Doctor responds to Washington State assisted suicide law expansion Bill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Great news: The Washington State assisted suicide expansion Bill HB 1141 is dead. 

Washington State House Bill 1141, would have expanded the assisted suicide law by:

• Expanding the list of who can prescribe lethal drugs by changing the requirement from physicians to "qualified medical provider." A "qualified medical provider" is defined as a physician, or a licensed physician assistant, or a osteopathic physician, or and advanced registered nurse practitioner. 
• Expanding the list of who is legally able to counsel a person, when the qualified medical provider questions the ability of the person to consent. Those who are permitted to offer counseling include: a state licensed psychiatrist or, psychologist, independent clinical social worker, advanced social worker, mental health counselor, or psychiatric advanced registered nurse practitioner.
  
• Eliminating the 15 day waiting period within the law and replaces it with a 72 hour waiting period before the second request is made. The 72 hour request period can be rescinded if the qualified medical provider believes that the person may be imminently dying. 
• Allowing the lethal prescription to be delivered to the person, rather than requiring the lethal drugs to be accessed by the person who is approved to die or the physician.

HB 1141 expands the assisted suicide law by eliminating the waiting period, making it possible for a same day death. A person can request and potentially receive lethal drugs on the same day. Studies prove that a person's will to live will fluctuate. Your bad day becomes your last day.

Dr Sharon Quick

Dr Sharon Quick was published in the Tacoma Tribune telling legislatives to give House Bill 1141 a death without dignity.

Quick who is a pediatric anesthesiologist/critical care physician with expertise in pain management and care for dying patients. Quick comments on the Tribune editorial which questioned the reduction in the waiting period for assisted suicide. Quick points out that all of the provisions in the bill need to be questioned. Quick wrote:

House Bill 1141 would shorten the waiting period to receive lethal drugs from 15 days to 72 hours and eliminate it when life expectancy is less than 72 hours.

Two professionals perform the initial evaluation, but under this bill only one provider, even a non-physician, would need to make the complex determination that a patient has 72 hours to live. It would allow the participation of advanced registered nurse practitioners, physician assistants and osteopathic physician assistants.

Physicians, much less those with less experience, cannot reliably make a 72-hour or a six-month prediction. A 72-hour prognosis indicates a person is in the dying process with failing organs and questionable cognitive capacity to make life-ending decisions. Lethal overdoses are unnecessary and ill-advised.

Quick comments on the reasons why people seek a hastened death:

Patients requesting a hastened death usually do not cite concerns about pain but about loss of abilities or autonomy — issues experienced by everyone at some point. The disability community knows “new normals” can be embraced when given sufficient time and support.

A physician’s role is to value patients’ inherent dignity, regardless of their condition. This benevolent responsibility turns malevolent when physicians offer lethal drugs to terminally ill patients — who may be in reversible, temporary despair —within a short time frame of 72 hours.

Quick then comments on depression and the need for mental health counselling:

Depression is expected in 25 to 40 percent of those desiring to hasten death, yet less than 5 percent are referred for mental health counseling in Washington.

Physicians are likely missing the diagnosis of depression, and patients are inappropriately receiving lethal prescriptions. Yet this bill proposes lowering evaluators’ qualifications?

Quick concludes her article by urging legislators to reject HB 1141 and to focus on better options such as improving the deficient oversight of the current law and ensuring good palliative care.

More articles on HB 1141:

• Washington State debates bill to expand assisted suicide law. Say No To Same Day Death. (Link). 
• Preventing the spread of assisted suicide in America (Link).
  

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The Extreme Ableism of Assisted Suicide

The following article was published by Not Dead Yet on January 28, 2020

By Diane Coleman, President & CEO Not Dead Yet

Diane Coleman

I just came across a brilliant letter that John Kelly sent to the Washington, D.C. Council when they were considering an assisted suicide bill in 2016. I should have posted it here then, but I am doing so now because it’s one of the best discussions I’ve read of the core problem that assisted suicide advocates have with disability.

Let me just highlight one example from the letter, a Washington Post quote from Dan Diaz, who is still working for Compassion and Choices, traveling around the country doing press conferences and testifying on their behalf in favor of these dangerous bills.

