More than 70 victim statements in the Kenneth Law suicide poison case.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Some of Kenneth Law's victims

Kenneth Law, a Canadian chef who sold suicide poison online to as many as 1200 people world-wide, plead guilty to 14 charges of aiding and abetting suicide in a New Market court on May 29, 2026. The deaths 14 suicide deaths involved people who were aged 16 - 36 and there were at least 79 deaths in the United Kingdom.

 

More Kenneth Law victims.

Thomas Daigle reported for CBC News last May that Law was connected to at least 147 poisoning deaths world-wide.

On September 23, 24; families of the victims of Kenneth Law gave victims statements in the New Market court, before sentencing will conclude.

Joseph Brean reported for the National Post that: 

No matter what prison sentence is ultimately imposed on the suicide poison merchant Kenneth Law, Wednesday’s proceedings before Justice Michelle Fuerst had the deflated air of inadequate compromise.

Kenneth Law

Law was originally charged with 14 counts of second degree murder. Law challenged the charges arguing that he did not murder anyone and he wasn't present at the death of any of his victims.

Based on a plea agreement the Crown Prosecutor dropped the 14 counts of murder for an agreement where Law pleaded guilty to aiding the suicide of his victims, a charge that may result in a 14 year sentence.

Brean reported on the number of deaths associated with Law's suicide poison:

His Ontario victims formally number 14, with details of 79 more shared by Britain to inform this sentencing hearing. But that does not include his American market, so the real number is likely higher, almost certainly more than 100.

He sent 431 packages to the U.S., 330 to the U.K., and 157 within Canada, all during the pandemic in 2021 until his arrest in 2023 sparked a panicked international search for packages already mailed. In addition to poison, he also sold more expensive kits for asphyxiation by gas.

Brean reported the testimony from the victims of Kenneth Law.

Cindy MacMinn said in an angry voice through tears.

“My son is dead, he is gone, I am empty, hollow,”

“If it hadn’t been for your offence, perhaps Clayton (Choquette, 32) may still be here … Your actions caused me to have no desire to live any longer, because Clayton is not there to share with. It is pointless. He was everything to me.”

Sarjit Kaur Rana, the mother of Amrit Rana, (21) said:

“There are things you do not realize you are memorizing while your child is still alive,” like the sound of his “gallop” down the stairs to ask if the chicken and rice is ready,

“Now it’s one of the most precious memories of my life.”

Stephen Mitchell, Sr., father of Stephen Mitchell, Jr., who died by suicide aged 21 said:

“He was ill and he needed help and I tried my best to give him that help,”

“Mr. Law robbed my son of the chance to be healed.”

Greg Bryson, the father of Tyler Bryson, (34), who was a professional commercial pilot, said:

“Mr. Law broke all of our hearts,”

“knowingly took actions to steal something so precious in all of our lives.”

Kim Prosser, mother of Ashtyn Prosser-Blake, (19) said:

“I have no words for how cold the blood ran in my veins, the ice that dropped me to my knees and destroyed the world I lived in until that moment, to hear the words ‘He did it this time,’”

He had just called her to say good night, and she thought he sounded tired. “I didn’t know he was making his last call goodbye,” she said. It lasted 38 minutes and 18 seconds.

She confessed that she has since made an attempt on her own life, not planned, after an unexpected emotional loss and the burden of the court process.

“I am still here and Ashtyn is not,” she said.

Leonardo Bedoya Forero, father of Jeshennia Bedoya-Lopez, (18), who gave a statement with his wife Maria Lopez, read out by a prosecutor due to language barriers.

“We are two people trying to survive the same loss while watching each other suffer,”

“It terrifies me to think what would happen if we both collapse at the same time.”

“We are two people clinging to each other because neither of us knows how to stand up on our own,” he said. “The future we had imagined as a family disappeared.”

He spoke of powerlessness, how could not protect his daughter, and now fears he cannot protect his wife.

“I saw my daughter, pale, bruised and cold,” “That image became part of me.”

“The place she went for understanding led her to greater danger,” he said, to a man who “paves a path to death … How was I supposed to protect my daughter from something I didn’t even know I was supposed to protect her from?”

Norson Harris, father of Ashley Harris, (26), who graduated in computer science and systems design, said:

“There was a before, and then there is an after when we have gained membership in a club that nobody wants to be part of,”

“I still write to Ashley, message her, in the hopes there’s a small corner of the universe where she has written a system that is able to receive them,” he said. He said he leads a smaller life now and has become an introvert, and is not working at a similar level as in the past.

“We all feel we should have been able to prevent Ashley’s death, or to intervene in a way that would have changed the course of events”

Brean reported Norson to further say:

Before she died, Ashley had just got into a new therapy program. But Law “sold her a chemical that Ashley ultimately used to end her own life.”

it is a “small consolation” that Law has admitted his responsibility, and he said he hopes Law recognizes the answer he should have given his customers is “that they were loved, they were not alone, and that help is available.”

Brean reported that on Thursday morning (September 24)

Law sauntered slowly toward the central prisoner’s box in a black bomber jacket, khakis and brown leather shoes, making no eye contact with anyone. He sat impassively through all the proceedings as the Crown made its start on 74 victim impact statements, some read by their authors, others by prosecutors.

