Assisted Suicide, Once Legal Inevitably Expands

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.  (pictured right).

When a jurisdiction is debating an assisted suicide bill, many organizations and individuals present information about the necessary safeguards that the jurisdiction must implement to “safely” legalize assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition knows that it is not possible to “safely” legalize assisted suicide and once legal the law will inevitably expand.

Great Britain is currently debating an assisted suicide bill  sponsored by Kim Leadbeater. Many states have already introduced assisted suicide bills in 2025 and we anticipate many more legalization bills this year. We know that some states that have legalized assisted suicide will debate bills to expand their law.  

This article focuses on the experience with assisted suicide in jurisdictions where it is legal. 

Nearly every jurisdiction that has legalized assisted suicide, later expanded their law.

The assisted suicide lobby groups know that it is more difficult to legalize assisted suicide than it is to expand the law once it is legal.

Anita Cameron: "My Mum Didn't Die"*

Good morning. I’m Anita Cameron, Director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet, a national, grassroots disability organization opposed to medical discrimination, healthcare rationing, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide laws are dangerous because though these laws are supposed to be for people with six months or less to live, doctors are often wrong about a terminal diagnosis. In 2009, while living in Washington state, my mother was determined to be at the end stage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. I was told her death was imminent, that if I wanted to see her alive, I should get there in two days. She rallied, but was still quite ill, so she was placed in hospice. Her doctor said that her body had begun the process of dying.

Though she survived 6 months of hospice, her doctor convinced her that her body was still in the process of dying, and she moved home to Colorado to die.

My mum didn’t die. In fact, six weeks after returning to Colorado, she and I were arrested together in Washington, DC, fighting for disability justice. She became active in her community and lived almost 12 years!

Denver Post Switches Sides: Votes "NO" on Prop. 106

https://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/11/no-on-proposition-106-aid-in-dying-measure-lacks-proper-safeguards/

After a lot of soul-searching, we are asking voters to reject Proposition 106, a measure that would give patients the legal right to end their life, because we fear the cultural, legal and medical shift that it would create in Colorado.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board: "Vote 'no' on more suicide"

http://gazette.com/editorial-vote-no-on-more-suicide/article/1586396

Proposition 106 would establish the assisted suicide trade for doctors willing to participate. An out-of-state special interest, funded mostly by billionaire George Soros, has marketed this measure as a form of compassion.

Suicide rates are a crisis in Colorado, and a poorly written plan to legitimize these tragedies raises big concerns.