“If I find myself in a situation where I can’t go to the bathroom on my own, where someone has to change my diapers, where I can’t feed myself, where I can’t care for the people around me, where other people have to move me around to keep me from having bedsores, I would then submit, ‘Is that really living?’ ” Diaz said. 

Although assisted suicide proponents often accuse opponents of fearing death, the letter below demonstrates how profoundly proponents fear and loath disability. Their ableism is so extreme that they want to carve a vaguely defined segment of old, ill and disabled people out of suicide prevention, enlist our healthcare system in streamlining our path to death, and immunizing everyone involved from any legal consequences, thereby denying us the equal protection of the law.

November 1, 2016

Chairman Mendelson, Councilmembers:

John Kelly

My name is John Kelly. I am the New England Regional Director for Not Dead Yet, the national disability rights group that has long opposed euthanasia and assisted suicide. I am also the director of Not Dead Yet’s Massachusetts state affiliate, Second Thoughts MA: Disability Rights Advocates against Assisted Suicide.

I refer you to two recent articles in the Washington Post. Read together, they must lead you to vote against assisted suicide bill B21-38. Assisted suicide isn’t about physical pain at all, despite what proponents have told you. And assisted suicide benefits one specific group in the district and country, wealthier white people, while disadvantaging poorer people, and people of color specifically.

The first article came out last Monday, October 24. Titled “‘Death with dignity’ laws and the desire to control how one’s life ends,” this article exposes the main argument for assisted suicide, “that terminally ill patients have the right to die without suffering intractable pain in their final days or weeks,” as a big lie.

Author Liz Szabo reports that assisted suicide proponent group Compassion & Choices “focuses heavily on the need to relieve dying patients of pain.” One ad has the assisted suicide bill giving “a dying person the option to avoid the worst pain and suffering at the end of life.”

Yet the latest research shows that terminally ill patients who seek aid in dying aren’t primarily concerned about pain. Those who have actually used these laws have been far more concerned about controlling the way they exit the world than about controlling pain.

As one California doctor said, “It’s almost never about pain. It’s about dignity and control.”

And that’s what the Oregon and Washington data show. Pain is the least of people’s concerns. Doctors report people requesting the lethal drugs because of psychosocial suffering about becoming disabled through their illness. It’s mental distress about becoming dependent on other people (“losing autonomy” 92%), losing abilities (“less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” 90%), shame and perceived/actual loss of social status (“loss of dignity” 79%), needing help with incontinence (“losing control of bodily functions” 48%), and believing that suicide would leave loved ones better off (“burden on family, friends/caregivers” 41%).

Dr. Ira Byock, a leading palliative care expert, told the Post, “it’s a bait and switch. We’re actually helping people hasten their deaths because of existential suffering. That’s chilling to me.” As Byock said, almost all pain is controllable. Hospice staff are on call 24 hours a day, and caregivers can be trained in administering emergency pain medication until staff arrive.

The real reasons that people want to commit assisted suicide, proponents admit, are about being dependent on other people for personal care. We disability rights activists have been pointing this out all along.

Barbara Coombs Lee, who as an insurance company executive wrote Oregon’s assisted suicide law, brought up the case of the woman who committed assisted suicide because she was incontinent. The woman wrote that “the idea of having somebody take care of me like I am a little 2-month-old baby is just absolutely repulsive. It’s more painful than any of the pain from the cancer.”

Lee described scenarios of disability that she said were “worse than death.” Proponent Dan Diaz emphasized the supposed horrors of disability.

“If I find myself in a situation where I can’t go to the bathroom on my own, where someone has to change my diapers, where I can’t feed myself, where I can’t care for the people around me, where other people have to move me around to keep me from having bedsores, I would then submit, ‘Is that really living?’

This isn’t a public health bill, it’s a death before disability bill.

So this is what some of you are planning to vote for. You are not protecting DC residents from agonizing pain. You are promoting the particular views of one specific group of people, described by Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel as predominantly “white, well-insured, and college-educated.” People who are used to being in control of every aspect of their lives.

