Assisted suicide is not the compassionate answer.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Stephen Ward

Dr. Stephen Ward who is an internist and a practicing primary care physician for 16 years in Cheshire CT responded to the CT Mirror who published an editorial supporting assisted suicide on April 15. Ward responded with - Assisted suicide is not the compassionate answer.

As a physician myself, assisted suicide contradicts the physician’s most basic calling, to provide cure and hope for the patient. The prescription is no longer aimed to prolong life and delay death. Instead, death is the treatment.

Dr Ward comments on the editorial article emphasis on autonomy and writes:

What is portrayed as “choice” will be in reality closer to coercion. When life sustaining care is expensive and inaccessible, “choice” becomes limited. Assisted suicide becomes a cheaper alternative to years of expensive medical care and disability accommodations.

Dr Ward comments on healthcare cost containment and states:

The state would rather pay for your early exit than life-sustaining care. What an egregious message to send to our loved ones, neighbors, and friends.

Dr Ward then responds to the assurance that "safeguards" will protect you by stating:

However, in the tragic case of Eileen Mihich, every safeguard failed in Washington state, a state where assisted suicide has been legal for 17 years! Eileen suffered from serious mental illness, she was not a Washington resident, no doctor verified she was terminally ill, and no waiting period was enforced. Eileen was able to access assisted suicide drugs while side-stepping every safeguard. This can happen again to someone else’s daughter, sister, or friend.

Dr Ward then comments on attitudes that promote assisted suicide.

Unfortunately, misguided notions of “quality of life” means freedom from suffering in the name of a false compassion. This is a violation of patient autonomy. Yet assisted suicide celebrates despair as freedom to choose. The terminally ill and chronically infirm are among the most vulnerable in society and deserve legal protection. It is not the role of government to determine who does or does not have more human value than others.

Dr Ward completes his article by stating:

Yes, Connecticut is a state that leads in quality patient-first centered care. Let’s keep it that way. Connecticut should focus on expanding access to hospice and palliative care, not intentionally ending another human’s life.

Connecticut has faced assisted suicide bills nearly every year for almost 15 years.

Connecticut legislators need to listen to Dr Stephen Ward and continue to protect their citizens from assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide was legalized in three US states in 2025. Are you concerned?

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In 2025, assisted suicide was legalized in Delaware, Illinois and New York. This means that there are now 13 US states plus Washington DC that permit assisted suicide. The 13 states include California, Illinois and New York, three of the six most populated states in America.

This is tragic and will result in many early deaths and will lead to the further medical abandonment of people in need.

Previous to this year, the last state that legalized assisted suicide was New Mexico in 2021.

Are you concerned? I am concerned.

I watched the recent online US assisted suicide lobby political meeting. During the meeting the assisted suicide lobby outlined that, in 2026, there will be at least 18 states with bills to legalize assisted suicide. 

We are very concerning with some of the listed states which included: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada and Virginia. There are other states that the assisted suicide lobby are focusing on that are less likely to legalize assisted suicide in 2026 including (but not limited to) Arizona and Florida.

Our allies have been very successful in the past few years but the issue seems to be changing How are we to respond?

Let's look at the most recent successful campaign. 

The Slovenian people voted on an assisted suicide referendum on Sunday, November 23, 2025 and voted to overturn the assisted suicide bill that was passed in the Slovenian legislature in July 2025. More than 53.5% of the voters rejected the assisted suicide law.

This was a great victory, that was accomplished by a small group of committed citizens who stuck to their talking points. They achieved the victory for people who are sick, people with disabilities and pensioners against all odds, as they were up against the government and a well funded death lobby.

Slovenia is not the United States, but the principles in the successful campaign will transport to North America.

They weren't afraid to call it what it is. They used the term poisoning. Assisted suicide is to provide a lethal concoction to poison a person to death. 

The never used the language of the other side. The other side continuously lied about what the assisted suicide law said or what assisted suicide is. The campaign focused on telling the truth and challenging the lies.

They called assisted suicide, health care reform. Most jurisdictions require health care reform to enable a more equitable provision of care. Assisted suicide poisons a person to death. Dead people don't need health care.

The called assisted suicide pension reform. Slovenia, like most jurisdictions, invest a significant portion of their budget into the pension system. Assisted suicide poisons a person to death. Dead people don't collect pensions.

Proper medical care. The other side focused on suffering. The campaign opposing assisted suicide talked about proper care, and explained that assisted suicide forces people, who cannot attain proper medical care, to be poisoned to death.

The Slovenian campaign was more aggressive than most campaigns, but they won even though they were massively out-spent.

The take-away from the Slovenian referendum is that people innately oppose killing people, but you must be willing to state what assisted suicide is. The Slovenians built their campaign on a few key talking points and stuck to them. Hiding behind nice language or presenting the issue in a way that seems more socially acceptable avoids the reality that assisted suicide is about killing people by poison.

I am not afraid to say that I oppose killing people.

Stephen Mendelsohn was a fierce opponent of assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

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

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

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

Leavenworth wrote:

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

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

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

"We depended on him," Schadenberg said.

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

Connecticut Bill to prohibit drugs for capital punishment must also prohibit drugs for assisted suicide.

