Thank you for your press release regarding increased suicide rates in the US. Please consider the following factors not mentioned in the release.
1. The release discusses rising suicide rates begining in 1999. Oregon's assisted suicide law, legitimizing and encouraging suicide, had gone into effect just two years prior, in late 1997.
Local media then glorified assisted suicide deaths, for example, of Lovelle Svart, who was filmed taking the lethal dose and then dying at a suicide party. Indeed, local media encouraged readers to both listen and watch as Ms. Svart drank the lethal dose.
2. The suicide rates reported by the CDC leave out deaths due to legal assisted suicide, which by state law are reported as natural deaths. More to the point, the CDC suicide statistics are understated.
3. I work against assisted suicide legalization, so that my name is out there regarding the topic. So far, I have had four actively suicidal people contact me to use legal assisted suicide. The first three were all physicially healthy men, aged late 20's, to 50. The fourth said that he/she had health issues.
4. There is evidence of suicide contagion in Oregon:
Since the passage of Oregon’s law allowing physician-assisted suicide, other suicides in Oregon have steadily increased. This is consistent with a suicide contagion in which the mere legalization of physician-assisted suicide has encouraged other suicides. See here.
Please feel free to contact me for additonal information. Thank you again for the press release.
Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA
Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation
Law Offices of Margaret K. Dore, PS
1001 4th Avenue, Suite 4400
Seattle, WA 98154
206 697 1217