New Jersey court decision prevents suicide tourism and all of it's grisly reality

By Dr Jacqueline Abernathy

Article: Judge upholds New Jersey assisted suicide law residency requirement (Link). 

Jacqueline Abernathy

Vulnerable citizens, disability rights advocates and people who oppose assisted suicide were delivered good news last week when the latest attempt at judicial activism by the assisted suicide lobby failed to strike down the residency requirement in New Jersey’s assisted suicide law. Compassion & Choices has been trying to chip away at the supposed safeguards in the state legislation and has, for years, pinned its hopes on litigation that could persuade judges to circumvent the will of the people. This latest attempt failed otherwise New Jersey would have joined Oregon and Vermont as the third suicide tourist destination in the United States.

Once an assisted suicide law is passed and the practice is legalized, safeguards like residency requirements, eligibility, provider qualifications, and waiting periods become the next target for advocates. Colorado just passed Bill SB 128 expanding their assisted suicide law to lower the waiting period and allow non-physicians to prescribe lethal poison drugs. However, the first draft of that bill would have revoked the residency requirement and reduced the waiting period from 2 weeks to only 2 days. The legislators compromised on cutting the waiting period to one week, however, embracing suicide tourism was a harder sell. I testified that the reason for such an abbreviated waiting period and liberalized qualifications on who could legally assist suicides was to accommodate non-residents who would be eligible to end their lives in Colorado. Expanding the law was the goal but the ultimate desire for euthanasia advocates was that assisted suicide be accessible to sick and dying people in neighboring states where their lives are protected from legal violence. When someone takes a moment to consider the pragmatic and grizzly reality of what that means for society, not just ill people and their loved ones but others who have to clean up the aftermath, it should become evident why selling suicide is a faulty and grisly idea.

Just from a patient's rights perspective, allowing vulnerable people to access lethal poison from a total stranger who will only have them as a patient as long as it takes to dispense the lethal dose is bad medicine even if we weren't talking about an irrevocable destruction. Healthcare providers are supposed to take into consideration the confluence of a patient's situation including the validity of someone's terminal diagnosis, treatment options, the patient's mental capacity to consent, the possibility of treatable depression, and other circumstances that can be resolved, and potential coercion, real or just perceived. A patient could be under pressure not to spend some heirs' inheritance or believe that there would be no one to take care of them if their family isn't willing. Or, someone might just assume this and be gravely incorrect. The family might desperately want as much time with them as possible and the ability to support them in their difficult time.

Likewise, someone hiding their intent to be killed may choose to do so alone also risks dying in a less palatable way. Assisted suicide drugs often include an anti-emetic to deal with the nauseating nature of the barbiturate overdose and it is not uncommon for people to vomit after taking the poison. There's a risk of asphyxiation on one's own vomit or not ingesting sufficient doses of poison to fully overdose. What about those victims whose death is delayed? When the process takes longer, those who do not die as quickly as expected risk having the process interrupted. Someone choosing to take the dose in time to avoid rigor mortis or gruesome post-mortem decay before a visitor finds them the next morning might not yet be dead when their friend or housekeeper arrives. Even if there was a note, people may call an ambulance in a panic, and unlike do not resuscitate orders, paramedics and hospital staff intervene "full code." The hastiness and secrecy of travelling out of state to be killed enables these tragedies.

Making suicide into a business is really bad medicine (as if killing were healthcare, to begin with), but adding the ethical conflict of financial gain is a significant concern with suicide tourism. Suicide tourism fosters specialty death clinics by creating a market for suicide as a service, niche practices staffed by unethical, unscrupulous doctors or zealots who are ideologically pro-euthanasia who believe death on demand is a personal right for those who meet any legal criteria. There is no second opinion. Visiting a doctor once, specifically because they sell suicide suggests no doctor-patient relationship, and furthermore, with a doctor who has a conflict of interest: a profit motive against critically assessing each patient's situation to determine if they truly want to end their lives, if they are guided by wrong assumptions or ignorance of non-violent options, and if there are treatment alternatives they haven't considered. It's counterproductive for somebody who runs a business selling suicide to risk losing future customers by being the doctor who can't be counted on to just hand over the script on demand like a vending machine.