Testimony in opposition as proposed to Proposed SB 430 An Act Prohibiting Certain Conduct Concerning Drugs and Medical Devices Used to Execute the Death Penalty February 10, 2025

Stephen Mendolsohn press conference

By Stephen Mendelsohn

Senator Maroney, Rep. Lemar, and members of the General Law Committee:

Proposed SB 430 constitutes selective indignation with a vengeance. There is no moral reason to prohibit drugs and medical devices used for capital punishment while omitting what are often the exact same drugs and devices used for euthanasia and assisted suicide. I speak as a disability rights advocate who has repeatedly testified here in Connecticut and in other states opposing legislation that, no matter how well-meaning, constitutes lethal disability discrimination.

Medically assisted suicide and euthanasia constitute capital punishment for the “crime” of being old, ill, and/or disabled, with far less transparency or oversight. All of the legitimate arguments against the death penalty—opposition to state-sanctioned killing, the corruption of the medical profession by turning doctors into agents of death, the wrong people dying for the wrong reasons, racial and class inequities, the inability of medical science to guarantee a quick and painless death—apply all the more so to assisted suicide and euthanasia. If the state has any legitimate reason to take any life, it should be the lives of those like Linda Mai Lee (f/k/a Steven Hayes) 1 and Joshua Komisarjevsky who by their murderous actions have forfeited their moral right to live. Connecticut needs to take a strong stand against exposing vulnerable elders and disabled people to an ableist system of state-sanctioned medical killing.

One need not point to Canada’s extremely expansive euthanasia laws, where disabled people are routinely being denied lifesaving medical care and social supports while being offered euthanasia instead, and where euthanasia is now the fifth leading cause of death, to understand why we need to strongly push back. There are far too many documented problems and abuses in U.S. states that have laws permitting medically assisted suicide. People whose sole diagnosis is anorexia nervosa have been deemed terminal and prescribed the lethal dose in both Colorado and Oregon. A woman with early stage dementia, who did not qualify as six months terminal and may not have been mentally competent, died under Oregon’s law after using voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) to be deemed terminal. If VSED qualifies one for medically assisted suicide, than every adult, and especially those with long-term disabilities, becomes eligible for state sanctioned death.

All three current sponsors of SB 430 are, unfortunately, leading proponents of assisted suicide in Connecticut. Indeed, one of them, Representative Josh Elliott, has openly admitted he wants to pass a “limited” assisted suicide bill only to expand it later. We are witnessing continuous expansion in the several states that have already legalized assisted suicide. In 2024, a state senator in California promoted a bill, SB 1196 to expand that state’s law to non-terminal patients and those with dementia, and to permit lethal injection. A leading sponsor of an earlier assisted suicide bill opposed that new bill merely on tactical grounds as “pushing for too much too soon.” Expansion is not merely a “slippery slope” but a paved road to what Canada now has.

Regarding the specific drugs used for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment, it must be noted that historically we are often talking about the same drugs. Barbiturates like pentobarbital and secobarbital have been used for both assisted suicide and capital punishment. When these barbiturates became prohibitively expensive nearly ten years ago, in part due to opposition to their manufacture from opponents of capital punishment, assisted suicide proponents began experimenting with other lethal combinations of drugs. KFF Family News noted:

The first Seconal alternative turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients — and up to 31 hours in one case.

It gets worse. In an article titled “The Complicated Science of a Medically Assisted Death,” Quillette reports on one example of an agonizing death from assisted suicide in Oregon:

Jeff drank the lethal cocktail through a straw. Within 20 minutes he was asleep. Twelve hours later, Ada saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye and looked over. Jeff was sitting up and awake. Then, he started vomiting profusely….

After he awoke, scared and confused, Jeff was admitted to the hospital. When Ada visited Jeff the next day, she found him in the “comfort care” ward. Nurses had given him a mild tranquilizer to help with his nausea and vomiting. Over the next four days he declined rapidly. Ada was with Jeff when he died. As he lay flailing in his hospital bed, yanking at the sheets, she held his hand. “He didn’t die peacefully,” she said, her voice almost breaking. “It was a terrible death.”

The Oregon Death With Dignity Act 2023 Data Summary includes on page 18 one case of someone who took 137 hours—nearly six days—to die after ingesting a combination of digoxin, diazepam, morphine sulfate, amitriptyline, and phenobarbital (DDMAPh-1). I have yet to hear of a case of capital punishment where the condemned prisoner took an agonizing 137 hours to die. If we cannot guarantee a painless death from lethal injections used for capital punishment, how can we possibly claim orally ingested lethal concoctions can guarantee a peaceful death? And conversely, if ingesting these compounded drugs supposedly results in the painless death the assisted suicide lobby claims it does, then why has it never been used in states which retain the death penalty (in the manner that Socrates was forced to ingest hemlock when he was executed)?

Because of the self-administration requirement in U.S. assisted suicide laws, doctors are prohibited from directly hastening death to alleviate suffering when there are complications from the ingested lethal compound. This is a major reason why expansion to active euthanasia is inevitable. In foreign jurisdictions like Canada where there is a choice between lethal injection euthanasia and oral self-administration, doctor-administered euthanasia is nearly exclusive.

