Colorado Loosens Safeguards on Assisted Suicide & Euthanasia

By Meg Wingerter, additional information provided by Margaret Dore.

Colorado loosened regulations on medical aid in dying, also known as assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.  

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis [pictured here] signed Senate Bill 68, which shortened the bill's waiting period for terminally ill people who wish to end their lives with a drug cocktail to seven days. Under the previous law, people with less than six months to live had to request the medication twice, at least 15 days apart, before they could receive it.

The law also will open access to medical aid in dying in Colorado to non-residents, and allow advanced practice registered nurses to prescribe the medication cocktail. APRNs can prescribe most other drugs.

Nearly Every State That Has Legalized Assisted Suicide, Has Expanded Its Law

By Alex Schadenberg (pictured here)

In 2019 Oregon expanded their assisted suicide law by giving doctors the ability to waive the 15 day waiting period when a person was deemed near to death. In 2023 Oregon removed the residency requirement extending assisted suicide nationally to anyone.

In 2021 California expanded their assisted suicide law by reducing the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours. It forced doctors who oppose assisted suicide to be complicit in the process (later struck down by the court), and it forced all medical institutions to post their policy on assisted suicide.

Colorado Governor Signs Bill Reducing Patient Protections

Governor Polis (pictured here) signed SB068, an amendment to Colorado’s End of Life Options Act (assisted suicide and euthanasia) into law on June 5, 2024. 

The bill reduces the waiting period for patients seeking an aid-in-dying prescription (assisted suicide and euthanasia), from 15 to 7 days, increases the number of practitioners who can participate in the law, and allows providers to waive the waiting period if the patient is not likely to survive more than 48 hours and meets all other qualifications. 

My Mum Didn't Die

Good morning. I’m Anita Cameron, Director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet, a national, grassroots disability organization opposed to medical discrimination, healthcare rationing, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide laws are dangerous because though these laws are supposed to be for people with six months or less to live, doctors are often wrong about a terminal diagnosis. In 2009, while living in Washington state, my mother was determined to be at the end stage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. I was told her death was imminent, that if I wanted to see her alive, I should get there in two days. She rallied, but was still quite ill, so she was placed in hospice. Her doctor said that her body had begun the process of dying.

Law Punctuated by a Question Mark

Joey Bunch, ColoradoPolitics.com

Click here to view the article as published.

No one expects to pass a law that's going to have problems, but it's hardly uncommon to have those told-ya-so moments that offer hollow gratification for those who opposed it from the start. When it comes to governing life and death, these stumbles deserve a longer look.

Jakob Rodgers of The Gazette recently reported on the first data from Colorado's medical-aid-in-dying law, which voters passed in 2016. Sixty-nine people sought prescriptions to end their lives, and 50 of them reportedly picked up the lethal drugs from a pharmacist.

We don't know how many died by choice, or what happened to the deadly prescriptions, if any, that weren't used. Voters passed a law that doesn't require the state health department to keep track of that kind of information.

Physician-Assisted Suicide Traumatic for Family Members

By Margaret Dore, Esq.

In 2012, a European research study addressed trauma suffered by persons who witnessed legal assisted suicide in Switzerland.[1] The study found that one out of five family members or friends present at an assisted suicide was traumatized. These people,

experienced full or sub-threshold PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) related to the loss of a close person through assisted suicide.[2]

In Oregon, Other Suicides Have Increased with Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA
A pdf version can be viewed here 
and here

Since the passage of Oregon’s law allowing physician-assisted suicide, other suicides in Oregon have steadily increased. This is consistent with a suicide contagion in which the legalization of physician-assisted suicides has encouraged other suicides.