestion (assisted suicide).

 

The 2026 report indicated that 460 of the 486 assisted deaths were carried-out by the doctor (euthanasia) which was up from 450 of the 472 assisted deaths being carried-out by the doctor (euthanasia) in 2025.

On November 11, 2025 I reported that New Zealand MP Todd Stephension introduced - The End of Life Choice Amendment Bill, a private members bill to expand the New Zealand assisted dying law.

What would the New Zealand euthanasia expansion bill (among other things) do?

• Amends the definition of who can do euthanasia by changing the terminology from attending medical practitioner to attending practitioner.
• Changes the terminal illness requirement to a person who has been diagnosed with a condition that is advanced, progressive, and, either on its own or in combination with 1 or more other diagnosed conditions, is expected to cause death. (Expected to cause death is not the same as a terminal illness with a 6 month prognosis).
• Eliminates conscience rights by forcing a medical practitioner to refer a person to the assisted dying service when they have received a request for assisted dying.

The New Zealand government may follow Canada's lead with plans to expand euthanasia to people who are not terminally ill. In fact the bills definition of who qualifies to be killed can be interpreted wide enough to include most people with disabilities.

In October 2020, New Zealand voters supported euthanasia based on specific legalization legislation. The law has only been in place since November 2021 and now there is a push to expand the legislation.

Norwegian who was convicted of murder is now convicted of assisting a suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A Norwegian man who was first convicted of murder when he was 15 years-old has been convicted of assisting the suicide of a woman in Sweden.

Steinar Wangen (55), who calls himself a "euthanasia activist" was already in prison for assisting the suicide of of a 76-year-old woman in Strömstad Sweden.

Wangen was convicted of murder last Friday.  Newsinenglish.no reported on July 6, 2026 that:

...a Norwegian court in Vestfold convicted him on Friday of murdering another woman in Sweden (Trollhättan), who allegedly wanted to die, by holding a pillow over her face after she’d consumed sleeping pills and alcohol. His trial took place in Tønsberg, Norway because that’s where he lived when he established contact with the Swedish woman.

Using a pillow is murder. The Newsinenglish.no article stated:

Norwegian prosecutors sought and received a 15-year prison term for Wangen with forvaring, which means a judge must determine every 10 years or so whether he still poses a threat to society. Wangen denies he helped kill the woman in Trollhättan and appealed on the spot.

An interview that was published by svt.se on June 16, 2026, that, in the past, Wangen had been acquitted for assisting the suicides of four people in Sweden. In the interview:

Steinar Wangen calls himself an "euthanasia activist" and has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

The family of the 7 year old girl who Wangen killed when he was 15 referred to him in their book as a

“A cold-blooded and calculating person.”

Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide (medical killing) creates the perfect cover for murder.

Maryland: A moral reckoning on assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Jonathon Alexandre

Several years ago I had the opportunity to do a speaking tour in the state of Maryland. Based on that experience I can really appreciate the article by Jonathan Alexandre that was published on June 20, 2026 in the Townhall on the assisted suicide debate in Maryland. Alexandre writes:

Assisted suicide in Maryland is stirring through this electoral season and will certainly be in the 2027 Maryland General Assembly. Regardless of how the issue is framed by proponents of physician-assisted suicide, the outcome is still death. They have given death a new wardrobe. They've dressed a lethal prescription in the language of compassion. But do not be deceived. Make no mistake: physician-assisted suicide is still suicide. The goal is still death. The poison is still poison. And the people who will be most exposed to it—the people who will feel its weight most brutally—are the same people who have always been asked to carry the heaviest burdens in this state: Black Marylanders and our brothers and sisters living with disabilities.

Alexandre comments on role of the Black legislative caucus who were the Firewall in defeating previous assisted suicide bills.

For years—the Black legislative caucus of Maryland stood as a firewall. At approximately 30 percent of the legislature, the African American delegation was more than a constituency. It was a conscience. They knew what their communities knew. They had heard the sermons. They understood, instinctively and historically, that when the government starts making death affordable and convenient, it is the poor and the brown and the disabled who get offered the off-ramp first. They voted no, no to Medical aid in dying (MAID) because they understood the stakes.

The members of the legislature representing the most Black-populated jurisdictions in this state consistently voted against the bill in 2019 with a simple, almost pastoral, reasoning: they feared medical centers, including nursing homes, would coerce vulnerable people into a decision they hadn't truly made for themselves. That is a lived reality for communities where medical trust has been seared in the furnace of Tuskegee and forced sterilizations.