Moreover, when an execution is botched, there are witnesses, and we are likely to hear about it. With assisted suicide, there are no required witnesses. Prolonged and agonizing deaths, as well as coercion, are easily covered up. The death certificate is intentionally falsified by law or regulation to list the underlying terminal illness rather than the lethal dose as the cause of death, and natural causes as the manner of death. This last provision caused the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice to testify in opposition to bills seeking to legalize assisted suicide in our state in 2015, 2019, and 2021, as this provision covers up a potential murder prosecution.

Finally, Absolute Standards in Hamden, which Senator Anwar and Representative Elliott protested against last year, no longer produces pentobarbital for executions, and we know of no other company in Connecticut that does so. The threat is very real and immanent that these same legislators will work to legalize medically assisted suicide and invite Connecticut-based compound pharmacies to compound DDMAPh and other lethal cocktails whose sole purpose is to kill people. We in the disability community have been here at the Capitol nearly every year since 2013 to defend our lives from this menace. Help send a strong message that our lives matter at least as much as convicted murderers on death row.

In short, I request that this committee reconstruct SB 430 to prohibit the manufacture, compounding, sale, testing, distribution, dispensing or supply of any drug or medical device for the purpose of euthanasia or assisted suicide, and not just the death penalty. Unless and until the bill is so revised, it should not move forward.

1. I am cognizant of the transgender community’s opposition to deadnaming. However, when this person committed one of the most heinous crimes in Connecticut history, this is the name that appeared in the news and is what is most familiar to the public.

Stephen Mendelsohn 171 Hartford Road, #19 New Britain, CT 06053-1532

Published with permission.

Message to Scotland: Don't buy into McArthur's "bait and switch" assisted suicide bill

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I was recently speaking to MSP's in Scotland about the upcoming assisted suicide bill sponsored by Liam McArthur (LibDem MSP). 

During several meetings many of the MSP's suggested that McArthur was promising a "heavier safeguarded" model than previous euthanasia bills that were debated in Scotland. 

My response was that it didn't matter how "heavily safeguarded" the bill is because the goal of the euthanasia lobby is to get the bill passed and expand it later.

McArthur was interviewed on March 24 by BBC Scotland on The Sunday Show where McArthur explained that the new bill will be released on Thursday March 28. McArthur stated the following about the proposed bill:

"I detect a real shift in the political mood, driven in a large part by witnessing countries and states across the world introducing heavily safeguarded provisions of the kind I'm looking to introduce here in Scotland."

He said his proposals would require diagnosis of a terminal illness by two separate doctors and a 14-day cooling off period after which a medical substance could be supplied, to be self-administered.

The reality is that McArthur is describing a bill that is similar to the original Oregon assisted suicide law, a law that was expanded in 2019 and further expanded in 2023.

McArthur stated that the mood in Scotland has shifted based on "heavily safeguarded provisions" but the provisions that he is referring to do not remain in the Oregon or other assisted suicide law provisions in the United States.

While in Scotland several of the MSP's told me that McArthur had invited them to go to California on a "fact finding" trip. California is the prime example of a state that has expanded its law since legalization. 

Recently Senator Blakespear in California introduced Bill SB 1196 an assisted suicide bill that would change the law to specifically allow utilization of the lethal poison by IV (intravenous). (my article on SB 1196)

In 2016 California legalized assisted suicide. California expanded the law in 2021 when it passed Bill SB 380. SB 380 reduced the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours, it eliminated the final attestation, and it forced doctors who oppose assisted suicide to participate.

In September, 2022, U.S. District Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha ruled that California Senate Bill 380, which amended the End of Life Option Act (assisted suicide law) in California, violated the First Amendment rights of doctors by requiring them to participate in assisted suicide. Aenlle-Rocha granted a preliminary injunction barring the state from compelling health care providers to document a patient’s request for assisted suicide. (my article on the decision).

In other words, McArthur is basing his "heavily safeguarded provisions" on an American law that originally contained those provisions but has been expanded and it may be expanded again this year.

Recently I published an article titled The assisted suicide lobby wants to legalize assisted suicide and expand it later. 

In that article I explain that the assisted suicide lobby claim that no legislative creep exists. Yet in the past few years existing assisted suicide laws have been expanded in nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide by: reducing or eliminating waiting periods, allowing non-doctors to participate in assisted suicide, allowing assisted suicide approvals by Telehealth, expanding the meaning of terminal illness and removing the state residency requirement.

Assisted suicide law expansion bills have been passed in California (2021), Hawai'i (2023), Oregon (2019, 2023), Vermont (2022, 2023) and Washington State (2023). There are several assisted suicide expansion bills being debated in 2024.

For instance, Colorado assisted suicide expansion Bill SB 068 would expand the assisted suicide law by: permitting non-physicians to prescribe the lethal poison, reduces the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours and it allows the 48 hour waiting period to be waived.

In January Josh Elliott, a three-term member of the Connecticut House, and a sponsor of previous assisted suicide bills was interviewed by Paul Bass for the New Haven Independent on January 4, 2024. Bass reported Elliott as wanting to get a "heavily safeguarded" assisted suicide bill passed and then make amendments later. Since Elliott admitted to his "bait and switch" tactic, 2024 was the first year in the past eleven where no assisted suicide bill was introduced in Connecticut.

