Assisted Suicide Laws:
The Doctor, Not the Patient, Decides

Jeanette Hall
“If my doctor had believed in assisted suicide, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Oregonian Jeanette Hall was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, and asked her doctor to prescribe lethal assisted suicide drugs. Fortunately, her doctor recognized she did not want to suffer and she believed she would, leading him to assess his patient’s real need in spite of the law. He encouraged her to pursue treatment and she is still alive today! Unfortunately, not everyone has such a dedicated physician.
In Oregon, depending on the year, 60%-90% of patients received a lethal prescription from a doctor referred by proponent organizations that push for assisted suicide laws, not their own physicians.*
*The concentration of Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Prescriptions & Deaths from a Small Number of Prescribing Physicians