So, like so much in the US, assisted suicide is an issue that cuts across class and race. The 2012 election map in Massachusetts shows that wealthier, whiter areas voted heavily for legalization, while working-class whites and people of color voted strongly against. People turning out for Barack Obama and current Sen. Elizabeth Warren defeated the proposal.

The second article, from October 17, by reporter of color Fenit Nirappil, was titled “Right-to-die law faces skepticism in nation’s capital: ‘it’s really aimed at old black people.’” It details the opposition to assisted suicide of Washington’s black majority.

Many in the black community distrust the health-care system and fear that racism in life will translate into discrimination in death, said Patricia King, a Georgetown Law School professor who has written about the racial dynamics of assisted death.

“Historically, African Americans have not had a lot of control over their bodies, and I don’t think offering them assisted suicide is going to make them feel more autonomous,” King said.

District residents told Nirappil of concerns that “low-income black senior citizens may be steered to an early death”, and that in the end, assisted suicide is really all about reducing government healthcare costs.

Derek Humphry, who founded the Hemlock Society (Compassion & Choices’ original name), wrote years ago of the “unspoken argument,” that assisted suicide will gain traction because of “the realities of the increasing cost of health care in an aging society, because in the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice.”

Assisted suicide, like suicide in general, is primarily practiced and promoted by white people. Nirappil reported that national leaders in the assisted suicide movement are all white, and that most of the participants at a recent rally were white. In the 18 year history of the Oregon assisted suicide law, only one black person has used the program. In a state that is now 22% nonwhite, 97% of assisted suicide deaths have been white.

Non-Hispanic whites also commit regular suicide at a rate 2.5 times that of blacks. Rather than importing a predominantly-white practice as a solution for the district, you must say no to this bill and the big lie it hides behind. Assisted suicide is not about protecting suffering people from physical pain, it’s about satisfying the control needs of a group of people, predominantly white, who would rather die than become dependent on another human being.

Please respect your constituents, understand the danger this bill represents, and reject this bill. Thank you.

Fifteen Fatally Flawed Assisted Death Experiments.

The Australian Care Alliance has completed research on every jurisdiction that legalized euthanasia and/or assisted suicide including Australia's Northern Territory that overturned the assisted suicide in 1997 and Victoria Australia and Hawaii that have yet to implement their death laws.

Here is the link to the Australian Care Alliance web page with links to the information on the fifteen fatally flawed laws.

Link to the PDF of the 15 Fatally Flawed Experiments (Link).

For your convenience here are the links:

• Australia's Northern Territory (1996 - 97)
• Oregon USA (1997 -)
• Switzerland (1998 -)
• Netherlands (2002 -)
• Belgium (2002 -)
• Luxembourg (2009 -)
• Washington State USA (2009 -)
• Vermont USA (2013 -)
• Canada (2015 -)
• Columbia (2015 -)
• California USA (2016 -)
• Colorado USA (2016 -)
• District of Columbia USA (2016 -)
• Hawaii USA (2019 -)
• Victoria Australia (2019 -)

The Australian Care Alliance has completed incredibly useful research.

The deadly advocacy of assisted suicide in Washington DC

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr G Kevin Donovan 

The Washington Times published an excellent analysis of the assisted suicide legislation in Washington DC by G. Kevin Donovan, a physician and director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics and professor at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Donovan is responding to public service announcements in Washington DC promoting assisted suicide. Donovan states:

It is no wonder that the assisted-suicide lobby has resorted to such tactics — this dangerous public policy is so unpopular here that in the first year after the District of Columbia enacted a law to allow assisted suicide, not one person killed themselves with a doctor’s help, as the new law sanctions. In fact, during that time only two out of nearly 11,000 licensed D.C. physicians were willing to participate, and just one hospital cleared doctors to be involved.

People in Washington DC clearly do not want assisted suicide. Donovan then explains how legalizing assisted suicide leads to discrimination for people in vulnerable conditions.

Despite so-called safeguards, the D.C. assisted-suicide bill fails to adequately protect the most vulnerable in society. The poor, people of advanced years, persons with disabilities, both physical and developmental, and people who experience depression all find themselves at a much higher risk of being placed, even against their will, in that “second class” of people who do not receive the equal protection of suicide prevention. 

