Assisted Suicide as the Next Roe v. Wade: Time to Pay Attention
by Jacqueline Harvey Abernathy, Ph.D. MSSW
Those committed to protecting human life at all ages celebrated the fall of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 2022, after 49 years of legalized lethal violence claiming millions of babies across the United States. The sheer carnage of universal access to abortion in every state demanded pro-lifers’ attention. Yet another form of killing, assisted suicide is slowly gaining acceptance. What was once considered a non-viable threat because of bi-partisan opposition has become a reality in 11 U.S. states. .
There are countless parallels between the euthanasia lobby’s landmark court cases and those that validated abortion (Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton) and later re-validated abortion in the first trimester but empowered state regulation of it (Planned Parenthood v. Casey). When pro-lifers lost their attempt to overturn Roe but were given the green light to regulate it at the state level, they did so promptly and thoroughly.
The euthanasia lobby is finally gaining momentum, but the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) can instantaneously change that. The likelihood of it prevailing in the present court is slim, but divisive issues among states (abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment) seem to end up settled by SCOTUS inevitably. Furthermore, the court’s makeup could shift by the time a case can be made.
Rachel MacNair and author Jacqueline Abernathy, University Faculty for Life conference, 2024
Historically at the Supreme Court, the euthanasia lobby (led by Compassion & Choices in Dying, formerly the Hemlock Society) has both failed and prevailed. In 1997’s Washington v. Glucksburg attempt to unilaterally strike down assisted suicide prohibitions enacted by the citizens — imposing their will on the unwilling nation — establishing a constitutional right to assisted suicide would have succeeded had SCOTUS respected the precedent they concocted that supposedly imbued a right to abortion. Unlike with abortion, SCOTUS was not comfortable nullifying all state laws against assisted suicide, so the euthanasia lobby’s case surprisingly (but fortunately) didn’t become a second Roe v. Wade.
No additional states had been reformed by 2006 when the Supreme Court handed the suicide lobby a victory with Gonzales v. Oregon by ensuring states access to the lethal poison prescribed in assisted suicides that execute patients (the same drugs are used in capital punishment to execute condemned criminals). At this point, Oregon’s law had been enforced for 12 years and was reaffirmed in the highest court nearly a decade earlier.
It would be another two years before Washington joined Oregon by ballot initiative in 2008. In the first 15 years, the number of states with assisted suicide increased to a total of three due to judicial activism in Montana in 2009. 2009’s Baxter v. Montana made it to that state’s highest court and has not been successfully answered by state lawmakers despite attempts every session to overrule it and reaffirm protections for humans at the end of life. The assisted suicide lobby has persistently and now successfully passed bills through state legislatures.
Vermont became the first state legislature to pass an assisted suicide bill in 2013, the only bill of 177 proposed up to that date to ever see the governor’s desk. This was, sadly, the first of many successful bills to follow in other states just 2 years later.
October of 2014 marked a significant shift in public opinion on assisted suicide, which some experts consider the beginning of the end for holding back the tide when it came to state assisted suicide bills gaining political viability. A national PR campaign highlighted the tragic case of Brittany Maynard, a young newlywed with terminal brain cancer who moved from California to Oregon to obtain a legal prescription of lethal drugs and kill herself on her chosen date that November. Maynard posed for the cover of People magazine, and Compassion & Choices (C&C) enabled caring strangers to sign her sympathy card not knowing their names were being added to the C&C mailing list and exploited for petitions in favor of assisted suicide for their respective state.
Polling that followed that campaign showed a significant increase in public opinion favoring legal euthanasia. The next year, a second state succeeded in passing an assisted suicide bill. The 2015 California Assembly initially rejected the first proposal, SB 128, but euthanasia lobbyists and their allies abused a special session intended for transportation issues in order to bypass committee opposition and full legislative scrutiny such as the hearings and debates that destroyed SB 128. Despite an outcry to then-Governor Jerry Brown begging him to veto legitimate bill ABX2-15, it became law in September 2015.
Rachel MacNair and Jacqueline Abernathy, University Faculty for Life conference, 2014
For political scientists, California is a leader in policy innovation, an early adopter of progressive legislation that laggard states later adopt, either after the majority of other states have followed suit or when federal powers like Congress or SCOTUS have intervened. Colorado also became an early adopter of legalized killing in 2016, much like it was the first state to legalize abortion before Roe. Hawaii ushered in assisted suicide in 2018, New Jersey and Maine in 2019, and the latest state added to this roster is New Mexico in 2021.