People do not pay huge sums to travel to a clinic that prescribes lethal poison without the assurance that they will get that prescription when they arrive. People are less likely to endure the expense and trouble of travelling to an assisted suicide-sympathetic practice if they may be turned away. Rather, it is just rational to go to a clinic that has a reputation for rubber-stamping requests and so other clinics are pressured to do the same merely to stay competitive. Suicide tourism fosters specialty death clinics by creating a market for suicide as a service, niche practices staffed by unethical, unscrupulous doctors or zealots who are ideologically pro-euthanasia who believe death on demand is a personal right for those who meet any legal criteria. There is no second opinion.

As for loved ones, the secrecy that this allows and the ability to end a life while alone is rife with the potential for lifelong guilt and regret from family members who might wish they had been there to hold their loved one’s hand, others would have given anything to assure them that they don't have to die this way. Imagine blaming yourself for not being supportive enough, acting greedy or selfish that someone you loved died because they thought you valued their money that they stand to inherit more than you valued their life. I can't fathom the shame I would feel if my grandparents, parents, siblings or spouse didn't think I would be there when they needed me, and worse, knowing they died with that misperception without me ever having the chance to redeem myself.

Imagine the added trauma of just stumbling across your loved one's dead body the day after having met them for brunch, when they were very alive and nowhere close to naturally succumbing to their underlying illness. It is possible that some people would rather just run off to kill themselves in isolation rather than return home with their dose, launching a panic and an anxiety-laced search for them, creating pointless emotional agony from the search effort, an agony which will not end in relief, just further anguish. A suicide how-to manual in Japan caters to anyone who just wants to disappear completely. It provides bus routes to the dense Aokigahara forest, so someone can kill themselves where their body is unlikely to ever be found (it even offers pointers for how to avoid suspicion from park staff, trained to spot people suicidal people in crisis). Some people may choose suicide tourist states as their final destination in order to hide from their family and friends. Maybe they do not want the shame of having anyone know they died by assisted suicide or think that it is easier for their family not to know they died in this manner. Whatever the motive for secretly seeking assisted suicide, it complicates the grief of those left behind. Losing a loved one is inherently painful. Suicide tourism serves to only add layer upon layer of additional torment and trauma.

For the average citizen of a suicide tourist destination, there is the added risk of the heavy emotional and financial toll from cleaning up after the deceased. While it is true that most suicides (77%) occur at home, those who travel from their homes out-of-state just to obtain deadly drugs might not return home. Those who seek suicide away from home are first and foremost trying to subvert the laws of their home jurisdiction but again, how many might be trying to subvert loved ones back home as well? As mentioned before: some people just do not want to die where they could be found. Furthermore, what about those suicide-seekers with no one to return home to anyway or those who can not afford return travel? Suicide is an inherently impulsive act and someone might be unwilling or afraid to wait. Perhaps some are unable to afford return travel or prefer to spend their money to die in an Airbnb with a scenic view of nature.

There are suicide hotspots for a reason Parks attract despondent people not just because some just want to "return to nature" when they die. National parks are prime suicide destinations in the United States suicide is the second leading cause of death among visitors and deaths can cost over a quarter-million dollars in recovery and identification efforts per victim. Park Rangers have suffered immense psychological damage from these macabre discoveries. We know that the mere proximity to suicide violence increases the likelihood of suicide among those who experienced it, primarily the survivors but even strangers like first responders. It could also be the hotel maid or the owner of an Airbnb who endures the terror of discovering a tourist cold and breathless in their bed. Because pills are easier to conceal than guns or ropes and are inconspicuous any public place can become the spot someone chooses to die if they are inclined, where anyone can become a victim of finding their corpse.

These are merely a few hypothetical pitfalls of turning death into a tourist attraction. Assisted suicide itself is already wrought with abuses and anguish but allowing clinics to sell it as a commodity to patients they know nothing about (and patients they have no intention of getting to know) is a compounding public health and safety risk.

The people of New Jersey as well as neighboring states who would have availed themselves of out-of-state suicide are fortunate that the court opted to protect them. Even though the reasons for denying the petition were more procedural, the logistical issues of liability from the decedents' home states, the effect is the same: vulnerable people from neighboring states are protected by the laws enacted to keep them safe, at least for now.