J.M. Sorrell, Executive Director of Massachusetts Death with Dignity, was quoted on a similar bill as saying,

“Once you get something passed, you can always work on amendments later.”

My message to Scotland's MSP's is don't buy into McArthur's "bait and switch" assisted suicide bill. 

McArthur realizes that the majority of the MSP's will not support a Canadian style euthanasia bille ha. He has decided to first legalize an Oregon style bill and then expand it later. The reality is, even the American assisted suicide bills have already been expanded

The assisted suicide lobby pass "restrictive" assisted suicide bills and expand them later.

At least 18 states will debate assisted suicide bills in 2024

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On January 8, I published an article titled: Assisted suicide bills must be defeated in at least 10 US states. Now the assisted suicide lobby are stating that they are sponsoring assisted suicide bills in at least 16 states.

The current states with a new bill are: Florida, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The states with an existing bill carried over from last year are: Delaware, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

It is important to state that we have been successful. No new state has legalized assisted suicide in the past two years but the assisted suicide lobby remains relentless.

There are also bills to expand assisted suicide laws in at least two states where it is legal, such as Washington State and New Jersey.

One of the key strategies of the assisted suicide lobby is to present an "restrictive" assisted suicide bill for the purpose of getting it passed and once it is passed they introduce bills in subsequent years to expand the assisted suicide legislation.

This is not a new strategy. What has changed is that the assisted suicide lobby is publicly admitting their "bait and switch" tactic. 

Rep Josh Elliott

For instance Josh Elliott, a three term member of the Connecticut House, and a sponsor of previous assisted suicide bills was interviewed by Paul Bass for the New Haven Independent on January 4, 2024. Bass reported:

Elliott has been sponsoring bills for years to allow terminally ill people to take their lives (aka ​“aid in dying”). The bill finally passed the legislature’s Public Health committee; it got stuck in Judiciary.

The version he plans to resubmit this year has been narrowed to cover terminally ill people with prognoses of less than six months to live, with sign-offs from two doctors and a mental health professional, monthly check-ins, and at least a year of state residence.

“Almost no one” would qualify under that restricted version of the law, Elliott said. But passing it would open the door to evaluation and expansion.

For further clarification Elliott told Bass in the wider interview at 21:30 that:

The bill would be, um, exceptionally narrow in scope, it would be the most narrow in scope bill of this kind were we to pass it. It would be, uh, six months left to live, you have to get sign-offs from multiple doctors—two doctors and one mental health physician—uh, and then you need to go for frequent check ins—I think it's like once a month—and you have, there is a one year residency requirement, so there are so many ways we limit who could actually use this bill, to the point I believe if we were actually to implement the way that we are talking about it, almost nobody would use it. But the important thing for me is to get this bill on the books, and then see how it's working, and if it's not and people aren't using it, than make those corrections to actually allow people to use it. So that is what we've been discussing.

Elliott is clearly explaining his "bait and switch" tactic, that his goal is to pass a "restrictive" assisted suicide bill and then expand the law later.

Amy Paulin, the sponsor of the New York assisted suicide bill, recently stated that they need to get the bill passed first and then expand it later. 

J.M. Sorrell, Executive Director of Massachusetts Death with Dignity, was quoted on a similar bill as saying,

“Once you get something passed, you can always work on amendments later.”

Clearly the assisted suicide lobby are willing to admit to their 'bait and switch' tactic.

The key to holding the line on assisted suicide is to stop states from legalizing it. The key to defeating an assisted suicide bill is to call it what it is. The purpose of assisted suicide is to cause death.

The other key to defeating assisted suicide bills is to clearly explain what the assisted suicide bill says. Those who support assisted suicide will vote based on ideology but many legislators will agree that the language of legislation is fundamental.

We now have solid evidence that when an assisted suicide bill is "restrictive" that the intention is to pass the bill and expand it later.

The assisted suicide lobby will use false terminology to sell assisted suicide as a form of healthcare that provides "choice" at the end-of-life. Assisted suicide is not healthcare or aid in dying and it provides death at the end of life.

The assisted suicide lobby claims that there is no slippery slope, yet, in the past few years nearly every assisted suicide law has been expanded by: reducing or eliminating the waiting periods, allowing non-doctors to participate in assisted suicide, allowing assisted suicide approvals by tele-health, expanding the meaning of terminal illness and removing the state residency requirement.

One of our greatest concerns is that the assisted suicide lobby have removed the residency requirements in Oregon and Vermont and they are now pressuring New Jersey to also permit assisted suicide tourism.

In October 2021, the assisted suicide lobby launched a court case challenging the Oregon assisted suicide residency requirement. In March, 2022 the Oregon government agreed to remove the residency requirement.

A February 2023 article by James Reinl for the Daily Mail reported that Dr Nicholas Gideonse had opened an assisted suicide clinic in Oregon to prescribe lethal assisted suicide drugs for death tourists.