Fortunately, Democratic Governor John Carney Jr. vetoed HB 140 on September 20, 2024, the first of a decade of assisted suicide bills to finally pass the Delaware legislature. Otherwise, the total number of states with legal assisted suicide would be 12, not 11.
Governor Carney represents a small faction of euthanasia opponents in a Democratic party that has essentially championed assisted suicide as the logical extension of someone’s right to choose. After all, if bodily autonomy justifies killing someone else, one’s own child, for inhabiting their body, surely they have the autonomy to kill their body also.
Growing social acceptance in general, coupled with the issue of settling down party lines, means bills introduced in statehouses with a sufficient Democrat supermajority are passing assisted suicide bills at an exponential rate, often with little Republican resistance. Though Republican lawmakers lead the opposition, they are likely to break rank, abstain, or be absent from voting on assisted suicide bills when they don’t wish to answer for supporting or rejecting these proposals.
The heroic work of state-level coalitions is all that holds back legalized euthanasia and liberalized expansion bills year after year There’s an urgent need for yet more of such work.
States with sufficient Republican majorities to protect the unborn are not vulnerable to assisted suicide bills, but they fail to acknowledge that growing acceptance and legalization by other states often leads to SCOTUS which could, like with Roe, unilaterally and immediately strike down laws protecting the vulnerable from assisted suicide in their state.
Highly polarized social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage that segregate states into two factions tend to be resolved by constitutional challenges under the 14th Amendment. A claim could be made against state assisted suicide prohibitions that inequitable access to euthanasia available to residents of other states affronts the plaintiff’s rights to equal protection afforded to them as a U.S. citizen.
This was attempted shortly after Oregon legalized assisted suicide and its constitutionality was ruled upon by the high court in Washington v Glucksberg. Justices stopped short of striking down state laws against assisted suicide by declaring it a constitutional right, but this reflected the climate during a much different time. Only one state sanctioned assisted suicide, public opinion in favor of euthanasia was much lower, and the issue had no ideological bias. Now we have states embracing legal euthanasia year after year, supported by a well-funded and powerful national interest group that easily overwhelms the utmost heroics from grassroots activists fighting back state-by-state.
Judicial activism is a major strategy for vacating and expanding assisted suicide laws nationwide. One common expansion tactic in states with legal assisted suicide still immediately threatens the lives of those in states where assisted suicide is still illegal. New Jersey courts just refused petitioners from out-of-state who challenged the assisted suicide law’s prohibition of services beyond New Jersey residents.
Two states reformed their laws to remove residency requirements, effectively sanctioning suicide tourism. Only thanks to passionate testimony in Colorado did the recent SB 68 have this amendment omitted before it expanded its assisted suicide law to cut the waiting period in half and decrease qualifications to allow non-physicians to prescribe lethal doses of barbiturates.
Even if assisted suicide is not legal in someone’s home state and the political climate makes this unlikely, their neighbors are still at risk. Like Roe, only one plaintiff needs to convince a judge in their state, or a majority of SCOTUS justices in Washington, D.C.
It took decades and millions of dead children before Roe was reversed. We must not allow such a travesty to happen again.
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For more of our posts focused on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Testimony Opposing the End-of-Life Options Act (Maryland)
Beneath Layers of Lies: The Surge in Efforts to Legalize Euthanasia
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Will I be Treated the Same Way Now?
The Danger of Coerced Euthanasia: Questions to Ask
When people complain that if their state still forbids MAID, they are burdened with going to (or bringing their relatives to) another state to get killed, why don’t we point out that in states with MAID, people who want to live until their body dies naturally are burdened with trying to find caregivers and care facilities that they can trust not to present them with fatal prescriptions? Do not many seek care in other states? At least one woman in Canada, when told to die, went to the US and found treatment in Maryland that put her cancer in remission.
Also, how about sick and disabled people from MAID states and countries testifying about the difficulties they face trying to ward off death-hastening? Including those who moved to avoid it.
Examples of people wanting to LIVE so much that they move across state or international borders could illustrate that, contrary to what the media and popular culture say, some people DO want to live until their body dies naturally, even if in “condemning” conditions.
There are fewer and fewer places to escape to.