This type of discrimination is a reality in places where assisted suicide is legal. We know because in Oregon (oregon.gov), where assisted suicide was legalized 20 years ago, feeling like a burden is among the top end-of-life concerns of people who asked for lethal drugs. Making suicide available to people who require significant care and resources conveys that dependency and the need for care is burdensome, perhaps even revolting.

Donovan continues by outlining the other negative effects associated with assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide also breaks down the patient-physician relationship. With these laws, a doctor is legally forbidden from listing suicide as the cause of death on the death certificate. Not only does that require a falsehood, it makes oversight nearly impossible and accurate disease data a thing of the past. These laws do precious little for patients, but they do ensure that doctors cannot be sued or subjected to criminal penalties when acting “in good faith” within this law. 

For centuries, a physician’s primary focus has been to cure and comfort. Assisted suicide is an aberration that distorts that focus, medicalizing suicide. The result is a breach of trust between physician and patient — and the real risk that normalizing suicide will lead to “suicide contagion” in others. There is no mystery behind why physicians in Washington are not lining up to participate: It undermines their credibility and runs contrary to their role as healer. And physicians should be wary of promoting suicide for any reason among their patients. More doctors themselves die of suicide than in any other profession.

Donovan concludes by challenging the suicide lobby from promoting assisted suicide rather than suicide prevention, patient's rights and protection of the vulnerable.

• NO DC assisted suicide deaths in the first year after legalization. DC doctors don't support assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide is the wrong prescription.

Dr. Joseph Marine, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University wrote an article that was published by Realhealth.com on September 20, 2018. Dr Marine gave five reasons why assisted suicide is the wrong prescription. Here is what he wrote:

1. PAS is unethical for doctors and nurses and is not medical care. The Oath of Hippocrates, from over 2400 years ago, states that “neither will I administer a deadly drug to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.” In modern times, most major medical organizations, including the AMA, the American College of Physicians, the American Nurses Association, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and the World Medical Association, have agreed and issued statements opposing PAS. PAS has no basis in medical science or tradition, no peer-reviewed guidelines or standards of care. No one would consider giving patients cyanide tablets or carbon monoxide to be medical care. Neither is misusing dangerous controlled drugs as poisons.

2. The supposed “safeguards” in PAS laws are an illusion. They include no requirement for psychiatric evaluation or for witnesses to the consumption of the lethal overdose, no medical examiner inquests, no independent safety monitoring board, and no mandatory routine audits of records and documentation. There is no requirement that the prescribing physician has a meaningful long-term patient-physician relationship with the patient seeking assisted suicide and physicians are immunized from ordinary negligence. Additionally, all medical records and documents connected to the provision of assisted suicide are protected from legal discovery or subpoena, ensuring that no investigation is ever likely to take place.

3. Abuses of PAS laws are already occurring in the U.S. Despite the extraordinary legal protections given to PAS practitioners and the lack of meaningful oversight, cases in the U.S. have been documented where PAS drugs have been given to patients with severe depression and dementia, and at the urging of relatives rather than a patient’s independent request. We know that patients in Oregon have been given PAS drugs and lived for years afterwards, when the law requires a six month prognosis. In addition, there are reports that health insurance companies have denied patients investigational therapies while offering to pay for PAS drugs. Documents from the Oregon PAS program also show that patients may take as long as four days to die after ingesting PAS drugs. For 80 percent of patients, it is unknown if complications occurred (because of lack of medical witnesses). Doctors experimenting with novel PAS drug cocktails in Washington State caused some patients to “scream in pain” before dying.

4. PAS is unnecessary. Patients may already decline any and all medical care that they do not want, and can encode their wishes in advance directives, to be overseen by designated and empowered health-care proxies. Palliative care, hospice care, and pain management programs have made enormous stride in the past decades, and almost all pain and distress at the very end of life can be treated with medications. Moreover, the great majority of patients do not seek PAS because of pain (less than 25 percent in Oregon). Rather, loss of autonomy and fear of being a burden on others are the dominant reasons.