As for Vermont, in August, 2022, the assisted suicide lobby launched a lawsuit challenging Vermont's assisted suicide residency requirement. Lisa Rathke reported in March, 2023 for the Associated Press that Vermont's attorney general's office reached an agreement with the assisted suicide lobby and dropped the Vermont assisted suicide residency requirement.

New Jersey is facing similar pressure. In August, 2023 the assisted suicide lobby launched a lawsuit to force the state of New Jersey to drop its assisted suicide residency requirement. The lawsuit claims that the New Jersey assisted suicide law is unconstitutional because it denies equal treatment.

If the assisted suicide residency requirement in New Jersey is removed, the assisted suicide lobby will establish an assisted suicide clinic in New Jersey to assist the suicides of people in the neighboring states that have not legalized assisted suicide.

The assisted suicide lobby is aware that they will not legalize assisted suicide in every state but by forcing states to permit suicide tourism, assisted suicide will then become available to every American.

 

The good news is that in April 2023, The United Spinal Association, Not Dead Yet, Institute for Patients’ Rights, Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, Lonnie VanHook, and Ingrid Tischer have launched a lawsuit to strike down the California assisted suicide law with the goal of the case going to the United States Supreme Court to strike down assisted laws throughout the US. (Link to the complaint).

The case asserts that the assisted suicide act is a discriminatory scheme, which creates a two-tiered medical system in which people who are suicidal receive radically different treatment responses by their physicians and protections from the State depending on whether the person has what the physician deems to be a “terminal disease”—which, by definition, is a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Link to the article). 

More articles on this topic:

• Assisted suicide laws violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (Link).
• Vermont assisted suicide deaths more than quadruple (Link).
• New York assisted suicide bill sponsor: Get this passed first, expand it later (Link).
• American medical association maintains opposition to assisted suicide (Link).
• Michigan debates deceptive assisted suicide bill (Link).
• How medical aid in dying became the euphemism of choice for assisted suicide (Link).
• Anita Cameron: Dont be fooled. Assisted suicide is suicide (Link).
• Assisted sucide lobby launches lawsuit to allow assisted suicide tourism in New Jersey (Link).

Assisted suicide lobby launches lawsuit to allow assisted suicide tourism in New Jersey.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The assisted suicide lobby launched a lawsuit on Tuesday, August 29 to force the state of New Jersey to drop its assisted suicide residency requirement. The lawsuit claims that the New Jersey assisted suicide law is unconstitutional because it denies equal treatment.

If the residency requirement in the New Jersey assisted suicide law is withdrawn, the assisted suicide lobby will establish an assisted suicide clinic in New Jersey to assist the suicides of people in the neighboring states that have not legalized assisted suicide.

New Jersey is not far from: New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New Hampshire --- states that have not legalized assisted suicide.

The Compassion and Choices media release stated:

Compassion & Choices filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday afternoon on behalf of cancer patients in Delaware and Pennsylvania and two New Jersey doctors asserting the residency mandate in New Jersey’s medical aid-in-dying law violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment. The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court in Camden, New Jersey, to prohibit state officials and the Camden County prosecutor from enforcing this unconstitutional provision of the law. The lawsuit complaint is posted at: bit.ly/NJMedicalAidinDyingLawResidencySuit

...The plaintiffs assert that the law’s residency requirement violates three clauses in the U.S. Constitution, specifically the:

• 1. Privileges and Immunities Clause by limiting the availability of medical aid in dying to residents of New Jersey. 

• 2. Dormant Commerce Clause by restricting interstate commerce, including medical care. 

• 3. Equal Protection Clause by failing to provide residents and nonresidents equal protection under federal law.

On October 2021, the assisted suicide lobby group, Compassion and Choices, and Dr Nicholas Gideonse, an assisted suicide doctor, launched a court case challenging the Oregon assisted suicide residency requirement. Instead of defending the residency requirement, the Oregon Government, on March 29, 2022 agreed to remove the residency requirement.

A February 2023 article by James Reinl for the Daily Mail reported that Dr Nicholas Gideonse has opened the first assisted suicide clinic in Oregon to prescribe lethal assisted suicide drugs for death tourists. At least one person from Texas and an east coast resident has died by assisted suicide in Oregon.

On August 26, 2022, Compassion and Choices launched a lawsuit on behalf of a Connecticut woman and a Vermont doctor challenging Vermont's assisted suicide residency requirement.

Lisa Rathke reported on March 14, 2023 for the Associated Press that Vermont's attorney general's office reached an agreement with the assisted suicide lobby and dropped the Vermont assisted suicide residency requirement.

The assisted suicide lobby failed to legalize assisted suicide in any more states since 2021. By dropping the state assisted suicide residency requirements the assisted suicide lobby is creating suicide tourist states. 

New Jersey neighbors several highly populated states that have not legalized assisted suicide. If New Jersey drops its residency requirement, the assisted suicide lobby will establish an assisted suicide clinic in New Jersey to service the killing across the Northeast United States.

Combating the plague of euthanasia

By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gordon Friesen

We who oppose all forms of assisted death rely on a large basin of dependable votes from people who believe that such practices are wrong: categorically, universally, absolutely. Many people, however, do not think that way. They believe that the very same act might be bad in one circumstance, but good in another.