Philip Nitschke

Sanchez Manning reported for the Times on October 16, 2025 that long-time euthanasia / suicide activist, Philip Nitschke, told a seminar in London England that he had introduced the poison to the Canadian chef Kenneth Law.

Nitschke said that he introduced the poison to Law when he attended Nitschke’s assisted suicide seminar in Toronto.

 

More recently, Nitschke is promoting a collar that suffocates people to death.

The same themes contained within Kenneth Law's victims statements are shared by people who have lost friends and relatives to death by medical homicide / assisted suicide. People justify those deaths based on the health condition of the person who died, nonetheless, I have heard many people respond in the same way.

Was there something I could have done to prevent this death?

Could we have found another way to help?

You can't bring them back. 

The person has died, it was wrong, and I miss them.

Assisted suicide, suicide - There is no mushy middle.

By Gordon Friesen
President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gordon Friesen

Those of us who are committed to the prevention of medical homicide have frequently felt betrayed by the unfortunate adoption of pro-death policies, by those very organizations whose natural mandate is to oppose such practice without reservation.

Our latest example involves the American Association of Suicidology, which has apparently reposted the following policy statement on its website: 

“the practice of physician aid in dying ... is distinct from the behavior that has been traditionally and ordinarily described as “suicide”.[1]

According to this incongruous theory: people blowing their brains out should be seen as an evil to be prevented; but achieving the same result by consulting a doctor, should not! Regardless of any possible subtleties, the blunt effect of such a doctrine would greatly limit the scope of suicide prevention, and potentially, render that effort irrelevant altogether.

In their own defense the authors of AAS policy embrace (or feign to embrace) political neutrality: 

"...The document does not speak for or against legalization of this practice..."

However, there can be no neutrality in such a case. For to cease opposition to medical homicide is to implicitly support its practice.

Indeed, Such pretended neutrality is strongly reminiscent of the false language offered by the Canadian Medical Association, in 2014, and the British Medical Association, in 2021. In these cases, also, the pretense of political neutrality was a complete refusal of fundamental duty.[2] [3] Both of these announcements significantly took the wind out of medical homicide resistance, and greased the pole for future acceptance.

To explain their own extraordinary self-destructive position, the authors of AAS policy (again like those of the CMA and BMA) claim pragmatic political necessity: 

“The final document accepted by the AAS Board is the product of an effort to try to resolve the tension, evident within the AAS over a period of many years, between commitment to suicide prevention and the recognition that medical aid in dying is now legal in multiple jurisdictions.” [4]

And yet why should legality dictate acquiescence? Mere legality does not make actions right; and that fact is even more certain in the realm of medical ethics. 

Personally, I do not credit this alleged motivation of pragmatic expedience. On the contrary, I believe that a more experienced reading reveals a carefully scripted process, apparently dominated by elements whose ideas are closely aligned with the death lobby itself; and where the reasons given to support their final position might well have been copy/pasted from generic death lobby websites.

And yet (however that may be) our most important concern should not be with those few States where medical homicide is legal. That concern should be with the effects of medical-homicide-enabling doctrine upon the majority of AAS members, in jurisdictions where that practice is still prohibited by law. For as Wesley J. Smith has recently described in detail: the legalization of medical homicide represents an absolute disaster-in-waiting for any effort at suicide prevention.[5]

In short: it is of no benefit, for anyone in such a State or Country, to belong to an Association whose ideology is aimed at undermining the very ground upon which they themselves are standing; an Association, in effect, which is preparing them for extinction.

On the contrary! What we require now is the formation of representative groups dedicated to the protection of basic principles; groups prepared to dispute every inch of ground; groups committed to providing a living model of conceptual integrity, even (and especially) in places where less positive visions have temporarily gained ascendance.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is proud to take an unambiguous stand on medical homicide (as do also: the World Medical Association, the American Medical Association, and many others).

Moreover, recent victories in Slovenia, Alberta and the UK, show that a proactive, morally repugnant submission, is not justifiable on grounds of pragmatic expedience. This fight has not been lost! We have barely yet begun! And the progress of our adversaries is visibly grinding to a halt. 


[1] American Association of Suicidology, Statement Clarifying the Distinction Between “Suicide” and “Physician Aid in Dying”, first posted October 2017, withdrawn 2023, reposted 2025 (Article Link).

[2] Somerville, Margaret, There’s no “mushy middle” on euthanasia, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, October 3, 2014 (Article Link).

[3] Macdonald, Gordon M.D., BMA goes Neutral on Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, September 21, 2021 (Article Link).

[4] Battin, Margaret P. Phd, Development of the AAS Statement on “Suicide” and “Physician Aid in Dying”, The American Association of Suicidology, June 2019 (Article Link).

[5] Smith, Wesley J., World Suicide Prevention Day Hypocrisy, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, September 10, 2026 (Article Link).

Ashley Dalton (Labour MP) speaks out against UK assisted suicide bill

Ashley Dalton UK (MP) L

This is the speech in the British parliament by Ashley Dalton (Labour MP) West Lancashire who is living with terminal cancer.

Dalton spoke out against the assisted suicide bill on Friday September 11, 2026. 

Dalton is not philosophically opposed to assisted suicide but she is concerned about it's effects and she was opposed to the bill which was defeated by a vote of 286 to 270. (Link to the speech) 

The last time this House considered this bill at Second Reading I was keeping a secret.

