Assisted suicide has been on my mind ever since Washington DC took steps to legalize the act in 2016. The fact that it wasn’t on my radar before is a luxury of my health. For Americans with disabilities, it is a constant threat to their dignity. Starting about 20 years ago, disability groups began speaking out and forming official positions against assisted suicide. Many accused those with disabilities of “meddling” and trying to “take away” the rights of those with disabilit

Physician-assisted suicide proponents have been calling in favors to get in the media a lot recently, using sympathetic stories of disease to build goodwill towards their agenda. Rarely do they mention the failures and the bitter mechanics of the process, the gross lapses in oversight, or the threats to the disabled, elder adult, and depressed/suicide-minded communities. Neither do they discuss the danger posed by assisted suicide to the healthcare community, those we all rel

The etymology of euthanasia, when translated from Greek, means “good death (1).” In our present debate on euthanasia in the United States, the public policy arena is currently predominated by assisted suicide, a form of euthanasia distinguished only by the fact that the person committing the ultimate act of killing is the victim (2). In spite of the presence of suicide prevention programs to talk the depressed out of harming themselves — and even involuntary commitment and su

What do assisted suicide and abortion have in common? So many things. Like the death of an individual at the hand of a physician. They share an important selling point for those who support both: an insistence on respecting the private relationship between the patient and the doctor. Here is an example of a good thing being misappropriated to serve a bad end. We can appreciate the privacy that would allow us to be frank with our doctor about our health. Discussions of symptom

Brittany Maynard, an attractive and vivacious 29-year-old, spent the last few months of her life campaigning for the cause of “death with dignity.” She killed herself in November 2014 with drugs a doctor prescribed to her. “Right-to-die” legislation has emerged in a handful of states, and physician-assisted suicide has come to the forefront of debates about life and death. Those who value the life and rights of every human being must be ready for the coming battle over whet

The Jahi McMath legal battle at Children’s Hospital Oakland over a brain-dead 13-year-old provides a stark contrast to a law passed across the Atlantic in Belgium that allows terminally ill minors to choose physician-assisted suicide. California judges have allowed the mother of young Ms. McMath to uphold her wish to keep her daughter on life support despite multiple pediatric neurologists declaring her dead. Meanwhile, the nation of Belgium presses forward its dismal euthana