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West Virginia amends its constitution to ban ‘assisted dying’
November 18, 2024
14 Reactions
Whilst much attention was taken earlier this month by the results and aftermath of the US presidential election, much less note was taken of the results of ballot initiative votes held in state elections. One such relevant to the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions was the passing of an amendment to the Constitution of West Virginia which expressly prohibited “the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of a person”.
Whilst those practices are already illegal in the State, the amendment was a proactive measure to ensure that medically assisted suicide does not one day become legal in West Virginia through a bill in the State legislature. West Virginia becomes the first American state to proactively protect all its citizens and medical practitioners and institutions from the dangerous trend of Euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) by a constitutional amendment.
This action particularly involves a rejection of the Oregon model of assisted suicide on which the proposed Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is based, claiming that in Oregon there have been no cases of abuse of the law and no widening of its initial, limited scope.
Both these claims are misleading. In terms of the scope of the law:
- In 2019, the Oregon Legislative Assembly expanded the State’s law by removing one of its purported “safeguards”, allowing those who procure assisted suicide to forego a 15-day waiting period before accessing lethal drugs (Washington State removed its 48-hour waiting period in 2023);
- In 2023, the legislature dropped another limitation to the law – the residency requirement (Vermont followed suit that same year);
- Assisted suicide in Oregon is ostensibly only for terminal illness – which is commonly understood to mean illnesses such as advanced cancer or heart disease – but in 2021 two patients with anorexia underwent assisted suicide after their physician deemed their condition to be “terminal”;
Other States using the Oregon model have gone further:
- allowing for ‘telemedicine’ requests for lethal drugs with a required physical examination to be conducted by a doctor other than the one prescribing them (Vermont, 2023);
- allowing nurses to prescribe lethal drugs (Hawaii and Washington State, 2023);
- reducing the time between two oral requests for assisted suicide (from 15 days to 2 days in California, 2022; from 15 days to 7 days in Washington State, 2023; and from 20 to 5 days in Hawaii, 2023).
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As for (further) abuses, an overview of practice in Oregon, including some case studies as well as statistical evidence, showed problems with doctor shopping, suspect coercion and lack of sufficient psychiatric evaluation.
More recently, a 25-year analysis of the Reports made by palliative care specialists Dr Ilora Finlay and Dr Claud Regnard found a reduction in the length of the average physician-patient relationship from 18 weeks in 2010 to 5 weeks in 2022, the a low proportion of patients referred for psychiatric assessment (1 percent), and an increasing trend of those citing fear of being a burden and financial concerns for opting to undergo assisted suicide.
There may be other more disturbing problems, but we cannot know due to the lack of transparency of Oregon’s system and consequent difficulty of determining how well it works. Even the Annual Reports published by the Oregon State Public Health Division every year on which the long-term analyses above are based constitute minimal data collection, requiring doctors to report any lethal drug prescriptions they make but without any enforcing penalties for those who fail to report, or monitoring of non-compliance or under-reporting. Since the information is voluntarily reported by doctors, it is only the most conscientious that do so, and the underlying data records are destroyed each year.
Also, worryingly, even this minimal data collection has declined, including in important areas. As Finlay and Regnard point out, between 2010 and 2022 there were complications in 11 percent those assisted suicides that were reported, but in 2022 the cases on which data complications-related data existed per se was only 26 percent.
Meanwhile, no information is collected from patients or their relatives, and there is no official means by which the public can complain about abuses of assisted suicide. There is no strong oversight of assisted suicide exercised by the state government. Little wonder that an editorial in The Oregonian in 2008 described assisted suicide in the State as “a system that seems rigged to avoid finding” abuses.
Despite this, what we do know about the Oregon system is extremely troubling. The action of West Virginia voters should be telling and instructive for UK legislators as Westminster prepares to debate the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday, November 29.
Do you trust the “rigorous safeguards” which prevent abuse of assisted dying laws?
This article has been republished with permission from the Anscombe Bioethics Centre.
David Albert Jones is the Director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, Professor of Bioethics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and Vice-Chair of the Ministry of Defence Research Ethics Committee.
