The Facts
Senate Bills 678-681 invite bad actors to influence vulnerable people into ending their lives.
The truth about assisted suicide legislation
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In Oregon, the length of doctor-patient relationships tied to assisted suicide deaths is dropping.
A research-led review of 25 years of annual reports documenting Oregon’s assisted suicide law showed the length of the doctor-patient relationship reduced over time, falling from 18 weeks, on average, in 2010, to 5 weeks in 2022.
The researchers suggested that trend “may have made it more difficult to identify treatable factors influencing the wish to die,” noting a lack of recent data on how many participants had treatable depression—a factor known to influence a person’s wish to die.
“In fact, after they write the prescription the physician may not keep track of that patient.”
-Dr. Katrina Hedberg, lead author of most of Oregon’s official assisted suicide reports, testifying in 2004
“The law itself only provides for writing the prescription, not what happens afterwards. … We do not have a way to track if there was a big bottle [of lethal drugs] sitting in somebody’s medicine cabinet and they died whether or not somebody else chose to use it.”
-Dr. Katrina Hedberg, lead author of most of Oregon’s official assisted suicide reports, testifying in 2004.
Source: Footnote 91 from here.
Physicians are not required to be present at the time of ingestion or death, and their choice to be present has been dwindling over the years.
In 2023, a physician was present at the time of ingestion in only 29% of cases. It was about the same percentage when it comes to doctors present at the time of death – 28% of the cases in 2023.
That’s down from 38% of cases when physicians were present between 1998 and 2021.
Source: Footnotes 97 & 98 here.
Assistance with Death
“[W]e do not know exactly how he helped this person swallow, whether it was putting a feed tube down or whatever, but he was not prosecuted. …”
-Dr. Katrina Hedberg, a lead author of most of Oregon’s official reports, discussing a case in which a man said he helped his brother-in-law take the prescribed drugs, which is evidence of at least one documented example in Oregon in which assistance by others in the dying process has been acknowledged.
“Since the lethal agent can be administered to a willing person through a feeding tube, it is equally possible to administer it to an unwilling person by the same means.”
-Kenneth R. Stevens, Jr., M.D., former Chairman of Radiation Oncology at Oregon Health & Science University and Vice-president of the Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
People Dying Without Consent
Individuals who request assisted suicide must provide explicit written consent and must be competent at the time the request is made.
Yet, despite those safeguards, hundreds of people are euthanized involuntarily every year, one study found.
For instance, more than 560 people in the Netherlands in a single year were administered lethal substances without having given explicit consent.
A recent study found that in Belgium, 66 of 208 cases of euthanasia (32%) occurred in the absence of request or consent. The reasons for not discussing the decision to end the person’s life and not obtaining consent were that patients were comatose (70% of cases) or had dementia (21% of cases).
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
Missing Drugs
When it comes to analyzing assisted suicide trends, the number of prescriptions written equals the number of assisted suicides, correct? Not exactly.
In 2023 in Oregon, 560 prescriptions were written, but 367 died from ingesting drugs. Exactly 30 of those deaths were from medication prescribed in prior years.
There were141 cases that had an ingestion status “unknown,” and 82 did not ingest medication and died some other way.
Unknown Number of Complications
It’s not known whether there were any complications from taking lethal drugs in 72% of the assisted suicide cases in Oregon in 2023.
Over the entire length of the law in Oregon, it’s unknown if there were complications in 61% of the cases.
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“In the early years of euthanasia in the Netherlands, it was almost exclusively available to mentally competent and terminally ill adults. After a few decades, the practice was extended to the chronically ill, the disabled, people with psychiatric problems, non-autonomous adults with living wills and young children. We're currently discussing an extension to elderly people without existing medical conditions.”
-Dr. Theo Boer, writing in Le Monde about The Netherlands
“Until 2001, the Netherlands allowed only adults access to euthanasia. However, the 2001 law allowed for children aged 12–16 years to be euthanized if consent is provided by their parents, even though this age group is generally not considered capable of making such decisions. The law even allows physicians to proceed with euthanasia if there is disagreement between the parents.
By 2005, the Groningen Protocol, which allows euthanasia of newborns and younger children who are expected to have ‘no hope of a good quality of life,’ was implemented.”
We have ample evidence to demonstrate that when assisted suicide is legalized, it doesn’t just stop at people with terminal illnesses.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
In The Netherlands, official data show that the number of euthanasia cases has risen continuously since 2006, reaching 6,361 in 2019.