Whilst Honourable and Right Honourable members were debating the issue I was grappling with my own terminal diagnosis. I was told I have stage 4 incurable metastatic breast cancer.

I was overwhelmed with grief fear and anxiety. I was scared of what was to come and I was fearful of how it was to affect my family and my loved ones.

I was scared that I was going to get very poorly and thinking how will I cope, how will my family cope, I will I be cared for, how will I afford it, how badly will it hurt and how long will it last.

When you hear those words, depression anxiety, grief, shame and guilt come inbounds.

Suicide risk is highest immediately after diagnosis and it usually falls quickly within three to six months.

I would be lying if I said that when thinking about all that was to come I didn't consider that it might just be fairer and easier on everyone if I just got the dying done as soon as possible.

Having treatable depression however will not exclude anyone from an assisted death in this bill and depression is common among people with terminal illness but it is often treatable.

Clinicians are trained to prevent suicide in people suffering from depression, but where will the line be drawn. This bill makes no provision to support this difficult transition or to create safeguards around it.

A person can also be suicidal and have unmet mental health needs prior to developing a terminal illness and then ask the state to kill them without any assessment of their psychological health just their mental capacity. Because mental capacity and mental health are not the same thing.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends a holistic multi disciplinary assessment of every applicant. The three person panel at the end of the assessment process in this bill is not what most NHS clinicians recognize as a multi-disciplinary team. It certainly does not allow the meaningful multi-disciplinary decision making. The assessment needs to happen at the beginning of the process, not the end and each team member should be independently assessing the patient, in person, this is not what is being included in this bill.

Now I don't know how long I will live. I will be on treatment for life, however how long or short that may be. I at the moment live between scans in 9 to 12 weeks blocks of time. The last scan may show that the disease is stable but the next scan may show that it is growing again. If the disease is stable the drug is working and we can carry on. Eventually the drug will stop working, the cancer will grow and we will have to try another drug and see if that works.

At some point we'll either run out of drugs to try or I will be too poorly to tolerate them. Then I die. It could be months, it could be years, no one really knows.
Prognosis is notoriously difficult to predict. Palliative care professionals and oncologists tell me that whilst they can more or less give me an indication of when I'll die when I'm a few days or weeks off, anything beyond that is a flip of a coin.

But what the palliative care professionals have told me is that palliative care can help me when I die.

But in the campaign around this bill it seems to me that it is being implied that a person with a terminal illness will have a dreadful painful death unless they have access to assisted dying and it is simply not true.

Palliative care in the UK is excellent. Far to many people do not have access to palliative care that they need. But the idea that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false.

People, I, have been terrorized with tales of people vomiting up their own feces as though this is common place during death. It is vanishingly rare. Bowel obstructions are more common but they are treatable, I know, I have had one.

It's nothing short of irresponsible to scare monger people like me into believing that our deaths will be horrific when all the evidence suggests that with access to good palliative care deaths are, on the whole, gentle.

The answer is not to terrify people and their families. It's to sort out palliative care and social care first because of this takes place in a vacuum.

Until we can say that everyone who needs it has access to high quality palliative care then we are offering nobody a choice. A terrible death or an assisted death is not a choice it's a threat.

Whilst I speak today from the position of someone with a terminal illness, I am acutely aware that this is not about me. This debate is also not about an abstract concept or a position of principle. The question that will be put at the end of this debate will not be that this House has considered the question of assisted dying it won't even be that this House agrees with the principle of assisted dying. The question will be that this House agrees that this bill be read for a second time. This bill. Not the bill it might have been, not the bill members might have hoped it would be, not the bill it could be. This bill. And it incidentally it says absolutely nothing about the House of Lords. That is not the question that we are being asked.

And whatever Honourable and Right Honourable Members think about the principle of assisted dying surely our first and foremost responsibility is to write law that is safe and workable.

Not one of the professional bodies that will be tasked with delivery of the bill will attest that it is either safe or workable. The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Association of Palliative Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians all say the bill is seriously inadequate. They aren't opposed to assisted dying in principle, but they cannot support this bill.

Instead of bringing a bill identical to the last so the Parliament Acts could be used and it can be forced, un-amended on the statute books, why didn't the proposers spend the summer working with the Royal Medical Colleges, professional bodies and organizations to build a bill that they could also support. If they had done that it would have been very difficult for those opposed to principle to argue against the bill, but they didn't. This is not about sides, this House is not a debating society, it is about making the law.

Whilst we may be campaigners out there, in here we are all legislators. It is our responsibility not to pick a side and dig in but to work together to build the best laws that we can and that is never truer than with a private members bill on a matter of conscience.

This bill does not protect the most vulnerable, it does not protect the poor, the old, people with disabilities or black and minority and ethnic people being disproportionately affected. It does not protect people who are mentally ill, it does not recognize that not everyone has the same level of agency, control or influence over their decision making and what the clinicians who are asked to deliver the bill are saying is that it isn't even workable. That there is every expectation that it wouldn't even work for the terminally ill people who want an assisted death either.

And there is no stopping it. Auto commencement in the bill means that if it is passed by the commons and pushed through by the Parliament Act and even it the government and NHS is not ready it has to happen on the strike of four years from it being passed. Even if there is no funding, even if palliative care is still broken, even if it is known to be dangerous flawed or unworkable, it is happening - ready or not.

This is not a last chance saloon. This debate has been going on for years, it is not a once in a generation opportunity, it could come back again at the next parliament.