Image: Bigstock
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David Page commented 2024-11-22 11:08:58 +1100Assisted dying has always been there, under the radar. I may have done that with my wife. I will never know. I made sure she wasn’t in pain. That’s why hospice at home is so important. In an institutional setting she would have died suffering.
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Juan Llor Baños commented 2024-11-21 00:16:00 +1100This article is worth spreading as much as possible!!
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mrscracker commented 2024-11-20 04:21:01 +1100Mr. Eric, I wish you a long & productive life. Ending life is not a very difficult thing to do & with our increasingly greying population I’m pretty sure the financial incentives to encourage that will grow.
It’s not so much about religion but the protection of conscience for healthcare professionals, pharmacists, etc. who would be forced into complicity.
West VA is a absolutely beautiful place & we’ve been blessed to have friends there to visit but historically it’s not really a conservative, GOP state. If you look at the history of Sen, Robert Byrd & others, it’s been more an old school, working class Democrat state. Even though those folks have largely moved on now to vote for Trump. -
Eric Krieg commented 2024-11-20 02:10:11 +1100Ms Cracker: I’m glad good conservative values (or perhaps weak wokism) have prospered the beautiful state of WV to make it thriving and growing. I’ll have to pray that refugees from blue states do not also bring leftist social poison. I have no intention to “unalive” myself in my present chapter of life – but I’m able to envision religionists stopping badly declined dying elderly me from “joining my parents and grandparents” rather than self funding my then torture on earth.
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mrscracker commented 2024-11-20 02:00:57 +1100Quite a few people actually are relocating & retiring to West VA these days, ever since Covid lockdowns & the ability to work remotely. And the increasing price of housing in the Washington DC area .Eastern West VA isn’t that far a commute from DC.
Mr. Eric, no one can stop you from suicide if you are really determined, but it’s the efforts to force others into being complicit in that which goes against the freedom of conscience. -
Eric Krieg commented 2024-11-20 01:12:29 +1100. . making mental note: don’t retire in WV
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Eric Krieg commented 2024-11-20 01:11:07 +1100One of my biggest fears in life is religionists (including those in the religion of woke) could force all my life’s savings to be chewed up keeping me suffering in a hell on earth. One of my constitutionally protected freedoms (like voting, speaking etc) should be the freedom to specify “this is where the end that awaits us all comes to me”
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mrscracker commented 2024-11-18 23:28:53 +1100Trotsky Lives, I believe any government can inflict suffering when it becomes intrusive and overbearing . Most people I know voted Republican because they were hoping for less over -regulation and intrusive behavior.
We shall see. -
mrscracker commented 2024-11-18 23:24:03 +1100Hello Mr. Fedders.
Don’t you think it’s a feature of our fallen human nature to suppose that suffering can be inflicted on those we believe deserving of it?
We experienced terrible flooding several ago and the opinion of some people on the the Left was that we deserved it because of the number of folk here working in the energy sector.
We were also disproportionately affected by Covid mortalities. One group took the stand that those who distrusted government health care, often people of colour who actually had good reason to distrust it, deserved to die.
Our charity and compassion for others didn’t shine in those moments. -
Emberson Fedders commented 2024-11-18 18:07:31 +1100No, but I think that many who voted for Trump think the suffering will be inflicted on the people who ‘deserve’ it.
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Trotsky Lives! commented 2024-11-18 17:18:15 +1100“Inflicting suffering seems to be the main priority of Republican administrations.” — On the face of it, this seems like an absurd comment. A Republican won the popular vote in the US, The Senate and House are dominated by Republicans. Are we to think that more than 50% of Americans are masochists?
But I admit to not being the brightest globe in the room. Perhaps there is something that I have missed. -
Emberson Fedders commented 2024-11-18 17:10:26 +1100Inflicting suffering seems to be the main priority of Republican administrations.
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Paul Bunyan commented 2024-11-18 16:33:10 +1100The most immediate effect of this amendment will be the fear of arrest and prosecution. Doctors and nurses will be afraid of giving too much analgesia, which means that many patients will be forced to die in pain and misery, unless they can find a doctor brave and compassionate enough to help.
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