Judge upholds New Jersey assisted suicide law resident requirement.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dana DiFilippo reported for the New Jersey Monitor on September 19, 2024 that U.S. District Court Judge Renée Marie Bumb upheld the New Jersey assisted suicide law residency requirement.

Judge Bumb dismissed the case by the assisted suicide lobby and two plaintiffs who were challenging the right of New Jersey to restrict their assisted suicide law to state residents. DiFilippo reported:

A federal judge has refused to strike down the residency requirement in New Jersey’s physician-assisted suicide law, a court loss advocates declared “a temporary roadblock.”

U.S. District Court Judge Renée Marie Bumb on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by two terminally ill women from Pennsylvania and Delaware, rejecting their claim that the residency requirement in New Jersey’s Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act is unconstitutional.

Judge Bumb refused to block enforcement of the residency requirement and stated:

“The residence requirement makes sense: While medical aid in dying is permitted in New Jersey, it is indistinguishable from the criminal act of assisted suicide in neighboring states,” 

“By limiting the pool of eligible patients to State residents, the requirement is rationally related to the legitimate objective of protecting from out-of-state liability providers and advocates who assist terminally ill patients in seeking medical aid in dying.”

The fact that the assisted suicide lobby considers the decision to be a "temporary roadblock" indicates that they intend to continue pressuring New Jersey to expand their assisted suicide law.

In 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.

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

Withdrawing the assisted suicide law residency requirement allows for assisted suicide tourism. Every American is eligible to die by assisted suicide in the states of Oregon and Vermont.

The New Jersey 2023 assisted suicide report states that there were 101 reported assisted suicide deaths in 2023 up from 91 in 2022. Assisted suicide started in New Jersey on April 12, 2019.

Pressure to expand New Jersey assisted suicide law.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dana Difilippo reported for the New Jersey Monitor on August 28, 2024 that the assisted suicide lobby is pressuring the New Jersey government to expand their assisted suicide law. Difilippo reports:

Since New Jersey lawmakers passed an aid-in-dying law five years ago, the number of terminally ill patients who have sought to end their lives by self-administered medication has jumped almost tenfold.

Now, advocates are working on two fronts to push state policymakers to “course-correct” the law and make it more accessible to people nearing death with unbearable pain and suffering.

They want to abolish a provision in the law that restricts it to New Jersey residents. Two terminally ill patients from Delaware and Pennsylvania and two New Jersey doctors sued the state last summer, calling the residency restriction discriminatory and unconstitutional.

They also want state legislators to move on a stalled bill that would allow doctors to waive the mandatory 15-day waiting period after patients’ initial requests for life-ending medication. The wait was meant as a safeguard but instead has become a barrier, supporters say.

As I have written in previous articles, nearly every US State that has legalized assisted suicide later expanded their law (Link to article).

According to Difilippo the assisted suicide lobby is pressuring the New Jersey government to waive the waiting period and remove the residency requirement. The waiting period protects people from dying at the low point in their life while the residency requirement prevents the state from becoming a suicide tourist destination. 

Difilippo reports that assisted suicide deaths have grown steadily in New Jersey:

In the past five years, doctors in New Jersey have evaluated and approved almost 300 people to end their lives by self-administering prescribed medication, with the number steadily climbing from 12 in 2019 to 101 last year, according to the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner.

Herb Conaway Jr (D-Burlington) who has sponsored the bill to expand the New Jersey assisted suicide law admits that assisted suicide laws will expand over time. Difilippo reports:

“Most laws need to be adjusted at one point or another, driven by the data that we accumulate in the wake of the initial passage,” Conaway said.

Difilippo reported that Corinne Carey, the Senior campaign director for the assisted suicide lobby stated:

Most states that have legalized aid-in-dying used Oregon’s law as their blueprint, but the waiting period is a “remnant” of that pioneering law that many have since eliminated, Carey said.

The assisted suicide lobby launched a lawsuit to remove the New Jersey state assisted suicide residency requirement.

Last August, two terminally ill women from neighboring states filed a federal lawsuit looking to end New Jersey’s residency requirement for aid-in-dying.