My days could be numbered but that doesn't mean that I want this Chamber to rush through bad law just so I might have a chance to see it or use it. It's of huge importance.

If Honourable and Right Honourable members have any doubt that the exact bill before us today is not the best it could be. Is anything less than excellent well thought out and robustly drafted legislation that protects the vulnerable and recognizes the expertise of our world class clinicians, and a bill that I and other terminally ill people deserve, then I urge them to vote NO or vote to abstain.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition agrees with nearly everything that Dalton said, but we, of course, oppose killing people in general, as much as we recognize that the British bill was completely flawed. 

Raised, Recontextualized, Retired, Then Reissued: The AAS’s “MAiD” Statement

Meghan Schrader

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

This blog post responds to the fact that the American Association of Suicidology’s 2017 statement saying that Oregon Model “MAiD” is not “suicide,” previously “retired” by the AAS Executive Committee in 2023, was reissued verbatim this year.

I may write follow-up blog posts about this development, but I will stick with this one for now.

Clearly the AAS is comprised of brilliant scholars who have done great good for suicide prevention. Yet AAS’s vacillation can be understood to suggest that the statement is not indisputably based entirely on whatever scientific method the AAS considers most useful for studying suicide, but is at least partly influenced by the individual perspectives and ideologies of which scholars are in charge of the AAS at a given time. Suicidologists in charge of the AAS in 2017 thought it would be good to create the statement, the suicidologists in charge of the 2023 AAS Executive Committee thought it would be good to retire it, and enough current AAS suicidologists thought it would be good to reissue it.

However, the AAS’ statement does not establish unanimity among suicide prevention experts. In 2025 the New Hampshire Coalition For Suicide Prevention opposed the New Hampshire End of Life Freedom Act, because “This bill will send the message that it is OK to take your own life “in certain circumstances,” and “While framed as a compassionate option, physician-assisted suicide often exacerbates existing inequities in healthcare systems.”

Moreover, the International Association For Suicide Prevention released a 2025 “IASP Position Statement on Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia” warning about an overlap between “MAiD” and “suicide.” While not as unequivocal as euthanasia opponents would like (despite recommending a ban on psychiatric euthanasia and expressing deep concerns about the systemic pressures that might coerce disabled people who aren’t dying to end their lives, the statement doesn’t say, “all ‘MAiD’ is suicide, don’t legalize it for anyone”), it also does not say that any particular form of “MAiD” is not suicide.

Despite the harms that the Oregon Model poses to marginalized people with terminal or potentially terminal conditions, I am glad that at least the AAS’ current webpage about “MAiD” indicates that the distinction it draws between “suicide” and “MAiD” is limited to people who are already dying.

But we know that the Oregon Model has been applied to situations that the AAS has historically worked to prevent. For instance, people with eating disorders have used Oregon model “MAiD” as a suicide method.

Moreover, the actual text of the re-posted statement acknowledges that in international jurisdictions, “MAiD” is allowed for “incurable” illnesses, without explicitly saying that this is bad. The equivocation in those passages makes it easier for expansionists to apply the AAS statement to their advocacy. This is especially true in paragraph 1, which acknowledges the existence of “MAiD” for people who aren’t dying, and paragraph 20, which makes the blanket statement that “a patient’s choice of PAD that satisfies legal criteria is not an appropriate target for ‘suicide’ prevention,” without reiterating that this criteria must include terminal illness. Even though the organization’s “MAiD” webpage, and other parts of the statement, indicate that the AAS’s statement is meant to apply specifically to terminal illness, there are passages that expansionists can cite to support their cause.

Perhaps this is why the resurrected 2017 statement helped redefine suicide in the 2019 Canadian Truchon court case. The judge in that case cited the AAS statement when ruling that the “MAiD” deaths of disabled people who were not dying would not be suicides, even though the United Nations and nearly every disability rights group in Canada say that that’s not true.

So the AAS’s statement has been used to effect what the majority of disability experts, and likely many people at the AAS, view as suicides, even if that wasn’t the AAS’s intention.

As I’ve said, I can respect the logic of well-intentioned people, even suicidologists, who draw a good-faith distinction between Oregon model “MAiD” and “regular” suicide. I also understand that the AAS’s scholars have done great good for suicide prevention, and they may have reissued the statement with the best of intentions. But that statement has harmed disabled people, especially when “MAiD” expansionists have used it to achieve their goals.

We can observe some of those expansionists beginning to acknowledge that their agenda does indeed involve suicide, such as when famous expansive “MAiD” advocate Thaddeus Mason Pope tweeted to me that the suicides of disabled people are good.

Moreover, the AAS’s 2023 decision to retire its 2017 statement indicates doubt about the content of that statement. It is not unreasonable to infer that whoever was in charge of the AAS Executive Committee at the time entertained the thought that there might not be such a strong distinction between ““MAiD” and “suicide” after all, or that the statement was undermining suicide prevention in some way; otherwise why retire the statement?

It will be valid for future discussions about the statement to note that the statement was created, then retired, then re-issued, which suggests disagreement among suicidologists as to its usefulness.

Moreover, as noted, the AAS’s statement has been celebrated by very aggressive extremists who believe in “MAiD” for disabled people who aren’t dying and for people with mental illnesses. Their position contradicts the position of the Canadian Association For Suicide Prevention, the International Association For Suicide Prevention, and the director of Canada’s 988 Suicide Prevention hotline, all of whom have said that “psychiatric MAiD” is suicide and should not be legalized.