5. The vast majority of doctors in the U.S. will not practice PAS. In Oregon, all suicide prescriptions are written by only 2–3 percent of the state’s doctors, and the average duration of the doctor-patient relationship is only three months, indicating that patients’ personal physicians are rarely providing these prescriptions. In Washington DC, nearly one year after legalization of PAS, only two out of 11,000 licensed physicians (0.02 percent) have registered to participate. These facts indicate that the vast majority of U.S. physicians recognize that PAS is wrong and that physicians who practice PAS may not be trusted by patients with their lives and their health.

Assisted suicide is dangerous and unnecessary, and will permanently damage the integrity of and public trust in the health professions and the health-care system. What is more, there has never been a time in human history when assisted suicide and euthanasia have been less needed. Palliative care, hospice care, and pain management programs are what physicians and legislatures should be promoting — not assisted suicide.

Dr. Joseph E. Marine is a member of the American Medical Association and an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Assisted suicide is incompatible with the physician's role as healer. Assisted suicide is not medical treatment.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

T

Dr Joseph Marine

he American Medical Association (AMA) is debating their position on assisted suicide at their convention this weekend in Chicago. 

An excellent article by Dr Joseph Marine was published by USA Today titled: Physician-assisted suicide isn't right for doctors. Don't change the AMA position.

Last month the AMA ethics committee (CEJA) published their review of the AMA position on assisted suicide by recommending that the AMA say NO to Assisted Suicide.

In his article Dr Marine explains the background to the assisted suicide position review:

In 2016, the AMA charged the CEJA with reevaluating the AMA’s ethical position, issued in 1994, in opposition to the legalization and practice of assisted suicide. The current AMA position states that assisted suicide “is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” 

In its May report, after two years of exhaustive study, having considered published literature and written and oral testimony from many participants on all sides of the debate, CEJA concluded that no change in the AMA’s ethical code or language used to describe assisted suicide is warranted.

Marine, who supports the report of the AMA ethics council explains why assisted suicide is contrary to the role of a physician:

The CEJA should be applauded for the thoroughness and sensitivity with which it has approached its difficult task. The report maintains alignment of the AMA’s position against assisted suicide with that of the American College of Physicians, the American Nurses Association and a medical-ethical tradition that extends back more than 2,000 years. The CEJA report recognizes the simple fact that assisted suicide is not medical care. It has no basis in medical science, medical tradition or evidence-based medicine. 

The incompatibility of physician-assisted suicide with ethical medical practice is illustrated by the stunning news published in April that in Washington, D.C., nearly a year after enactment of assisted-suicide law, only two out of 11,000 licensed physicians (0.02%) had registered to participate. The indisputable facts emerging from Washington show physicians still recognize that assisted suicide is gravely problematic, and that physicians who practice physician-assisted suicide may not be trusted by patients with their lives and their health.

Marine concludes the article by explaining how assisted suicide will negatively effect people:

Assisted suicide will affect everyone. Proponents of assisted suicide assert that it is a matter of personal choice, and that participation will be required of no one. This is a naive viewpoint.

Assisted suicide will inevitably color doctors’ view of care toward patients with advanced illness, advanced age and disabilities. With time, the “choice” may become a societal expectation, especially under the economic pressure of rising health care costs. 

As Derek Humphry, the founder of the modern euthanasia movement, wrote in "Freedom to Die": “In the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice.” 

Assisted suicide is dangerous, is unnecessary and will permanently damage the integrity of and public trust in the health professions and the health care system. The AMA House of Delegates should strongly support adoption of the CEJA report and maintain its ethical position against physician-assisted suicide.

Let's hope that the AMA upholds the position that assisted suicide is unethical.

No DC assisted suicide deaths in the first year after legalization. Doctors don't support assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In the first year of legal assisted suicide in Washington DC, there were no assisted suicide deaths and only two of 11,000 licensed physicians and only one hospital agreed to participate in assisted suicide.

The assisted suicide lobby accused DC officials of preventing assisted suicide. A Washington Post article reported that the DC Health Director rejected this accusation:

At a hearing before the D.C. Council on Monday, D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt said she resented advocates who suggest she was trying to impede the law. She said the department notified all 11,000 licensed physicians that the law was in place, and suggested aid-in-dying advocates should have done more outreach to the medical community. 