This is extremely important from a political point of view because simple moral arguments do not sway such people. Instead, we must follow their logical path to its conclusion, and if possible, reveal conflicts with their own most cherished ideals, which might lead them to reconsider.

This is not easy work, but our friends in Connecticut have succeeded in respectfully reaching a common understanding with progressive voters, on the basis of disability rights. I believe that the same outreach can be undertaken towards those more conservative voters, whose support of assisted death is libertarian. For upon examination, current assisted death propositions are anything but libertarian.

To do this, of course, we must understand exactly what we are dealing with.

Freedom and Medicine

Jurisdictions legalizing assisted death can be roughly divided into two distinct groups, which I will refer to as "Freedom laws" and "Medical laws."

Like its name implies, a Freedom law simply holds that people should have the right to choose a self-determined death. A Medical law, on the other hand, holds that it is the special condition of being ill or disabled which justifies the killing of these individuals. One is therefore characterized by an unconditional embrace of arbitrary personal liberty, while the other, in an attempt to protect the majority from perceived harms of precisely such freedom, and is bound by definitions, limitations and "safeguards".

It would be natural to assume (and most people do so assume) that the wide open policies of a Freedom law would produce correspondingly greater numbers of assisted deaths; that there is a continuum between the two camps; that the farther we move along this imaginary line -- from medicine to freedom -- the more assisted death we will encounter. Surprisingly, however, this is not at all true. In fact, the philosophical rupture is complete; there is no continuum; and as we shall see, it is the Medical law which racks up, by far, the greater number of deaths.

To illustrate this fact, let us compare Switzerland for Freedom, and Canada for Medicine.

Switzerland and Canada

For cultural reasons, the Swiss have informally permitted assisted suicide since time out of mind (although they only got around to legislating on the subject in 1937). According to that law, assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland --for anyone -- as long as it does not proceed from "selfish motives". If the goal can be considered "altruistic", the act is permitted. No particular medical condition is required, nor is the involvement of a physician. Furthermore, it is not the Swiss alone who benefit from these liberties, since a suicide-tourism industry has also grown up, for citizens of less permissive countries who travel to Switzerland, to die.

Canada, on the other hand, has always officially condemned assisted death. Permission has only recently been allowed. Access to euthanasia (the medically preferred method of assisted death) is restricted to defined medical circumstances, which, even though in constant "evolution" are nonetheless intended to limit this practice.

I believe that anyone first hearing that description, and asked to bet upon which country has a higher rate of assisted death, would unfailingly choose Switzerland. But that person would be wrong. And not wrong by a little. In actual fact, the Canadian ratio of euthanasia-to-total-deaths (as recorded in the Province of Quebec), is possibly five times1 that of assisted suicide among the Swiss; even when we include the numerous foreigners who are only briefly in Switzerland, and only for that purpose.

So how can we explain this seeming impossibility? In one word: mandates.

Canada has mandated that euthanasia be provided (as a medical benefit) to all of those who are eligible for it, including those who are incapable of consent. This mandate flows directly from the central principle, of medically justified euthanasia, that it is bad to kill people (generally speaking) but that it is good to kill people who are sick or disabled. This formulation might sound crass, but I believe there is no more polite way to express it.

Switzerland, on the other hand, enables assisted suicide as an arbitrary personal liberty. No judgment is made on the morality of the act. Anyone can seek assisted suicide, but no one can claim entitlement. Most importantly, the State does not pick sides and such a system can create no mandates. Hence the wall-to-wall penetration of euthanasia-think, euthanasia-speak, and State-mandated euthanasia practice, now familiar in Canada, has no equivalent in Switzerland.

What about the USA?

To place these facts in context, a large majority of Americans who support current legislation, enabling assisted death, believe that they are defending the cause of autonomous self-determination. In fact, it is widely assumed that to debate assisted death, at all, is to debate the limits of personal freedom.

And yet nothing could be farther from the truth! None of the different State Bills, recently passed or under consideration, has anything to do with freedom, and none would ever find favor as a Freedom law. Quite the opposite.

All of the legislation which must be dealt with, right now, clearly proceeds from the philosophical principles as a Medical law, Canada in the lead, which is not merely indifferent, but is positively hostile to personal freedom!

For these bills all begin with a restriction of liberty to particular medical conditions; that discriminatory "kiss of death" which allows (and promotes) the killing of the sick and disabled, but nobody else. Such legislation offers no support at all for the true autonomy of the vast majority --either for those who wish to die (but do not fit the criteria), or for those who are qualified, but do not. The real effect is only to validate choices and behaviors which coincide with the opinions, and prejudices, of the legislators themselves.

Moreover, all of these Bills seek to impose their desired outcomes through the use of sweeping and invasive medical mandates.

Such, for instance, is the New York requirement that all public health facilities allow assisted death, or the Minnesota claim that all doctors should "inform" eligible patients. These authoritarian directives do not advance patient autonomy! On the contrary. They serve to further restrict the autonomous liberty of the non-suicidal majority! For should such mandates be enacted, as in Canada, it would no longer be possible for non-suicidal patients to find public hospitals where they might properly be cared for, by professionals who are not actively conniving at their accelerated (cost-effective) death.