Canada’s “MAiD” program encourages doctors to raise the possibility of “MAiD” with their patients-a practice that is now happening so regularly that disabled Canadians who find such suggestions offensive and disturbing have begun carrying cards telling doctors not to do this. I’m going to give the AAS the benefit of the doubt and assume that when they released their “MAiD” statement, that wasn’t what they had in mind.

Yet the AAS statement was cited in the 2019 Truchon court decision that expanded “MAiD” to disabled people without terminal illnesses and caused these scenarios.

I am sure that the AAS’s reissued statement will once again become one of the “MAiD” movement’s favorite talking points. But the statement must be assessed with respect to its impact, cultural context and inconsistency; it isn’t indisputably the rock-solid scientific consensus that “MAiD” proponents would like it to be.

Author Note 1: Here is an archived link to the retirement notice and a screenshot of that notice.

Author Note 2: Here is the complete text of the Truchon decision that cites the AAS statement.

Author Note 3: For a more in-depth response to the perspective of those who draw a good faith distinction between Oregon Model “MAiD” and “regular” suicide, see my blog post, “What Does Suicide Have To Do With the Oregon MAiD Model?".

Author Note 4: For peer-reviewed research on how “MAiD” intersects with the cultural trope that disabled people’s suicides are acceptable, see Professor Emily Lund’s 2016 article, “Is Suicide An Option? The Impact of Disability On Suicide Acceptability In the Context of Depression, Suicidality And Demographic Factors.”

Great news: British parliament defeats assisted suicide bill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have great news.

The British Parliament defeated the Edwards assisted suicide bill today (September 11) by a vote of 286 to 270. This is a great reason to celebrate.

We especially congratulate our friends at the Care Not Killing Alliance who have worked for so long to defeat this bill and previous bills. 

EPC letter sent to members of the British parliament (Link).

Some background

The Edwards assisted suicide bill was introduced on June 17, 2026 and was nearly identical to the Leadbeater bill that passed in the British parliament on November 29, 2024 by a vote of 330 to 275 at second reading and 313 to 291 in the final vote.

The Leadbeater assisted suicide bill was fatally flawed and timed-out in the British House of Lords earlier this year.

What changed between November 29, 2024 and September 11, 2026?

The Leadbeater bill passed in the House of Commons but stalled in the House of Lords. During the House of Lords debate multiple flaws and concerns with the bill were uncovered. Even though the Leadbeater bill was flawed, Edwards introduced a nearly identical bill in order to invoke the Parliaments Act which states that if two nearly identical bills are passed in the House of Commons in two consecutive parliaments then the bill is not required to be approved by the House of Lords.

Edwards was hoping to prevent the bill from having to be debated in the House of Lords.

Keir Starmer - Andy Burnham

Another change was that Keir Starmer was the British Prime Minister during the Leadbeater assisted suicide bill debate. Starmer was a long-time promoter of assisted suicide.

Due to his drop in popularity, Starmer resigned as Prime Minister and Andy Burnham became the new Prime Minister.

Unlike Starmer, Burnham is not a strong supporter of assisted suicide. In late July 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 opposed assisted suicide but he did say that improvements to end-of-life care should come first, before Britain considers assisted suicide.

Burnham later stated that members of the governing Labour party were not going to be pressured to vote for the assisted suicide bill.

Finally, stories about Canada's euthanasia law continue to circulate in Britain. The assisted suicide lobby has tried to "undo" the damage from Canada's euthanasia reality but the multitude of stories make it impossible to negate the truth, that legalizing assisted suicide, even a law that is "tighter" than the Canadian law, will result in expansion over time.

In March 2026, Scotland's parliament rejected the McArthur assisted suicide bill by a vote of 69 to 57 and today, the British parliament rejected the Edwards assisted suicide bill by a vote of 286 to 270.

The battle is not over in Britain, but the victories are worth celebrating.

Letter to the British Parliament. Vote No to the assisted dying bill.

The Canadian experience proves that you should not legalize assisted dying.

By Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Dr Paul Saba, Co-Founder of Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia and a Québec family physician.

Many people believe that the Edwards assisted dying bill will legalize a "limited" assisted dying law. In reality, the bill lacks effective definition to limit its application. Even so, the Canadian experience with legalizing assisted dying proves that the law will expand based on a lack of definition in the language of the law and the reality that, once legalized, restrictions in the law will be challenged based on equality. 

Canada’s original law (Bill C-14) appeared designed to limit assisted dying to people who were terminally ill by including the restriction that a person’s natural death must be reasonably foreseeable, a phrase that was never defined in the law. 

Even under the original law, which was more restrictive than Canada’s current law, Dr Paul Saba had a patient who wanted to die by euthanasia, but his patient had a wrong diagnosis. Dr Saba explains:

Dr Paul Saba

Let me share a personal experience. Eight years ago, one of my patients, Jim (a pseudonym), came to see me for a cough, thinking he had a cold. I ordered a Chest X-Ray. According to the radiologist’s report, Jim appeared to have lung cancer. I sat down with Jim and told him, “We need to do a CT scan immediately. You need to see a specialist. We need to do a bronchoscopy…”

Jim replied, “Dr Saba, I know you’re against assisted suicide, but you know what? I don’t necessarily agree with you.” I replied, "No, no. You need to go through all the steps of the diagnostic process, because this is only a preliminary diagnosis. Even if it is lung cancer, it’s a disease that can be treated today. There are new treatments available. It might not even be lung cancer.”

