Canada’s Assisted Suicide Laws Expanded to Include People with Mental Illness As Canada nears the implementation of amendments to their euthanasia and assisted suicide laws in March 2023, growing concern rises. These laws remove the alleged “safeguard” that a person must have a terminal illness to apply for assisted suicide. Now, those who are experiencing

Patients Have Access to Assisted Suicide but not Affordable Healthcare When people with disabilities are not provided adequate healthcare, palliative care, long term services and supports, or hospice, but rather are encouraged to consider assisted suicide, it is communicated that they would be better off dead than disabled. This is especially exemplified in an article

Federal Ruling Ensures Patient Autonomy to Choose a Do No Harm Doctor In a Friday ruling, “A federal judge says part of California’s aid-in-dying law is unconstitutional because it requires physicians, regardless of personal objections, to report a terminally ill patient’s request for life-ending medication,” quotes the San Fransisco Chronicle in their recent article.  Some

There are millions in this country who cannot stand up, go to the bathroom, or sit up on their own who deserve equal assisted suicide prevention care when they feel that those disabilities are too much to bear and ask for help in suicide.

The Patient’s Rights Action Fund applauds the WMA’s recently adopted policy preserving physicians’ right to not participate in assisted suicide, thereby preserving patient choice to receive care from someone who would not help them kill themselves in a dark moment

“Overall, more than 1.4 million Canadians with disabilities live in poverty according to a 2017 census—that’s roughly 1 in 25 Canadians. According to Dosani, MAiD [assisted suicide] becomes ‘the only option left to many people.’”

María José came to apply through our mutual connections at California League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization. She has worked in direct lobbying and worked in coalitions on human dignity issues, including assisted suicide, restorative justice, immigrant rights, victim empowerment, and advocacy on behalf of incarcerated persons. María José is a proud dreamer, born in Lima, Peru, who grew up in Northern California. She has an intuitive sense and passion for this issue, and we are grateful for her leadership and perspective…

A BMJ article titled “Some groups of terminally ill patients are twice as likely to die by suicide, data show” draws the wrong conclusion from the data surrounding increased patient suicide. The study referenced in the article, done by the Office for National Statistics, records that patients with some serious conditions are twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves compared to control groups with similar socio-demographic characteristics…

Assisted suicide proponents are doing a bait and switch – they use “safeguards” to convince legislators to pass the bills only to strip away those same precautions a few years later. Proponents of assisted suicide in Washington state are doing exactly this, claiming there is a barrier to access the lethal drugs because of the meager ‘safeguards’ they promised would make the bill safe to pass in the first place…