Alexandre is concerned that the Firewall is crumbling.

Now, whispers inside the statehouse and on the campaign trail suggest the firewall is crumbling. Some who once stood firm are reconsidering. Some are being told this bill is different this time—that the safeguards are real, that the community's fears are overblown. Some, it appears, are being persuaded by lobbyists, by campaign coffers, and by the social currency of national progressive credentialing. But you are being sold a lie, and in accepting it, you are selling your people downriver.

Safeguards? Alexandre comments:

The proponents of physician-assisted suicide love their so-called "safeguards." But they are an imposter’s gesture of responsibility with no actual protection. The bill requires that a patient be evaluated for mental health impairment, but only if the attending physician thinks they might have impaired judgment. In any other context where a person expresses a desire to end their life, society mobilizes. Dial 988. Crisis counselors. Full intervention.

But under this bill, because the desire to die has been legally gambled away into "medical treatment," the system does not intervene. It complies. It prescribes. It sends them home—alone, often without witness, without medical supervision—with a lethal dose and a death certificate that lies and says "natural causes."

And what of coercion? The bill's answer to coercion is to ask the patient if they're being coerced. Think about that. Undue influence, by definition, operates by overcoming a person's free will without their immediate awareness. If they knew they were being coerced, it would not be coercion. “Safeguard,” therefore, is a legal fiction designed to check a compliance box while a vulnerable human being is ushered toward their death.

Alexandre comments on what Black Marylanders experience in the health care system.

Communities of color in Maryland face documented, persistent disparities in healthcare access. Black patients are more likely to receive inadequate pain management. They are more likely to be categorized as terminal without exhaustive exploration of alternatives. They face greater financial barriers to life-saving treatment. They navigate a healthcare system that has, in living memory, exploited their bodies for research, sterilized them without consent, and delivered inferior care as a matter of policy.

Now, into this same broken landscape, we are being asked to introduce legal suicide as a medical option. And when the penniless state and strained insurers are facing budget shortfalls, when the cost of keeping a terminally ill patient alive is weighed against the cost of a lethal prescription, do we honestly believe that the patient in the underserved community will receive the same calculus as the patient in an affluent area of the state? At this point, this is more than a slippery slope. This is digging the pit, and our most vulnerable neighbors are standing at the edge.

Alexandre also comments on the disability community.

The disability community has been sounding this alarm for decades. They have argued that assisted suicide laws endanger them. When society tells certain communities, directly or indirectly, that death is cheaper than treatment, then choice becomes expectation, and expectation becomes pressure. All this is packaged in a sinister opaque bill that in the past would almost guarantee a no vote from black legislators. Now we are not so certain we can count on them to do the right thing for our community.

Alexandre comments on the role of the Church.

I do not say this to shame anyone. I say this because the Black church—the institution that has been the backbone, the sanctuary, the war room of this community through slavery and Jim Crow and every assault that came after—has been nearly unanimous in its opposition. The Maryland Baptists have spoken. The faith leaders of Prince George's County have spoken. But when elected officials begin to drift away from the communities they represent and toward the interests of those who fund their campaigns, we have a word for that. It is called betrayal.

Alexandre challenges legislators who are wavering on opposing assisted suicide.

To any Black Maryland legislator who is wavering—who has been lobbied, who has been charmed, who has been offered some calculus of political benefit in exchange for this vote—I want to humbly appeal to you now.

The people who are pushing this bill have money. They have infrastructure. They attempted to wave poll numbers in your face. But they are not your misdiagnosed grandmother, your neighbor who cannot afford a life-saving specialist, your disabled cousin fighting to be seen as fully human. A vote to legalize physician-assisted suicide targets those who look into your eyes every day. It places a state-sanctioned death option before our people who, in many ways, have never had equal access to life-affirming care.

Alexandre completes his article by urging Maryland legislators to oppose assisted suicide.

Maryland's Black legislators were right the first time. They were right in 2019. They were right in 2024. And if they hold that line—if they choose their people over political expediency—they will be right again. History will vindicate them. Our communities will thank them. And in a generation where so many surrendered, they will be counted among the few who stood firm on solid ground for life when death was hoping to meet our people down river.

More articles on the Maryland assisted suicide debate.

• Maryland assisted suicide bill appears to be dead again (Read).
• Great news. Maryland assisted suicide bill is dead (Read).
• Assisted suicide, disability discrimination and racial disparities (Read). 
• Maryland assisted suicide bill may permit euthanasia (Read).