I spoke with the radiologist who had performed the lung CT scan; he told me, “We don’t know exactly what it is. It looks like lung cancer, but it could be lymphoma, which would be highly treatable. ”

Jim is an intelligent, well-informed man, an engineer, who thought he had a cold, only to be told he might have cancer. He could have resigned himself to an assisted death before even knowing 

what it was, since Canadian law allows a person to refuse all the testing necessary to confirm the diagnosis. He could have lost hope when the situation was still full of hope.

The power to move people to give up is one of the dangerous and misleading aspects of assisted dying. However, Jim is alive today because I was able to get his attention and persuade him that the situation was hopeful and that he should get more tests and undergo treatment. Today, eight years after diagnosis, investigations and treatment, he is happy to be alive with no further evidence of disease. 

Jim was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a condition that is highly curable with targeted medical treatment.

Misdiagnosis is not uncommon. DP Medical reported in February 2025 that a 2023 study by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) estimated that misdiagnoses affect around one in 18 patients in primary and secondary care. The same study found that misdiagnosed cancers, strokes, and heart attacks were among the most serious cases, often leading to life-altering consequences or death.

Misdiagnosis is a strong reason to oppose assisted dying laws, but the biggest reason to oppose the Edwards bill is what it actually legalizes and what legalization will lead to over time.

Assisted dying is an act of killing a person, usually upon request, by prescribing a combination of lethal poison drugs to cause death. This is not a minor issue, as it requires medical professionals to be directly involved with the act of killing their patients.

Another issue is how these laws evolve over time. The Canadian experience shows how a law can move from assisted dying for the terminally ill, to assisted dying for the chronically ill to assisted dying for people with chronic mental illness as their sole criteria, to assisted dying by advanced request and to considerations of assisted dying for mature minors.

A recent parliamentary committee stated that the Canadian government should not extend assisted dying to people with chronic mental illnesses as their sole criteria. Dying with Dignity, an assisted dying lobby group, responded to the committee by launching a court case arguing that Canadians with mental illness as their sole criteria had a right to an assisted death.

Assisted dying is not what people think it is. It is about creating an avenue to kill people and legalizing assisted dying leads to extensions over time based on discrimination, as the restrictions in the law will be deemed to deny people equality under the law. 

Vote NO on the Edwards assisted dying bill while being committed to improving the care that everyone needs and deserves. 

Alex Schadenberg - Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Paul Saba - Co-Founder of the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia

World Suicide Prevention Day Hypocrisy

This article was published by National Review online on September 10, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

You may not have heard, but today is the annual World Suicide Prevention Day. Usually, such efforts are almost invisible. We don’t put nearly as much emphasis on suicide prevention as we once did.

I am all for suicide prevention, of course. I just wish that those efforts included assisted suicide/euthanasia, which costs the lives of approximately 25,000 people annually around the world — with that toll increasing every year. But despite proliferating laws allowing doctors and nurse practitioners to assisted suicides — or, as in Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, and other countries — actively kill suicidal people, prevention efforts are generally silent about this category of suicide.

I checked on the World Health Association link to Prevention Day for 2026. It has a four-tiered prevention strategy that goes by the acronym LIFE:

• L: Limit Access to Suicide;
• I: Interact with the media on responsible reporting;
• F: Foster life skills of young people;
• E: Early identity and support everyone affected.

That’s fine but assisted suicide/euthanasia directly violates three of those four prevention strategies. Let’s look at the “L”:

Limiting access to means of suicide is a universal evidence-based intervention for suicide prevention. Depending on the country, this may mean banning acutely toxic highly hazardous pesticides, restricting firearms, installing barriers in places where suicides are known to occur, limiting access to ligature points or taking other measures.

And yet, assisted suicide provides the means of self-termination to suicidal people.

Does the WHO oppose that — or even mention it? No, it does not.

What about the “I?”:

Interacting with the media for responsible reporting of suicide is significant because media reporting of suicide can lead to a rise in suicide due to imitation — especially if the report is about a celebrity or describes the method of suicide.

And yet, how many glowing media stories have we seen describing assisted suicides as “dying on his own terms,” or extolling suicide/euthanasia goodbye parties, and celebrating suicidal patients conjoining euthanasia with organ donation etc. Good grief, Brittany Maynard was declared by CNN to be an Extraordinary Person of the Year because she committed suicide after being diagnosed with brain cancer, and she was featured repeatedly on the cover of People.

Does WHO oppose that — or even mention it? No, it does not.

What about the “E?”:

Health services are often the entry point for people in distress or for those who have made a suicide attempt where early identification, assessment, management and follow-up care can be provided.

The health system is the “entry point” for all physician-assisted suicides. All are therefore identified. And virtually none receive suicide prevention services.

Does the WHO oppose that or even mention it? No, it does not.

With the exception of the International Association for Suicide Prevention, no suicide prevention associations of which I am aware ever mentions assisted suicide, much less explicitly opposes it. This despite studies demonstrating that legalizing and advocating for assisted suicide increase suicides generally.