Plaintiffs Judith Govatos, a Wilmington, Delaware, resident with stage-4 lymphoma, and Andy Sealy, a Philadelphia resident with metastatic breast cancer, wanted to apply for life-ending medication under New Jersey’s law but couldn’t because of the residency requirement, according to the complaint.

Pasik, founder of New Jersey Death with Dignity, and Dr. Paul Bryman, a geriatrician and medical director of a Camden County hospice, joined as plaintiffs, saying the requirement prevents them from treating out-of-state patients because of potential criminal or civil liability.

Attorney General Matt Platkin asked a judge in January to dismiss the case. There has been no ruling on that motion.

Unlike Oregon and Vermont that withdrew their state assisted suicide residency requirement after the assisted suicide lobby challenged it in court, New Jersey Attorney General Platkin is defending the assisted suicide residency requirement.

Swiss suicide clinic's many controversial deaths.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Ronny Reyes and Joe Hutchinson and Rory Tingle published an article in the Daily Mail on Sunday July 7 concerning some of the controversial deaths that have happened at a suicide clinic in Switzerland. Since I not want to promote the suicide clinic, I am not stating the name of the clinic.

Catherine Kassenoff in happier times.

Possibly the most controversial death was a New York woman who claimed to have gone to die at the suicide clinic to punish her estranged husband. The authors wrote:

Catherine Kassenoff, from Westchester in New York State, traveled to Basel last May to take her life at the ... which charges $11,000 (£8,600) for what it advertises as death with minimal 'bureaucracy'. 

The 54-year-old lawyer claimed her husband, Alan, had been abusing her and their children for years, and that it led to her taking her own life amid their custody battle, although Mr Kassenoff has denied being abusive.

Alastair Hamilton's mother.

The authors continued:

Among the hundreds who ended their lives there last year was British chemistry teacher Alastair Hamilton, who took a lethal overdose of drugs without telling his family and had no discernable illness, and two American sisters who had become 'tired' of life.

The authors tell the story of Hamilton's death:

The Hamilton family only learned Alastair had taken his life at the clinic after police examined his bank account statements and found that he had transferred thousands of pounds to ... leading his mother Judith to brand it a 'cowboy clinic'. 

Mr Hamilton told his parents he was visiting a friend in Paris when instead he was flying to Basel in Switzerland to end his life.

Shockingly, it took the persistence of Mr Hamilton's devastated family, the Metropolitan Police, the Foreign Office and Interpol to discover what had happened to Alastair after he vanished last summer.

In emails to Alastair's family, a frustrated Met Police sergeant criticised ... 'lack of compassion and lack of transparency' as 'completely unacceptable'. The clinic later vowed to change its procedures to ensure that relatives were always informed in future.

Ammouri Sisters

The authors then write about the deaths of two American sisters who were "tired of life".

In another controversial case, American sisters Ammouri and Susan Frazier decided to die at ... in 2022 because they had become 'tired of life'.  

Dr Ammouri, a 54-year-old palliative care doctor, and Ms Frazier, 49, had been suffering from medical 'frustrations' including chronic insomnia, vertigo and back pain, a doctor they consulted told The Independent. 

Their grieving brother, Ammouri Ammouri, said he wanted answers over their deaths, telling the New York Post:  'They were so secretive, especially with me.

'Can someone tell me what happened? Do people snap just like that? It could be. You wake up one day and you don't feel like life is precious.'

Laura Henkel

The authors describe the suicide clinic and then continue by writing about the death of Laura Henkel:

Laura Henkel, an Australian woman who allowed her filmmaker daughter to record her final moments at ...was seen laying on the death room's bed during her final moments in December 2019.

She opted for death via intravenous injection, which can be seen beside her bed in an image from the documentary.

Henkel had just turned 90, was not suffering from any terminal illness, and said she was mentally and physically healthy for her age.

But she said she wanted to decide to die on her own terms, before suffering the type of illness commonly associated with very old age that could have prevented her from being able to make that decision.

Henkel traveled to Switzerland because assisted dying was illegal in her home country of Australia.

The article explains that the suicide clinic requires the person to become a member, which costs $110 and then they charge $11,000 for the suicide. From other articles that I have read, they have other death services that are an option that will increase the cost of the suicide.