Opposing authoritarian mandates and defending personal liberty

There are many good people who uphold ideal notions of autonomous self-determination. And such people instinctively believe it is their duty to support any sort of legislation enabling assisted death. However (to state the obvious), sincere libertarians are not natural partisans of discriminatory and authoritarian mandates! They are not the people to quietly accept the monstrous sort of misrepresentation, and Bait-and-Switch, of which I maintain we are now the victims of with Canada's euthanasia law.

If even a few of these can be brought to coolly reconsider the evidence, as presented here, I believe we may finally achieve a tipping point, in arresting that gruesome utilitarian death-agenda, which we presently see spreading like a rash across the civilized world.

Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
June 21, 2023

1) Note on Swiss and Canadian (Quebec) assisted death rates:

Assisted suicides may represent 1.5% of all deaths in Switzerland.
(Article link) -- accessed June 20, 2023

Euthanasia accounts for up to 7% of all deaths in Quebec
(Article link) -- accessed June 20, 2023

7/1.5 = 4.66; therefore the Quebec euthanasia rate is roughly five times that of assisted suicide in Switzerland

Great News: Connecticut assisted suicide bill dies again.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Cathy Ludlum - Second Thoughts Connecticut

I have great news. The Connecticut assisted suicide bill has died again. This year represents 11 straight years for Connecticut to debate and defeat an assisted suicide bill.

Article from 2022: Connecticut assisted suicide bill defeated again (Link).

A news article by Hugh McQuaid for the CTNewsJunkie on April 19 reported:

A legislative panel on Wednesday tabled a proposal to allow terminally ill adults in Connecticut to end their own lives with medication, effectively ending the bill’s progress in the Judiciary Committee for the third consecutive year.

Sen. Gary Winfield, a New Haven Democrat who co-chairs the committee, announced that the proposal did not have enough support to pass as he raised it for a discussion during a midday meeting after hours of negotiations.

The assisted suicide bill sponsors, in 2023, intentionally added tighter guidelines in order to get it passed. The opponents of the bill explained that the intention was to get the bill passed, and then similar to other states, to expand the assisted suicide law in future years. McQuaid stated:

Supporters hoped those guard rails would help to win over skeptical members of the Judiciary Committee. It wasn’t enough. During a brief interview Wednesday, Winfield said earlier discussions indicated there was not even close to enough support among the committee members to pass the bill.

McQuaid reported on statements from the Judiciary committee:

“I do not want to put another thing in a lap of someone that is facing life’s difficulties and saying, ‘You also have the option to kill yourself’,” Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, said. “I don’t want anyone to have that option, legally, because I think that is a small step from going down the road to now you’re going to be encouraged, if not overtly, implicitly.”

There were concerns about the proposal on both sides of the aisle.

Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat who co-chairs the committee, spoke of his own father’s terminal cancer diagnosis and the difficult decisions it has brought. He pushed back on characterizations that opposition to the bill stemmed largely from the religious affiliation of legislators.

Instead, Stafstrom said his concerns about the proposal grew throughout this session due to court battles in other states, where lawsuits have sought to scrap safeguards similar to those contemplated under the bill.

“There are still some outstanding issues and we are right to be cautious on it,” Stafstrom said.

Connecticut is the best example of a bipartisan opposition to assisted suicide. Thank you to the disability group, Second Thoughts Connecticut, and to the many people who worked so hard to defeat the bill for eleven consecutive years.

Can Connecticut live with assisted suicide?

While cleaning up my emails I read an excellent article by Lisa Blumberg that was published by the New Haven Register on April 2, 2023. Blumberg argues that the Connecticut assisted suicide bill is designed to legalize assisted suicide and then expand the law. Here is what Blumberg writes:

Lisa Blumberg

Proponents of legalizing assisted suicide insist that the practice would be tightly controlled. Doctors would only be able to write lethal prescriptions for state residents with a six months prognosis who are mentally competent and who have made two requests at least 15 days apart. The drugs must be self-administered. As Dr. Diane Meier, a palliative care specialist has said, hoever, “the entire heartfelt adherence to restrictions that are announced when you first get the public to vote in favor of this go up in smoke once the practice is validated.”

Proponents seem to feel that it is a good strategy. J.M. Sorrell of Massachusetts Death with Dignity in referring to “the hoops you have to go through” under the bill Massachusetts is considering has stated, “Once you get something passed, you can always work on amendments later.”

Almost all of the few states that have legalized assisted suicide are considering loosening eligibility requirements. California has reduced the reflection time between requests to 48 hours. Bills introduced in Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington would do likewise.

Following New Mexico’s approach, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington are considering bills allowing nurse practitioners and, in the case of Washington, physician’s assistants to determine eligibility for assisted suicide and write death causing prescriptions. This belies the complexity in judging life expectancy and implies that assisted suicide is an ordinary medical procedure like wrapping a sprain.

Mistakes in prognosis occur regularly. 12-15 percent of hospice patients outlive their prognosis by six months or more. Sometimes a pessimistic prognosis may be based on the assumption, erroneous or not, that the person will not receive the in-home support needed to stay alive.