One association shamefully says that it isn’t really suicide, but that suicide is a “what,” not a “why.” What an abdication of responsibility.

So, let’s stop the hypocrisy and rename it, “World Some Suicides Prevention Day.” At least that would have the virtue of honesty.

Judge refuses to block Illinois assisted suicide law.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A federal judge, on September 10, denied the request from disability rights advocates’ to block the Illinois assisted suicide law from going into effect on September 12.

Jeremy Gorner reported for the Chicago Tribune on September 10 that:

The ruling came in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year by two disabled patients, a doctor and several disability and patients’ rights organizations. They allege the state’s End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars discrimination against people with disabilities; the Affordable Care Act, which regulates healthcare costs; and the plaintiffs’ equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

But in his 25-page decision, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp rejected at least one of the plaintiffs’ arguments calling for a preliminary injunction to put the law on hold, disagreeing that doctors “will start inviting disabled patients to consider medical aid in dying” once the law takes effect.

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

We reported on September 9 that Hannah Meisel reported for Capital News Illinois on September 8 that disability rights organizations, on September 5, petitioned a federal judge to block the implementation of the Illinois assisted suicide law based on how the law contravenes the Americans with Disabilities Act, and is discriminatory against disabled people, who are more susceptible to physician bias and therefore coercion to end their life.

Gorner also reported that Tharp questioned the standing of the plaintiffs in the case.

As referenced in Tharp’s decision, one of the plaintiffs — a quadriplegic woman named Ebony Payne who is paralyzed from the neck down and has repeatedly been in serious life-threatening situations in hospitals — contended that for disabled people the law “removes the legal and ethical obligation of doctors” to act solely as healers by allowing them to respond to requests about procedures related to medical aid in dying. But the judge argued the plaintiff has not shown that she is a “qualified patient” under the law. 

The judge also noted Payne did not explain “why she is necessarily harmed” by the law if she does not seek a medical-aid-in-dying method “or the physician is in any event unwilling to provide such assistance.”

The Illinois assisted suicide law will go into effect on September 12. Tharp gave the plaintiffs 30 days to appeal the decision.

Assisted suicide laws give medical professionals the right in law to prescribe lethal poison for the purpose of suicide. The Illinois assisted suicide law is designed to make it impossible to prosecute a medical professional who assists a suicide, even in the most egregious cases.

Big Money can be Made Assisting Suicides

This article was published by National Review online on September 5, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

The New York Times published an unbelievably puffy piece about a new assisted-suicide clinic starting in New York as legalization kicks in, describing it oh, so objectively as “a start-up for better deaths”–complete with Buddhist chanting. Good grief.

But the saccharine story raises an important issue discussed too little in the debate over assisted suicide. Legalization creates acute financial conflicts of interest that have the potential to push suicidal people toward death.

For socialized systems and government funded health care, killing instead of caring for expensive patients can save a lot of money over time, particularly when the terminal-illness limitation is lifted. Indeed, some advocates argue that saving money is a big part of the point. The Canadian media has even celebrated that potential.

For now, however, that macro conflict of interest is muted in the U.S. Medicare does not pay for assisted suicide, nor does the federal portion of Medicaid — thanks to a law signed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. State Medicaid may pay for it, but currently the numbers don’t add up to that much money. Private insurance companies have been smart enough to stay out of the controversy. Some plans pay the cost of doctor visits but not the price of the prescribed poison.

But legalization also creates acute potential conflicts of interest at the micro level. There is big money to be made for individual doctors in writing lethal prescriptions. For example, a death doctor in New Jersey has assisted more than 200 customers — I refuse to call them patients, since prescribed suicide isn’t a legitimate medical treatment — at up to $8,000 per prescribed overdose. If the average charge was $5,000, that’s more than a million bucks in a short time for not doing a whole lot of doctoring.

The New York assisted-suicide start-up touted so glowingly in the Times is another case in point. The clinic plans to charge up to $12,000 per suicide facilitation. Here’s what twelve grand covers.

Patients get two medical evaluations and a mental health screening, as well as a prescription for the combination of drugs — sedatives, morphine, lethal doses of cardiac medication — that will kill them.

New York is a populous state. So, let’s do a little math. If 1,000 people receive assisted suicide over the next few years from these “clinicians,” at say an average of $10,000 per death, that comes to — holy cow! — $10,000,000! Again, for doing very little actual doctoring. And the assisted-suicide clinic doesn’t have an office, so no rent payments will cut into the cash flow.

Moreover, the assisted-suicide clinic isn’t offering any actual “treatments,” since the price doesn’t cover caring for patients’ illnesses or, apparently, palliating symptoms. Nor will the “clinicians” practice in the medical specialties that treat the various illnesses with which suicide customers will present, such as cancer, ALS, or kidney disease.

Indeed, according to the story, the leader of the clinic is a nurse practitioner who treats chronic pain, which isn’t the same thing at all as caring for terminally ill people. Another M.D. is an ER specialist. They don’t treat terminal illnesses over the long haul, either. A palliative-care doc is involved with the suicide clinic but, according to the story, appears most interested in psychedelics. There is a former “hospice worker” and Buddhist monk. They sure don’t diagnose or treat terminal illnesses.

I’ll also bet the twelve grand doesn’t cover suicide prevention, which I doubt will be offered in any event. At least, there is no mention of that essential hospice service in the story. Besides, if the good death prescribers find that a patient does not qualify for a prescribed poisonous overdose, one would assume they don’t get the $12,000, a clear potential conflict of interest in my book.