The authors explain that David Goodall died at the Swiss suicide clinic at the age of 104. Goodall was not sick, but he claimed that he was not well. 

The David Goodall story suggests that elderly people should die at a certain age. During his press conference Goodall was wearing a sweater that stated - ageing disgracefully. The message that some lives are not worth living has eugenic overtones even when it is promoted by someone who is seeking death.

The authors then dig deeper into the story of Catherine Kassenoff. They write:

Catherine Kassenoff travelled to ... in May last year after announcing on Facebook that she was 'ending my own life'.

She had claimed her husband Allan Kassenoff had been abusing her and their children for years, and that it led to her taking her own life.

Allan was given sole custody of their three daughters, with his wife opting to kill herself after she lost visitation rights and being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

New details have since emerged about her suicide, as well as claims from former nannies that Catherine had punished her own adopted daughter by 'dripping water' on her all day so she couldn't sleep. 

She is accused of treating her other daughters who were later born via IVF in a much kinder way.

As part of her Facebook post, Catherine also released thousands of court documents, alongside videos of her husband, in a now defunct Dropbox link.

One of the reports seen by the outlet that was released was written by UK based former psychiatrist Colin Brewer.

Brewer had written in his report for the ... that Catherine was of a 'sound enough mind' to end her life.

Catherine Kassenoff's husband Alan was forced to quit his job as a lawyer following a leave of absence in June, because TikToker Robbie Harvey, an advocate for women in abusive relationships, started uploading videos Catherine had shared on her Facebook.

Her videos were removed but her claims were circulated online and among over 3 million of his followers.

Along with the details of their nasty legal woes and his alleged abuse, Catherine shared videos of Kassenoff throwing tantrums and calling her a 'fat, old loser.'

In another video, he was heard berating the mom-of-three, saying he hated her.

Other clips show him allegedly screaming behind doors, yelling at his kids to 'shut up,' and dramatically leaving their home and refusing to take care of the children that remain in his custody.

Meanwhile, a video of one of their daughters reveals the young girl crying and saying she doesn't 'want to go with that crazy guy.'

The harm done to the family when suicide becomes a weapon of revenge.

Kasenoff sued Harvey last year for him sharing the clips, claiming they led to financial and emotional ruin.

'With a few clicks of his keyboard and a video uploaded to TikTok, Defendant Robert Harvey financially destroyed Plaintiff Allan Kassenoff,' his attorneys wrote in the filing.

'And, even worse, irreparably harmed Mr. Kassenoff's three young children… by forcing them into a life where their identities will forever be associated with a bitter and ugly divorce and the suicide of their mother.'

The lawsuit claims that Harvey's followers 'bombarded' the law firm with more than 7,000 calls and 500 emails accusing him of being the reason Catherine took her life.

Allan had sought out $150m (£117m) to compensate him for his loss of earnings and his 'destroyed reputation. They settled earlier this week for an undisclosed sum.

Euthanasia, assisted suicide, suicide are never good for people or their families. Even in the "worst case" scenario, euthanasia and assisted suicide represent a cultural and medical abandonment of people.

Traditionally, nearly everyone in society opposed killing. Now it has not only become acceptable to kill but in fact society is covering up the reality of killing by further selling the concept to people who do not fit the "typical" case.

Now the pro-death lobby denies the reality that there is a type of push based on a justification of killing. For instance, in Canada most major hospitals have a "MAiD" (euthanasia) team. These teams not only provide euthanasia (kill their patients) they sell euthanasia by asking people who are in the hospital if they want MAiD.

This story clarifies what we have always known. The culture needs to care not kill.

Jacqueline Abernathy opposing Colorado assisted suicide expansion Bill SB 068

Dear Honorable Members of the Colorado State Assembly Senate Health & Human Services Committee,

Jacqueline Abernathy

I write today to urge you to oppose SB 068 and its blatant attempt to welcome suicide tourism in Colorado and put Coloradans at risk by expanding assisted suicide access to non-residents. I implore you as a public policy scholar fearful of how Colorado could betray the safety of its own most vulnerable citizens simply to put other citizens at risk as well. Your bill is a gross overstep to endanger citizens in other states while increasing the threat to your own constituents. 