“I’m not a gatekeeper to the patients. The program is launched,” Nesbitt said. “I don’t interfere in a patient-physician relationship.”

According to the Washington Post article doctors are not signing up to prescribe lethal drugs and they are not seeking more information:

There doesn’t seem to be much interest from doctors. 

No local practicing physician testified in favor of the measure, and several opposed it, during debate before the D.C. Council. 

“The physician community was not out there advocating for it, so I don’t think there should have been an assumption that there would have been a lot of physicians signing up,” said Pia Duryea, a spokeswoman for the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, which stayed neutral on the bill. “We haven’t had any doctors call us up and say, ‘I really want to sign up, and I think the process is too cumbersome.’ ”

I am concerned that the assisted suicide lobby will hire a death salesperson to push doctors to "sign-up" and to promote people dying by assisted suicide in DC.

• Assisted suicide act puts patients at risk and prioritizes cost over compassion.

Assisted suicide bills in the US have all been defeated in 2017.

This article was published by OneNewsNow on September 21, 2017

Last year on December 19, the mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, signed into law the "Death with Dignity Act," which permits people to request and receive a lethal dose of drugs to end their lives. Congress, however, has the authority to review and reverse decisions made by the DC Council, and the House has approved a measure with a provision that would terminate the assisted-suicide law. The House bill goes to the Senate now.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition tells OneNewsNow the reaction on Capitol Hill makes sense.

"Assisted suicide is sold to us as a lie," says Schadenberg. "They sell it as about choice and autonomy which, of course, is what everybody is in favor of. But what it's actually doing is giving a doctor the right to cause your death – and it's a very, very serious situation because it's dealing with people who are at the most vulnerable time of their life."

Schadenberg says bills to legalize assisted suicide were introduced in 26 states this year and all were defeated. As recently as last week, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide.

"It's not a juggernaut," says Schadenberg, "and when people look at what it's actually about, they recognize how bad it is and they actually vote to defeat it. I'm hoping that the Senate has the strength to do the same."

In Canada, assisted suicide was imposed on citizens by a ruling from the Canadian Supreme Court.

Assisted suicide legalization defeated in the US in 2017.

Jacqueline Abernathy

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

With nearly every state assisted suicide legislative attempt complete, initial data from a research study by Dr. Jacqueline H. Abernathy at Tarleton State University finds a staggering increase in the number of attempts to legalize assisted suicide in U.S. over the past year, in spite of an overwhelming failure rate associated with such legislation: fewer than one percent of all assisted suicide bills become law.

The analysis, to be presented at the 2017 National Euthanasia Symposium in Toronto on October 28, included all bills introduced in 36 states and the District of Columbia since 1994. Of the 231 total bills, nearly one-fifth (43 bills) were introduced just this year in 26 states and all attempts failed. This increase in the number of attempts to legalize assisted suicide is notable due to the fact that such bills have greater than a 99 percent failure rate. Only three have been signed into law in the last 23 years. In spite of the volume of bills introduced this past year, 100 percent of these attempts failed while Alabama tightened their assisted suicide statute.

Only in the last 4 years have any bills passed the legislative process and of the three, only one, Vermont in 2013, was signed into law following standard legislative procedure. California followed in 2015 by resurrecting a defeated bill in an unrelated special session, where processes are abbreviated and legislation is rushed. Similar can be said of Washington DC that recently passed their ordinance through only a city council vote rather than a bicameral legislature. These victories may explain, in part, the staggering increase in the number of bills introduced in other states.
 
Dr. Abernathy's analysis indicates that while the number of attempts in 2017 alone make up 18 percent of the total number of attempts since 1994, only one state, Indiana, made its first attempt this past year. In 2017, Indiana introduced two bills to legalize assisted suicide alongside the 43 bills in a total 26 states. The other 25 states (or 96 percent) had introduced previous failed assisted suicide legislation. Therefore the analysis shows a potential uptick in the number of bills proposed within each state, there was not a significant increase in the number of new states considering assisted suicide legislation.