Just this year in California, a bill was introduced “to create the most expansive assisted dying law in the country” by allowing early to mid-stage dementia patients to request assisted suicide.
It would have also allowed “patients without a specific prognosis to request life-ending drugs if they are suffering from a ‘grievous and irremediable medical condition.’”
A supporter of assisted suicide said the legislation had to be pulled back from consideration because it was “pushing for too much too soon.”
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/17/lawmaker-withdraws-california-bill-assisted-dying-00152840
In Oregon, the government reported that patients who died from lethal assisted suicide drugs include those who had diabetes, anorexia, arthritis, arteritis, blood disease, complications from a fall, hernia, kidney failure, medical care complications, musculoskeletal system disorders, sclerosis, and stenosis.
Source: cthl.cc/twjot, pages 12 and 14
In Colorado, two women with anorexia in their early 30s were given assisted suicide drugs to end their lives, an expansion not authorized by Colorado law, according to a published medical journal: cthl.cc/hztra; News coverage here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/01/disability-not-reason-sanction-medically-assisted-dying-un-experts
“We all accept that it could never be a well-reasoned decision for a person belonging to any other protected group – be it a racial minority, gender or sexual minorities - to end their lives because they experience suffering on account of their status.
“Disability should never be a ground or justification to end someone’s life directly or indirectly.”
-UN Experts say disability is not a reason to allow for assisted suicide: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/01/disability-not-reason-sanction-medically-assisted-dying-un-experts
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The projected cost savings between lifesaving drugs and assisted suicide drugs range from $33.2 million to $124.3 million annually in Canada.
When assisted suicide is legalized, insurance companies or government providers are incentivized to find the cheapest ‘solutions’ to people’s health issues.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5250515/
“They wanted ‘a drug that would: number one, put a patient to sleep and keep them asleep; and, number two, make sure there was no pain involved; and number three, ensure that they would die, and, hopefully, die relatively quickly.’
Plus, it had to be cheap. They aimed for $500 a dose.”
-The Atlantic article from 2016 about a group of professionals who met to find a new, more accessible assisted suicide drug.
Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, where there’s also a Medicaid rule that denies surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy for patients with a less than a 5% expectation of five-year survival.
Two medical experts said this rule is “an extreme measure that would exclude most treatments for cancers such as lung, stomach, esophagus, and pancreas. Many important non-curative treatments would fail the five-percent/five-year criteria.”
Assisted suicide is called a choice, but when insurance won’t cover treatment to keep someone alive, it won’t seem like much of a choice, but an expectation.
Source: https://dredf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/revised-OR-WA-abuses.pdf, pg. 3
“The cost of the lethal medication generally used for assisted suicide is about $300, far cheaper than the cost of treatment for most long-term medical conditions. The incentive to save money by denying treatment already poses a significant danger. This danger is far greater where assisted suicide is legal…
…If patients are denied necessary life-sustaining health care treatment, or even if the treatment they need is delayed, many will, in effect, be steered toward assisted suicide.”
Research has demonstrated there’s a “strong link” between cost-cutting pressure on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients, were it legal to do so.
-A 1998 study from Georgetown University’s Center for Clinical Bioethics. Source: Footnote 13 here
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Doctors can request a psychiatric evaluation for patients who request assisted suicide. But they’re not required to.
Here’s why that’s a problem.
In the first three years of legalized assisted suicide in Oregon, doctors requested psychiatric assessments for people who requested assisted suicide in an average of 28% of cases.
By 2003 this had dropped to 5%.
By 2022, just 1% of participants underwent psychiatric evaluation.
When assisted suicide is present, people who may need help and resources are instead prescribed life-ending drugs.
Just 3% of the more than 2,000 patients who have died by assisted suicide in Oregon since its legalization 25 years ago were referred for psychiatric evaluation.
People who are suffering depression or mental illness need treatment and support, not a prescription to end their life.
In Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, a 2006 study found 25% of patients who requested assisted suicide were clinically depressed. Several of those patients received the lethal drugs anyway.
Doctors aren’t required to order a psychiatric evaluation for their patients who request assisted suicide.
If a depressed person is suicidal, we offer resources, compassion, and support to them.
When assisted suicide is legal, these individuals are instead given a prescription to end their lives.
Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a1682
In some places where assisted suicide is legal, individuals who have been convicted of heinous crimes and imprisoned have requested and been granted assisted suicide.
That’s an injustice to the victims and their families.