This op-ed by Cornerstone’s Shannon McGinley was originally published in the New Hampshire Journal on 3/15/2025.
HB 254, relative to end of life options, is out of committee and is headed to full House consideration this week. You could call this the bill that never dies as various iterations of “medical aid in dying” (MAID) bills are introduced, and have, thankfully, failed each year.
First, let’s call this what it is – physician assisted suicide (PAS). The path to accepting the unthinkable often runs through digestible terminology, and that is exactly how PAS has been softened to become “medical aid in dying”. This is like adding a sweet coating to a poison pill. No matter how you phrase it, this is about the forcible termination of human life with the willing participation and enablement of a physician.
Rather than acknowledging this harsh and inhuman reality, those who support physician assisted suicide paint an appealing picture of self-determination and individual rights. The act itself is romanticized – soft music, loved ones in attendance, and a graceful letting go of pain and suffering, all on the individual’s own terms. This idealized image, like its softened label, masks the harsh realities of what actually happens when the state gets into the business of sanctioning and enabling suicide.
Rather than being about individual freedom, PAS is about the government establishing the parameters of what defines a life not worth living, including providing the mechanism of death. Given a choice between continuing to invest in costly care for the ill or encouraging patients to die, we’re already seeing what inevitably happens. In Oregon and Washington, where PAS has been legal for over 15 years, free choice and self-determination have been dramatically diminished. In Washington, the patient can be “helped” by an heir to sign up for and to actually administer their lethal medication. In Oregon, there are documented instances of Medicaid cancer patients being denied approval for treatment, but told their end of life care, including assisted suicide, would be covered by their health insurance. In Canada, disability advocates are raising the alarm in the wake of added “Track 2” “MAID” provisions that encourage physicians to approve assisted suicide requests of non-terminally ill individuals with disabilities among other conditions, arguing that the rapidly rising numbers of the disabled in Canada whose lives are being ended under Track 2 is, in fact, eugenics.
While PAS may be a tempting and cost-effective funnel to hasten the end of life, it flies in the face of a real expansion of free-market healthcare options that give patients access to quality palliative care, pain management, and alternative treatments. We’re already seeing that putting the government in control of our healthcare leads to less, not more choice.
Moreover, PAS is simply incompatible with healthcare. The American Medical Association (AMA) itself points out the inherent conflict PAS poses for our healthcare system and providers, stating this in their medical code of ethics: “Physician assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” The venerated Hippocratic Oath, dating from the first century B.C., itself addresses PAS, “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.”
Humanity is a complex and emotional creation. Deciding to end one’s life, an absolute and irrevocable act, cannot be treated as a purely rational and dispassionate decision or one free from influence or coercion. By treating suicide as “normal” for certain groups (i.e. the disabled or seriously ill), but as a crisis for others, we set up a glaring contradiction. When are suicidal thoughts a reason for intervention and support, and when are they something to be encouraged and facilitated? With the slippery slope of eligibility in the U.S. and internationally expanding to “mental” health and the disabled, the very idea that suicidal thoughts are a cry for help may be turned on its head in favor of self-extinction for the greater good.
Let’s be honest. Physician assisted suicide, by any name, should alarm us all. This is not about personal liberty, but a tragic path to less choice and more government control ultimately leading to unnecessary and premature death. In New Hampshire, as has been demonstrated in the U.S. and abroad, opening the door to assisted suicide will provide the pathway the state needs to eliminate the most inconvenient and vulnerable members of our society in the name of “compassion.” Let’s keep that door shut.
