Barrosse: ‘Suicide Contagion’ Is Reason to Defeat Aid in Dying

https://baytobaynews.com/stories/barrosse-suicide-contagion-is-reason-to-defeat-aid-in-dying,218741

Ellen Barrosse [pictured left] is the retired CEO of Synchrogenix Information Strategies, a global pharmaceutical services company founded in Delaware.

As the Delaware legislature debates House Bill 140, a measure to legalize physician-assisted suicide, the discussion typically centers on individual autonomy and end-of-life dignity. However, emerging research reveals troubling and unintended consequences: The legalization of assisted suicide is associated with increases in non-assisted suicide rates across the general population — a phenomenon known as “suicide contagion.”

At a time when Delaware and the nation are experiencing record-high suicide rates, with it ranking as the second-leading cause of death for Americans aged 1-44, research from the Southern Medical Journal on U.S. states that have legalized assisted suicide shows an increase of up to 3.3 additional non-assisted suicide deaths per 100,000 residents. For Delaware, this translates to approximately 34 additional lives lost each year. The numbers may not be the same here. Instead of 34, maybe, in Delaware, only 15-20 additional non-assisted suicides will occur. We cannot know the exact number. But, based on study after study, we know the number won’t be zero.

These aren’t just statistics — they represent our neighbors, colleagues and loved ones. Some of these individuals are young people with decades of potential ahead of them, their lives cut short not by terminal illnesses but by choices made in moments of despair.

Ten Years After a ‘Six Months to Live’ Diagnosis, Stephanie Packer travels to Delaware to Warn Against the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Stephanie Packer was told in 2012 that she had three years to live. So far, the doctors that made that prognosis are off by just 10 years.

Packer, 42, who lives in Orange County, Calif., visited Dover on March 11 to share her story with Delaware representatives who were then considering House Bill 140, which would legalize medical aid in dying, also called physician-assisted suicide. She was there to show them that there is life beyond that dire prognosis and to urge them to vote against passage of the bill.

HB 140 eventually passed the House of Representatives by a 21-17 vote with three legislators absent. It now awaits action in the Senate Executive Committee.

Reported Oregon Assisted Suicide Deaths Declined, But Do All Doctors Report?

Prescriptions for life-ending medications under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) increased between 2023 and 2024, while the number of deaths went down, according to new Oregon Health Authority (OHA) data.

According to OHA’s 27th annual report on the DWDA, the number of prescriptions written for lethal medications increased 8.2%, from 561 to 607; deaths from ingestion of lethal doses of DWDA medications dropped about 2.6%, from 386 to 376.

The 2024 data represent a significant change from 2023, when prescriptions increased about 29%, driven largely by a 2023 amendment to the DWDA that removed the state residency requirement. Deaths from ingesting the lethal medications increased that year by about 20%.

Bolt Out of the Blue: United Nations Committee Calls for Canada to Repeal Track 2 of its Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Program.

By Ian McIntosh

This report comes in large part owing to the exceptional work done by Inclusion Canada -years in the making – who first issued this Press Release to announce this monumental news:

On Wednesday March 26, 2025, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities released a set of recommendations calling on the government of Canada to repeal Track 2 of its assisted suicide and euthanasia program. Specifically, Canada’s 2021 amendment to its Criminal Code that expanded through Bill C-7, which expanded eligibility passed promised safeguards.

Track 2 of the Canadian assisted suicide and euthanasia program allows people with disabilities (“grievous and irremediable medical condition”) whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable to request assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Arguing against the very premise of Track 2, the report notes that the Canadian federal government,”…did not challenge the Quebec Truchon decision which fundamentally changes the whole premise of medical assistance in dying when natural death is reasonably foreseeable to a new program that establishes medically assisted dying for persons with disabilities based on negative, ableist perceptions of the quality and value of the life of persons with disabilities, including that ‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.”

Attempt to Raise Assisted Suicide Bill in New Hampshire Decisively Defeated

Dear Advocates and Friends, 

Last week we shared the good news that the New Hampshire assisted suicide bill was tabled by a slim margin of a single vote. Today, an attempt was made to raise it from the table. I'm pleased to inform you that the attempt failed! In a sharp turn from the close vote of last week, 205 legislators voted against removing the bill from the table, to 169 votes in support. There remains the technical chance that the bill could be raised again but, given the decisive vote today, the likelihood of such an action is highly unlikely.    

I remain grateful to the wonderful advocates on the ground who continue to show up, write letters, meet with legislators, and do the work of educating their neighbors on this important issue. Thanks to their tireless efforts, New Hampshire remains safe today and likely for the rest of the session, from the dangerous and discriminatory policy of assisted suicide.

 

Onward!

Jessica Rodgers (pictured above)

Award Winning 2025 Documentary, "Disposable Humanity," Scores at 31st Slamdance Festival

Content provided by Ian McIntosh and Not Dead Yet 

https://notdeadyet.org/unstoppable-award-winning-2025-documentary-disposable-humanity-scores-at-31st-slamdance-festival

Out of nearly two thousand entries, 146 films were selected for the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival in Los Angeles. Disposable Humanity captured the Audience Award and received an Honorable Mention for the Slamdance Unstoppable Feature Grand Jury Prize.

In Disposable Humanity, a profound, unforgettable documentary of historic disability injustice, Cameron Mitchell and his family guide the viewer down corridors of Nazi era eugenical horror into a past that many of us think we know but don’t.

Tim Stainton, Director of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship once called Canada’s eugenical descent into assisted suicide and euthanasia, “the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazi’s program in Germany in the 1930s”.

For anyone engaged in fighting health disparities and disability discrimination today, it becomes plain by the end of the film that the present-day creep of assisted suicide laws in America has an essential part of its ancestry rooted in the international ideas, language and maps of Aktion T4 – the Euthanasia Program of yesterday.