Assisted Suicide Is Not Compassion

For the last twenty years, the United States has been subjected to an unremitting, well- financed,[1] and intensely emotional campaign to legalize assisted suicide as a supposedly compassionate way to help end the suffering of people with terminal illnesses. Assisted suicide became prominent in the public square with the late Jack Kevorkian’s notorious campaign that resulted in the deaths of at least 130 people from 1991-1999, ending only when Kevorkian was finally imprisoned for murder.[2]  Concerted efforts have also been made all around the country to pass laws permitting doctor-prescribed death. While the movement has made gains, it has been slow going. As of this writing, only three states have formally legalized assisted suicide: Oregon voters approved a law in 1994 allowing doctors to prescribe lethal doses of barbiturates to patients diagnosed with six months or less to live.[3] Washington voters followed suit in 2008.[4]  The Vermont legislature passed a similar law in 2013.[5] But advocates have failed more often than they have succeeded. Voters rejected legalization in California (1992), Michigan (1998), Maine (2000), and Massachusetts (2012).[6]  Legislatures throughout the country have repeatedly refused to pass laws permitting doctors to prescribe lethal overdoses to terminally ill patients, for example, in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.