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. 

Prop. 106 Legalizes Euthanasia

Kenneth Stevens MD

To view similar information in a pdf format, see "Dore Memo Opposing Prop. 106," which can be viewed here and here.

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA

Prop. 106 is sold as physician-assisted suicide in which a patient self-administers the lethal dose. In the fine print, Prop. 106 also allows euthanasia. This is true for two reasons: (1) Prop. 106 defines "medical aid in dying" (a euphemism for assisted suicide and euthanasia) as a "medical practice;" and (2) on close examination, self administration is not required.[1] See below.

"Even if a patient struggled, who would know?"

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA

Prop. 106 allows the death by lethal dose to occur in private without supervision.[1] The drugs used are water and alcohol soluble, such that they can be administered to a restrained or sleeping person without consent.[2] Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, puts it this way:

Prop. 106 Will Create New Paths of Elder Abuse

To view similar information in a pdf format, go to "Dore Memo Opposing Prop. 106," which can be viewed here and here.

By Margaret Dore, Esq, MBA

Elder abuse is already a problem in Colorado. Passage of Prop. 106 will make it worse. See below.