Your voice is urgently needed! Bills (HF 2998/SF 3215) have been introduced in the Minnesota State House and Senate to legalize the dangerous and discriminatory policy of assisted suicide. The bills are currently in the House Health Finance and Policy Committee and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. 

Please take a few moments to send a message today to your state legislators asking them to oppose this bill. It is vital that they hear from you!

The dangerous policy of assisted suicide puts our most vulnerable neighbors at significant risk. We must remind our legislators that suicide is not medical care, and we deserve better access to quality care, such as in-home hospice and palliative care, not an ill-conceived public policy that puts patients at risk of mistakes, coercion, and abuse. Despite proponent claims, the facts are clear that people access assisted suicide for reasons of disability, not for pain. 

Here are some of the reasons why they must oppose assisted suicide:

• Patients have been denied coverage for lifesaving treatment and offered assisted suicide instead.
• Young women with anorexia have been given lethal drugs by their doctor under this same policy in Colorado and Oregon. 
• Pain and suffering, or even concern about it, never make it into the top 5 reasons why patients die by assisted suicide in Oregon.  Rather, the most commonly cited reasons are disability related concerns, which is why the National Council on Disability rejects assisted suicide.
• Mental conditions are ignored and depressed patients receive the lethal medications. 
• Doctors make mistakes and patients who are not dying receive the prescription drugs. 

Assisted suicide laws abandon vulnerable patients and they impact everyone’s end of life care. Minnesota state legislators would be making a grave mistake to pursue these bills.

Please fill out the form and urge your state legislators to reject HF 2998/SF 3215 today.