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I wasn't aware that Oregon had a "death with dignity" program for terminally ill people. It was enacted in 1997! Do other states have similar ones? I'm a huge

I wasn't aware that Oregon had a "death with dignity" program for terminally ill people. It was enacted in 1997! Do other states have similar ones? I'm a huge proponent for assisted suicide in general, even if you're not terminally ill. Regardless, these types of laws are a step in the right direction.

AStonesThrow 1y ago
[dead]
altairprime 1y ago
Between the timber wars and assisted death, it was a hell of a decade. They introduced statewide vote by mail I believe around then as well.
bufordtwain 1y ago
Yes, other states have it you can Google for a list.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  Hah, yeah, I could. I guess it was more of an invitation for people to discuss specific state programs and their experience with them (e.g. if they had relatives who used it)
gadders 1y ago
I don't know why people are so for it. The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it.
- pseudosavant 1y ago
  The question of choice/agency is probably at the heart of the difference. One, the state is taking someone's life against their will. The other is allowing someone to exercise their own agency to end their own life.
- aradox66 1y ago
  It's a different chemical cocktail, but more importantly consenting to it makes a bit of a difference in terms of how it registers morally.
- maxsilver 1y ago
  > The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it. Because consent matters. Many things work this way, they're wonderful or useful or helpful when you request/consent to it, but are despicably evil when done against your will.
  - noworriesnate 1y ago
    Children are incapable of consent. In the same way, people who are having big mental burdens are not capable of consenting to this. It’s a system as ripe for abuse as allowing children to consent to sex. I’ve had my dark moments, but I learned to deal and I’m sooo glad I didn’t end it. You know, you always hear about people who survive a suicide attempt often find out after they’ve jumped that they really didn’t want to die! It’s an irreversible choice, and something about realizing that changes people.
    - qualeed 1y ago
      >You know, you always hear about people who survive a suicide attempt often find out after they’ve jumped that they really didn’t want to die You don't just walk into a building and say "I would like to die please" and then get assistance on the spot. The two people I know who chose assisted death both had to go through various evaluations (over a period of several months) to determine that they thoroughly understood the decision they were making and that they had the mental capacity to make the decision. The comparison to a child 'consenting' to sex is completely nonsensical.
      - noworriesnate 1y ago
        Of course that’s not how it works. People will doctor shop. If one doctor rejects them, they go to the next and learn the right things to say to get the doctor to say yes. It’s just ripe for abuse. What they really need is help, not death.
        qualeed 1y ago
- strongpigeon 1y ago
  > The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it. You seem to be saying that as this is inconsistent. I'm curious why do you think that is? Whether someone agrees to have something done to them or not is a crucial factor in whether doing said thing is OK.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  Well, the death penalty is certainly a different discussion since the government is deciding to take your life. I don't support it, personally. Assisted suicide, in my view, is more like an escape hatch for people who don't want to participate any longer regardless of how much "potential" they may have. Making it available for terminally ill patients is good, but it misses the mark for people who struggle with more "invisible" illnesses like ones in their own mind or lifelong ones like a physical deformity.
- Nextgrid 1y ago
  My understanding is that the death penalty process is kind of a hack job and can't be done properly because no medical personnel will participate in it due to the Hippocratic oath. This is not a concern in consensual euthanasia. There's also an issue with the death penalty process seemingly requiring suffering, as evidenced by the lack of use of inert gas which appears to be painless considering accidents with poorly-ventilated spaces where people unknowingly pass out (and sadly those who go help them suffer the same fate). Even in states where the "gas chamber" is a thing, cyanide is used instead of just inert gas despite it making the post-execution cleanup process safer (so would make sense even if you did not care one bit about the suffering of the condemned).
  - baseballdork 1y ago
    Even if the death penalty was perfectly humane, there are so many other considerations that this comparison is clearly in bad faith. The GP doesn't understand why the state murdering people is a different consideration entirely from doctor assisted suicide?