I speak as an expert on this very topic, a bioethicist with a Ph.D. in Public Administration and Policy and a bibliography of scholarly peer-reviewed publications on assisted suicide and end-of-life medical decision-making. Where your duty is to the people of Colorado, entertaining the overreach inherent to SB 068 betrays the health and safety of those you are called to protect. This is why all eyes are upon you and non-residents like myself, who have an equal entitlement to weigh in on your decision in Colorado.

Regardless of what instigates it, suicide is generally an impulsive act of desperation, most often borne of fear. Enabling hasty irreversible decisions to self-destruct is not meant to limit any negative outcomes to the patient through delays. This bill will simply accommodate non-residents who travel to Colorado to obtain a deadly prescription from a total stranger who will only have them as a patient as long as it takes to dispense the lethal dose. SB 068 would create a market for these niche practices that do nothing but dispense deadly suicide drugs. The provisions negated in SB 068 include competent physician requirements, reflection and review periods, second opinions about prognoses and mental capacity, and the independence of physician assessments of each patient’s case. This bill eschews any semblance of an existing doctor-patient relationship by a physician well acquainted with the patient and their particular set of circumstances. SB 068 does not feign to value doctor opinions at all, striking every use of the word “physician” in favor of provider in order to allow lesser-qualified non-physicians to dispense the deadly poisons in a fraction of the time. This appears to accommodate specialty death clinics of ideologically pro-euthanasia on-demand doctors and nurses who can blindly validate each other’s conclusions out of their position that death on demand is a personal right for those who meet any legal or ethical criteria. This directly affronts the reason for the Colorado law to require a consultative review: as a safeguard to independently assess and concur with the attending physician’s conclusion that a patient is indeed terminally ill and mentally competent without signs of coercion or duress.

SB 068’s embrace of logistics to enable vendor suicide businesses negates any remaining provisions meant to protect Colorado citizens as total smokescreen. Whereas 14 days was the length of time for a resident advised by their existing doctor, surrounded by their family, greater community, extended support network and familiar resources, now anyone can visit a clinic for a rubber-stamped approval to kill themselves within two days. It strikes time for an adequate review of each patient’s case, limiting opportunity for further reflection by patients. There is no time for scrutiny or basic due diligence regarding someone’s alleged terminal prognosis and increases the likelihood of patient misdiagnosis and the possibility of treatable depression. A review of studies also determined that physicians’ medical diagnoses were often incorrect, both in declaring a patient to have a terminal condition and estimating their life expectancy at six months or fewer. Another study of physicians who were willing to prescribe the lethal dose found that 27 percent were not confident that they could determine if a patient only had six months or fewer to live. There is also substantial evidence that many patients opting to end their lives suffer from treatable depression and physicians report that patients for whom interventions were made (like treating depression) were more likely to change their minds about wanting to end their lives.

Whereas tax exportation to increase state budgets by encouraging tourism is within your scope as lawmakers, this would only increase revenue at the invaluable health and safety expense of those citizens who no longer have any safeguards thanks to enabling non-residents, but furthermore, this does not factor in the actual monetary and human costs of cleaning up after the deceased. 

The bill assumes that non-residents would just be trying to subvert their own state laws against assisted suicide but how many might be trying to subvert loved ones back home as well or have no one to return to anyway? While it is true that most suicides (77%) occur at home, those who travel here from their homes out-of-state just to obtain deadly drugs because SB 068 designed this option for that express purpose that they will not leave alive. Where do suicidal people who don’t have as ready access to their home as a place to end their lives? National parks are prime suicide destinations as is, particularly in the west where suicide the second leading cause of death, costs over a quarter-million dollars in recovery and identification efforts per victim. The Colorado National Monument attracts dozens of despondent people who self-destruct each year, but with the means to death in their pocket, any public place can become the spot someone chooses to die if they are inclined. There can only be added costs and psychological trauma to the Colorado residents who will face the aftermath of inviting this added violence. Mere exposure to suicide often leads to suicide among the responders and survivors, and this is true of those who discover a deceased loved one at home. For every quick, exported suicide that was started in Colorado but completed in a neighboring state for those residents to deal with the unpleasant consequences, there are sure to be secret, expedited death plans of residents enabled by SB 068. Making suicide so quick and easy can only mean more shocked survivors of hasty death plans by Coloradans hiding their intentions, leaving notes for their children or spouses explaining that they sought a hasty overdose from a nurse in Denver just days after learning their diagnosis because they “didn’t want to be a burden,” never knowing that their grieving survivors would give anything to have had a chance to tell them how desperately their family wanted to care for them for what precious time they had left.

