On Feb. 27, the first state to legalize assisted suicide announced that it will start funding suicides for terminally ill poor people under the state’s Medicaid program. Although Congress last year forbade the use of federal tax dollars for Medicaid assisted suicides, Oregon’s Health Services Commission said that the state would spend its own taxpayers’ monies to cover what it…
There is a certain bureaucratic crispness to the report issued Feb. 17 by Oregon’s Health Division. In 15 of the 29,000 deaths reported in the state last year, the cause of death was “drug overdose, legally prescribed.” Each of the 15 had filled out a simple, one-page form titled “Request for medication to end my life in a humane and…
On Nov. 5, Washington State residents went to the polls and voted against making their state the first place in the U.S. where it is legal for doctors to kill suffering people who want to die. Even apart from the outcome of that state’s much talked-about Initiative 119, it has become clear in the last year that Americans are at…