During the general election, West Virginians will decide whether the state constitution should prohibit physicians and other health care providers from helping a patient die.
Medically assisted suicide is already illegal in the state. Amendment 1 would enshrine a “protection against medically assisted suicide” into the state’s constitution.
The amendment reads:
No person, physician, or health care provider in the State of West Virginia shall participate in the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of a person.
Voting yes on the amendment would be a vote in favor of adding those words to the constitution.
It goes on to say that nothing in the section prohibits giving a prescription of medication to alleviate pain or discomfort, prohibit the withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment, and nothing in the section prevents the state using capital punishment.
Ten U.S. states have legalized medically assisted suicide, beginning in 1997 with Oregon’s “death with dignity act.” The law allows terminally-ill patients to end their lives by taking a lethal dose of medication prescribed to them by a doctor.
Del. Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, is one of the sponsors of the resolution and has written opinion pieces against the practice of medically assisted suicide.
McGeehan said with places like Canada and countries in Europe legalizing medically assisted suicide, it’s important that West Virginia be proactive in prohibiting the practice.
“Even though it’s currently illegal in our state, many organizations are out there pushing hard to change that,” McGeehan said. “There’s medically assisted suicide bills that have been introduced now in 23 states, and many in the Midwest are considering it. So it’s very important to place this protection in our state constitution, to be proactive, to ensure that medically assisted suicide is harder to legalize here going forward.”
McGeehan said one of the biggest problems with medically assisted suicide is the power of suggestion, especially from physicians and health care providers with elderly people.
“Legalized medically assisted suicide creates an institutionalized setting where pressure can be placed upon the elderly and the disabled to begin seeing themselves as a burden, and most of the people, these euthanasia laws target are the elderly people, our senior citizens, and they are definitely most among the most vulnerable that we have in our population,” he said. “Many suffer from dementia or other types of cognitive diseases.”
According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 71% of Americans believe doctors should be “allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it. Sixty-six percent of Americans believe doctors “be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide” for terminal patients in severe pain who request it.
Compassion and Choices, a national organization that advocates for the legalization of what it refers to as medical aid in dying, said West Virginia’s ballot initiative would make it more difficult for dying West Virginians to have a peaceful death without pain and suffering.
“We urge all voters to oppose this ballot measure that would further prevent deeply personal health care decisions at the end of life from being made between a patient and their doctor,” Charmaine Manansala, chief advocacy officer for the organization, said in the statement. “It is part of a broader, troubling overreach of legislators imposing their personal beliefs on the relationship between you and your doctor.”
In West Virginia, the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese of the Catholic church supports the amendment, as does the anti-abortion organization West Virginians for Life.
The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia has spoken out against the amendment, which it calls “backwards.”
“The right to avoid excruciating, end-of-life pain is essential to bodily autonomy and basic freedom,” the organization wrote. “Multiple courts have upheld the constitutionality of laws allowing death with dignity.”
The amendment needs a simple majority, or more than 50%, of voters to pass.
Original publication, 10/22/24.