Assisted-suicide proponents always argue that it will be implemented by doctors who have long-term relationships with their patients. That has always been a crock since most M.D.s properly will have nothing to do with prescribing suicides.

This story proves that point yet again. These suicide facilitators may know their customers for only about the two weeks it takes to jump through the bureaucratic hurdles. They certainly won’t have a long-term doctor-patient relationships with them.

With assisted-suicide numbers increasing every year and more states pushed to legalize doctor-prescribed death, there is big money to be made by doctors from writing lethal prescriptions. The subjects of this story do not appear to be motivated by avarice. But do we really want to financially incentivize access to suicide and let doctors get rich providing it?

That would sure allow bad practitioners who fail in clinical practice to personally do well by doing bad. Which reminds me of a joke. What do you call a medical student who graduates last in his class? “Doctor."

New York Times promotes assisted suicide "business"

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On February 6, 2026, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the assisted suicide bill with the law caming into effect on August 5. This is terrible news as it will lead to the deaths of many people, at a vulnerable time of their life by lethal poison.

To increase the demand for assisted suicide the New York Times published an article on September 3 by Emma Goldberg promoting a new assisted suicide "business". Goldberg describes it as a business "start-up" for assisted suicide. In reality the article is providing free advertising for a business and steering people to assisted suicide. Goldberg writes:

You can think of it as a start-up for better deaths.

They have created a one-stop shop, (name of killing center withheld), where people can get help meeting every legal and medical requirement for a death on their own terms. Patients get two medical evaluations and a mental health screening, as well as a prescription for the combination of drugs — sedatives, morphine, lethal doses of cardiac medication — that will kill them. Medical aid in dying is legal in 13 states, and New York has among the strictest regulations, including that patients must be state residents, have six months or less to live, and wait five days between getting the prescription and filling it.

Goldberg describes it as a "start-up for better deaths" which is a sales technique. Notice how the article states that New York has among the "strictest regulations". This is another sales technique because most people want restrictions on assisted suicide.

Goldberg describes the "business partners" with compassionate descriptors and explains the cost for being assisted in a suicide is $12,000 and states: 

(...This covers medical consultations, psychological evaluations, logistical support, drugs and help for the grieving family after the death. The team also says it will care for people who cannot afford the cost.)

When asked about concerns related to the Hippocratic Oath, an oath that doctors once professed, the response was:

“The Hippocratic oath says do no harm,” ... “And I don’t think we’re harming anyone by doing this. I think we’re actually being compassionate and relieving suffering.”

Your not harming anyone by prescribing lethal poison for the purpose of suicide?

I didn't mention the name of the killing center or the medical team because I don't want to promote the business. Sadly killing people may become a lucrative business and the New York Times seems willing to provide free advertising to help them make a killing.

British government admits that disabled people may face ‘subtle pressure’ to choose assisted suicide, if bill passes

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

John Pring reported for the Disability New Service on September 3, 2026 that the British government admitted that disabled people may face 'subtle pressure' to choose assisted suicide if the assisted suicide bill becomes law. Pring reported that:

The impact assessment was published by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) last Thursday (August 28).

The assessment’s publication came on the same day that prime minister Andy Burnham wrote to Labour MPs to say he would not vote on the bill on 11 September because he did not want to “unduly influence the debate as prime minister”.

He had already told the media that he believed the funding crisis in palliative and social care should be fixed before there is any debate about legalising assisted dying.

And he has now also told ministers that as the government will remain neutral on the bill, they should “avoid being part of the public debate, and should not express views” about the implications of the bill for their own departments.

Pring reported that the government published three assessments of the assisted suicide bill on August 28.

On Thursday (28 August), DHSC and MoJ published three key documents that assess the “potential impacts” of the bill.

Their equality impact assessment of the bill accepts that disabled people “may be more susceptible to feeling as though they are a burden on those around them”, a key concern raised by campaigners opposed to legalisation.

The impact assessment says that this pressure “is not necessarily felt or applied by other people” but that disabled people “may feel subtle pressure due to attitudinal barriers or a lack of alternative appropriate services and support”, such as with the lack of access to palliative care.

It says these feelings of being a burden could also be caused by “structural pressures such as neglect, poverty and difficult living conditions”, while disabled people are twice as likely as non-disabled people to be victims of domestic abuse such as coercive behaviour.

And the equality impact assessment warns that factors such as high rates of poverty, poorer access to healthcare, lower quality care, and disproportionate levels of domestic abuse of black and Asian women could cause disproportionate numbers of minority ethnic people to choose an assisted death “to avoid financial hardship or escape abuse”.

It also highlights how older people, who are likely to be the main recipients of assisted dying, are “often dependent on those who care for them”, which puts them at increased risk of abuse and pressure to choose an assisted death.

And the assessment reports findings by the UN in 2021 that older people “may feel subtly pressured to end their lives prematurely”.

On November 29, 2024; the UK House of Commons voted 330 to 275 at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill, a bill that was fatally flawed and died in the British House of Lords.

On June 17, 2026 Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a similar version to the Leadbeater bill that is scheduled to be voted-on at second reading on September 11, 2026.

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.

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

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

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

Dr Zubir Ahmad

By Dr Zubir Ahmad 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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