Dr. Abernathy also notes that there appears to be no correlation between the number of attempts and an increased likelihood of success. This is in spite of the increase in the number of multiple bills introduced in a single session as well repeat attempts over a number of years. While 12 of the 13 states with previous failed bills introduced more than one bill in 2017, including the one state without previous attempts, historically, the number of bills introduced in one year does not appear to correlate with the likelihood of having a bill pass.

The same can be said of repeat attempts. Vermont introduced a total of 12 bills before the assisted suicide law passed and California proposed 8 but DC had only one proposal. Likewise, Hawaii introduced 5 bills in 2017 alone, adding to a total of 35 failed attempts since proposing its first bill nearly 20 years ago in 1998. Of all 36 states, only Louisiana has only one attempt on record. Over half of all state legislatures that have attempted to legalize assisted suicide have five more attempts and seven of these 19 states have attempts numbering in the double digits. Considering the number of states that continue to fail after exceeding both Vermont and California in both the number of repeat attempts and number of bills per session, this political strategy has yet to suggest that perseverance alone can win sufficient legislative support.

Further analysis should offer more insight but these initial reports demonstrate a continuing overall failure rate of assisted suicide legislation in spite of both recent loses and the significant increase in the frequency of attempts. These initial results do indicate the use of persistence as a political strategy for the assisted suicide lobby but do not validate the efficacy of that strategy. As of yet, these numbers do not suggest lawmakers in general are willing to accept assisted suicide after a certain number of bills are introduced. Perhaps a greater number of lawmakers are willing to introduce bills, but the fact that these bills continue to fail and fewer states are rushing to consider such legislation suggests that assisted suicide remains an unlikely cause to advance in U.S. statehouses.

This article is based on the, yet to be published, analysis of assisted suicide legislation in the U.S. by Dr Jacqueline Abernathy at Tarleton State University.

For more information:

• Euthanasia and assisted suicide continue to be defeated.
• One year of legalized assisted suicide in California. Countless unanswered questions.

US House Appropriations Committee approves repeal of the DC assisted suicide Act

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Great News: Yesterday the US House of Representative Committee on Appropriations approved an amendment by Representative Andy Harris (Maryland), who is also a physician, that prohibits funds for assisted suicide in the District of Columbia, and repeals the DC Death with Dignity Act. The amendment was adopted on a vote of 28-24.

Information about the DC assisted suicide act.

Film Producer Seeking Assisted Suicide Stories

The producers of The Euthanasia Deception documentary (www.VulnerableFilm.com) are working on a new film dealing with the effects of assisted suicide in America. 

Assisted suicide is currently legal in the States of Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, and the District of Columbia. 

If you or a loved one have felt coerced, experienced abuse, or come back from the brink of death by assisted death, we would like to hear from you. 

Email us a brief description with contact information at VulnerableStories@gmail.com.

Crucial vote in the US Congress on Assisted Suicide.

Contact your member of Congress immediately to support Resolution 27.

The resolution to stop the Washington D.C. Assisted Suicide Act is coming up for a crucial vote. 

Now that H.J. Res 27 advanced from the House Committee on Oversight and Government on Monday February 13, by a vote of 22 - 14, Res 27 now must go to a vote in Congress soon.

Please email Congressman Jason Chaffetz, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government urge him to bring H.J. Res 27 to a vote in Congress.

Contact your Member of Congress to vote for H.J. Res 27! Tell your member of congresss that you oppose assisted suicide and to vote YES on H.J. Res 27. 

• You can call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121; 
• Find your Representative with your ZIP code; or 
• If you know your Representative's name, look his/her number up on this list.

Once you are connected, tell the staffer on the line that you are a constituent and would like the Representative to know that you support Resolution 27 and you oppose assisted suicide.

Also, sign the petition supporting H.J. Res 27, to reject the DC assisted suicide Act 21-577.

For more information:

• Representatives Brad Wenstrup and Phil Roe: Washington DC assisted suicide Act puts patients at risk and prioritizes cost over compassion.
• Margaret Dore: Why the DC assisted suicide Act 21-577 must be rejected.