Medical Professionals - 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.
Medical professionals can also experience discrimination if they are forced to comply with assisted suicide laws against their values, including not being party to discrimination against their patients with disabilities. 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 eligible to submit a complaint if a patient, friend or family member has qualified for lethal drugs and was steered to assisted suicide or denied services. 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 a medical professional who has or has had patients with life-threatening disabilities who would qualify for assisted suicide under an existing state law and were steered and/or denied services due to the assisted suicide statute in your state, 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 you as a medical professional to believe that someone qualifies. Having one of these conditions is not by itself a complaint. Having one of these conditions is not by itself a complaint. The complaint is what a provider, agency or insurer did to a patient 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.
Some states’ assisted suicide laws require the participation of medical professionals, even those who have opted out due to closely held ethical, moral, or religious principles. This could be as simple as your not wanting to be party to an inherently discriminatory two-tiered system of medicine and to discrimination against your patients.
It could also be that you know of circumstances wherein patients felt pressured, were denied services, or were coerced/steered to assisted suicide by the way the state set up the system, their insurer, other medical professionals, or family members.
If you have felt pressured in any way by the state statute, the institution where you work, or by colleagues to participate in assisted suicide against your conscience or your better judgement, we encourage you to file a complaint.
How to File
If you—or someone you know who opposes assisted suicide—would qualify to receive lethal drugs under one of these laws, please follow the instructions below to submit complaints with both HHS and DOJ. Then return here and fill out the form with your complaint numbers below.
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 health care provider (person or facility) that has suffered pressure or retaliation for refusing to participate in assisted suicide, despite moral or professional objections:
Check “Workplace Discrimination” and provide information about your employer or facility.
Please click HERE for a Sample Model Complaint for healthcare professionals.
2. If you have 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.
3. If you have 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.