What constitutes “terminal illness” is elastic. An Oregon health official has opined that conditions can be deemed terminal even if there is lifesaving treatment but the person does not want it, is uninsured or cannot afford it. This viewpoint sweeps in any chronic condition that might turn fatal if not medically managed. This is not a theoretical concern. Among the persons who died in Oregon in 2021 under its assisted suicide law were people with conditions such as arthritis and anorexia.

Indeed, a Colorado doctor has written of helping thirty somethings with anorexia obtain so-called “aid in dying” drugs. Anorexic persons do not meet eligibility requirements. As Dr. Angela Guarda, director of the eating disorders program at Johns Hopkins University, said, “Anorexia is treatable, not terminal … it is impossible to disentangle this request (to die) from the effects of the disorder on reasoning, and especially so in the chronically ill, demoralized patient who is likely to feel a failure.

If a state legalizes assisted suicide, there will be an assisted suicide industry, albeit probably a small one, seeking to pursue its interests. In Oregon, the requirement that only state residents be eligible for assisted suicide was challenged by a doctor in court and the state chose not to fight it. The state is amending its statute accordingly. Vermont is seeking to do so as well. It is not clear how lack of a residency requirement will play out in this day of teleconferencing.

Proponents scoff at any concern about assisted suicide morphing into “voluntary” euthanasia of the disabled, although this is what has happened in Canada and in other countries that legalized assisted suicide. In California, four doctors and two patients brought a federal lawsuit challenging the provision in the state’s law that patients self-administer the lethal drugs.Their argument was that this discriminated against people lacking functional ability to do it themselves. With major disability groups filing an amicus brief in strong opposition, the case was dismissed but assisted suicide laws may fuel more such cases.

A Connecticut legislator explaining why she is a proponent used a quote attributable to Nietzsche. “One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.” Hopefully she did not intend the obvious implication behind the quote that some folks need to hurry and die.

Before you support the legalization of assisted suicide and view it as just “aid in dying,” think carefully about the values you want for the health care system and the type of society you want to live in.

Lisa Blumberg of West Hartford is a lawyer, writer and disability rights activist.

Previous articles by Lisa Blumberg.

• Assisted suicide: It's not that simple (Link).
• Assisted suicide is bad medicine. How can legislators represent us if they cannot talk to us? (Link).
• Separating myth and reality in aid in dying (Link).

Connecticut politician quotes Nietzche in support of assisted suicide bill.

This article was published in the CT Mirror on March 29.

By Cathy Ludlum

We are in trouble when our elected officials start quoting Nietzsche.

It was at the Public Health Committee meeting March 10 that one of our legislators framed her argument in favor of SB 1076 (assisted suicide) with these words: “One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly” (clip position 27:40).

She did not appear to know who Friedrich Nietzsche was, and admitted that she had probably mispronounced his name. No doubt she had not read the rest of the paragraph from which that quote was taken. Here are some highlights: 

“The sick man is a parasite of society… A new responsibility should be created, that of the doctor — the responsibility of ruthlessly suppressing and eliminating degenerate life.”

There are reasons why Nietzsche was admired by the perpetrators of the Holocaust, as well as proponents of eugenics and euthanasia.

But it gets worse.

The Public Health Committee had an opportunity to explore the numerous concerns raised by the disability community, and a new group of voices, Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide. Misdiagnosis, coercion, disparities in healthcare, and erosion of suicide prevention efforts are just a few of the many issues. Instead, the conversation was entirely focused on keeping religion out of our personal choices.

It was as if all the opposition testimony from a secular social justice perspective—whether offered in person, on Zoom, or in writing—had never happened.

One representative had the nerve to say, “We are looking at the fact that there are zero reported cases of coercion” (Clip position 17:30). Think that through. If the person was coerced into ingesting the lethal prescription, they are dead. How would anyone know? For 20 years, disability rights organizations have made available anecdotal evidence of abuse in the system. More recently, there has even been an acknowledgment by pro-assisted suicide supporters of abuse in the deaths of several women with anorexia nervosa. This information has been presented time and again to legislators. Yet suddenly they were oblivious to it.

Remember also, that states shred records from their death-making programs after they issue their annual report. In addition, they require that death certificates only list the cause of death as the underlying illness. There are reasons why the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice has repeatedly submitted testimony warning that falsified death records could interfere with a murder investigation.

The same legislator went on to say, “There has never been a report of the meds failing” (Clip position 17:30). Apparently, she has not read the articles about difficult deaths, or the annual reports from Oregon and Washington that include things that have gone wrong. People have had uncontrolled vomiting, seizures, long protracted deaths, and sometimes even woken up, only to die in deeper agony from the underlying illness.

People who are not religious testified about how they were relentlessly pressured by the healthcare system to withdraw treatment from loved ones who wanted to keep living. And this happened in the current healthcare system, not one under the shadow of legalized assisted suicide.

We in the disability and progressive communities implore the members of the Judiciary Committee to take our concerns seriously. Do not echo the Public Health Committee’s laser-like focus on people’s negative experiences with religion while ignoring inconvenient but important facts.

Embracing Nietzsche’s worldview is not the way to empower people with terminal illnesses. If you read it in context, it does exactly the opposite.

Cathy Ludlum is a member of Second Thoughts Connecticut, a grassroots disability organization opposed to the legalization of medical assisted suicide.