In a state that ranks among the highest for per capita suicides (46 out of 50), so this would merely add a so-called legitimate form of self-violence to what your state calls a “public health crisis” and cost enormous sums of tax dollars to prevent. SB 068 only serves to usher in more death and destruction of Colorado residents by inviting the death and destruction of non-residents. Attempting to usurp the laws of other state legislatures to impose your will can only be done by endangering and burdening the citizens you are called to protect. 

Do your duty. Vote NO on SB 068.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Harvey Abernathy, Ph.D., M.S.S.W.
Dallas, Texas

The assisted suicide lobby wants to legalize assisted suicide in your state and expand the law later.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

In 2024, 20 states are debating (have debated) assisted suicide legalization bills and 4 states are debating assisted suicide law expansion bills.

The 20 states are: 

*Arizona, Delaware, *Florida, Illinois, *Indiana, *Iowa, Kentucky, *Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, *Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, *Tennessee, *Virginia and *Wisconsin. The * means that the bill has died.

The good news is that no new state has legalized assisted suicide in the past two years. The bad news it that the assisted suicide lobby is relentless.

The assisted suicide lobby claims that no slippery slope exists, yet, in the past few years existing assisted suicide laws have been expanded by: reducing or eliminating 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 state residency requirements

Assisted suicide law expansion bills were passed in California (2021), Hawai'i (2023), Oregon (2019, 2023), Vermont (2022, 2023) and Washington State (2023).

In states with an active assisted suicide bill, contact your elected representatives and inform them that in nearly every state assisted suicide law has been expanded since legalization.

There are 4 states that are debating the expansion of assisted suicide in their state.

Colorado assisted suicide expansion bill.

For instance, the Colorado assisted suicide Bill SB 068 will expand the assisted suicide law by: permitting non-physicians to prescribe the assisted suicide poison, reduces the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours and it allows the 48 hour waiting period to be waived, and it will remove the residency requirement to permit suicide tourism in Colorado.

Colorado citizens legalized assisted suicide by approving Proposition 106 in 2016. Proposition 106 was designed to legalize assisted suicide. Now the assisted suicide lobby is expanding the assisted suicide law beyond the "safeguards" contained in Proposition 106.

The assisted suicide lobby knows that it is harder to legalize assisted suicide than to expand it later.

For instance Connecticut opponents of assisted suicide have successfully stopped the legalization of assisted suicide every year, for 11 consecutive years. 

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 explains his "bait and switch" tactic. His goal is to pass a "restrictive" assisted suicide bill and then expand the law 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.”

The assisted suicide lobby admits to their 'bait and switch' tactic.

The key to holding the line on assisted suicide is to defeat assisted suicide legalization bills. To defeat an assisted suicide bill we need to call it what it is. The purpose of assisted suicide is to cause death.

Another key to defeating assisted suicide bills is to explain the language of the assisted suicide bill. Legislators who support assisted suicide often vote based on ideology but when a legislator knows what the assisted suicide bill actually says, they will often vote NO.

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

Oregon and Vermont have already been withdrawn their assisted suicide law residency requirement, allowing death tourism. The assisted suicide lobby is now pushing Colorado and New Jersey to permit death 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 and removed their residency requirement.

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

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 Vermont's assisted suicide residency requirement.

In August, 2023 the assisted suicide lobby launched a lawsuit to force New Jersey to drop its assisted suicide residency requirement.

 

As stated earlier, Colorado assisted suicide Bill SB 068 will remove their assisted suicide law residency requirement and permit death tourism.

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

 

Say NO to assisted suicide. 

More resource articles on this topic:

• The Nationalization of assisted suicide in America (Link).
• Minnesota assisted suicide bill is lethally deceptive (Link). 
• EPC-USA statement to the New York legislature (Link).
• The assisted suicide lobby pass restrictive bills and expand them later (Link).