Help Us Expose Assisted Suicide Discrimination
As we continue working to end assisted suicide laws in the United States, we need your help!
Assisted suicide laws are inherently discriminatory against people with disabilities. Everyone who qualifies for lethal drugs under these laws is a person with disabilities, and assisted suicide laws create a two-tiered system of medicine that results in death to the devalued group. Don’t put up with it! Let your voice be heard today!
Federal civil rights agencies review the complaints they receive and open investigations where a complaint identifies a covered entity, specific conduct, and a timely claim. What you describe in your complaint decides whether it goes anywhere. We are asking people with disabilities who qualify for assisted suicide under current state laws and who have been steered, have been denied services, or who have been otherwise coerced to file civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division.
These complaints help ensure that federal civil rights officials hear directly from the people who are most affected by these laws. Every complaint creates a record. Complaints that name a specific provider, agency, or insurer and describe what that entity did are the ones most likely to be investigated, and together they build a public record of real examples of how assisted suicide laws harm disabled people. These agencies also enforce federal law and may take action to curb the deadly impact of assisted suicide.
You may be thinking, “Well, I was offered assisted suicide but don’t have a terminal illness, so I guess this isn’t for me.” Think again. Anyone who has a life-threatening condition qualifies for lethal drugs and is a person with disability, as defined by law. Did a medical professional or insurer suggest assisted suicide to you because you take a medication or need regular medical treatment or services, without which you would likely die in 6 months? Then file a complaint, and describe that conversation: who raised assisted suicide, when, where, and what you had asked for instead. The same is true if you told a provider or a public program that you were suicidal and were not offered the suicide prevention care that other people receive. Name the provider or program and say what happened. Qualifying for lethal drugs, on its own, is not something these agencies can investigate. Your complaint needs an entity, an act, and a date.
You are still eligible to submit a complaint if discrimination happened to a friend or family member. You can tell their story.
Please follow the directions below to file your complaint today!
After you submit your complaint, please return to this page and provide us with your complaint numbers for each agency. We will use that information to follow up with the appropriate federal officials and advocate for a thorough review of these complaints.
Sharing your complaint number with us is optional. We keep it secure, use it only to advocate for review of these complaints, and will not publish it or share your health information without your written permission.
Who Should File a Complaint?
If you are or someone you know is a person with a disability who would qualify for assisted suicide under an existing state law or a medical professional believed you/them to qualify and you/they experienced being steered, denial of services, or coercion to consider assisted suicide, we encourage you to consider filing a complaint.
Below is a list of examples of medical conditions and circumstances that may qualify someone for assisted suicide under current state laws or lead some medical professionals to believe that someone qualifies:
Having one of these conditions is not by itself a complaint. The complaint is what a provider, agency, or insurer did to you because of it.
- Any Terminal Illness
- Anyone who was told they have a terminal illness, even if later it was discovered a false diagnosis.
- Cancer
- Diabetes
- Hernia
- Anorexia or other eating disorders
- ALS
- Renal Disease
- Need home and community-based services (Ex: If they have a spinal cord injury and need home care) without which they would die of starvation or their health would likely decline to death in 6 months or less.
- A history of serious mental health condition
This list is not exhaustive.
How to File
If you, or someone you know, would qualify to receive lethal drugs under one of these laws and experienced steering toward assisted suicide, denial or reduction of services, or coercion, please follow the instructions below to submit complaints with both HHS and DOJ.
File as soon as you can. HHS OCR generally requires a complaint within 180 days of the last act of discrimination, although it can waive that deadline for good cause. If your incident is older than that, file anyway and explain why it was not possible to file sooner.
2. Save Number
Keep your complaint numbers handy.
3. Tell Us
Return here & submit your complaint numbers.
EXAMPLES OF VALID COMPLAINTS
1. If you are a patient, or friend or relative of a patient, who qualifies for assisted suicide under current laws (via life-threatening disabilities like terminal illness, cancer, ALS, neurological disease, kidney disease, COPD, liver disease, heart/circulatory disease, infectious disease, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, hernia, anorexia, renal disease) complaining about a hospital, doctor, clinic hospice or nursing home:
Check: “Discriminated Against in a commercial location or public place” and then “Healthcare Facility.” If the provider is a public hospital, county clinic, or other state or local government program, choose the state or local government category instead.
Please click HERE for a Sample Model Complaint for a qualifying individual who experienced discrimination by a medical professional or facility.
2. If you are a patient who is a recipient of public services or benefits (or friend or relative of such a person) and you believe that a public agency, contractor, or insurance company is denying access to services or benefits, or making access more difficult, or your services were terminated or reduced on the grounds that the agency, contractor, or insurance company would prefer you (or your friend or relative) stop receiving services and seek assisted suicide; this includes if you expressed a desire to die and were either offered assistance with your suicide or you were not offered suicide prevention care and services and were therefore barred from the full force of the state’s public suicide prevention program:
Check the category for a state or local government agency or a federally funded program. Use “Something else happened” only if none of the listed categories fit your facts.
Please click HERE for a Sample Model Complaint for someone receiving public services who was steered toward assisted suicide or denied services.
3. If you are a patient with a disability needing supportive services in order to live (for example, breathing devices, feeding tube, dialysis, insulin pump);
Check the category that matches who denied the service. Complaints about a private health insurer go to HHS OCR under Section 1557. Use “Something else happened” only if no listed category fits.
Please click HERE for a Sample Model Complaint for a patient with a disability needing supportive medical services.