    - Nextgrid 1y ago
      Absolutely, I'm not defending the death penalty in any way. But even if you do support it, my response tries to bring up how bad and intentionally cruel the current implementation is.
    - gadders 1y ago
      The OP wants to know why the same process using the same drugs is described as full of suffering in terms of symptoms for criminals, but blissful when used for assisted suicide. (And I'm not in favour of the state killing criminals or terminally ill people).
      - the_af 1y ago
        But it's not "the state killing terminally ill people". It's terminally ill and suffering people asking for help to end their lives and their suffering. The situation is completely unlike the death penalty, where it's about punishment.
- noworriesnate 1y ago
  I think it should be an option for the terminally ill but nobody else. There are people who are suicidal who don’t feel they deserve help and feel that assisted suicide is an option for them. We should not give them that option. Instead, we should spend that effort as a society helping them deal / get better.
  - the_af 1y ago
    I don't think this option is given to people who feel suicidal, so that's a moot point. Also, people who find suicidal often will find a way, legal or illegal. This is about terminally ill people, and about not making things harder for them, or getting their loved ones in legal trouble.
- qualeed 1y ago
  >The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it. Yes, of course. This is a concept called "consent", and it drastically changes the context and morality of various situations.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  Is it unreasonable for you to imagine any of the following scenarios? * A person believes that choosing to die is different than having that forced upon you * A person disapproves of assisted suicide and capital punishment? * A person approves of assisted suicide and capital punishment? * The process is quite different for criminals vs voluntary medical participants? etc etc? Seems to me you're twisting things pretty hard to find a false equivalence.
  - gadders 1y ago
    I'm not convinced that the process is that different, medically.
    - the_af 1y ago
      But it demonstrably is. Unless you think medicine is just injecting stuff? How the health professional accompanies the subject is a major aspect of medicine. So some uncaring prison personnel carrying out an execution vs a caring health professional, a terrifying process vs acceptance/calm/accompanying is wildly different, re: "the medical process". A careful surgical procedure on a toenail is wildly different to someone torturing you by taking your toenail.
    - jvanderbot 1y ago
      Then perhaps you could accept one of the others as true or think of others?
- os2warpman 1y ago
  Because I am practically alone in having avoided addiction, felonies, poverty, becoming handicapped, and/or morbid disabling obesity over the course of my life I have become the "responsible adult" in my family. Over the last six years it has been my responsibility to oversee the end-of-life care for three people: my paternal grandfather and grandmother, and maternal grandmother. My grandfather died at home of congestive heart failure. He spent a week on hospice in a medical bed in the living room staring at the ceiling, barely conscious due to the morphine and pain, pissing and shitting himself, as he slowly suffocated to death. My paternal grandmother lingered for two weeks in the hospital due to an embolism after falling and breaking her hip. Again, two weeks bedridden staring at the ceiling barely conscious due to the morphine and pain, with a machine breathing for her, until diffusion/perfusion stopped enough that no mechanical or pharmaceutical intervention could oxygenate her blood enough and she died. My maternal grandmother was the worst. Having fought off COPD for the last 20 years it finally became too much. After a year of coughing fits that led to torn muscles and spine/rib fractures leading to her being in a near-constant state of opioid-induced stupor the oxygen and albuterol stopped working and she very slowly and painfully drowned to death. She had been aware of her impending death for about two years and constantly expressed her desire to die on her own terms, but she had made the mistake of moving into an assisted living facility. So she spent the last few years of her life in a recliner hooked up to oxygen as the albuterol treatments got more and more frequent until the point that she would have to wake up every couple of hours 24 hours a day to do them, with coughing fits between them to the point that she would paralyze herself due to neck or back pain and spend six weeks on pain killers, unable to urinate or defecate or dress or eat without assistance, as it became harder and harder to breathe until she mercifully slipped into unconsciousness and died. We already have medical aid in dying, it's called "giving a little more morphine every time the patient starts gurgling in order to 'soothe their pain'". In a just world the patient has the choice to accelerate the process. All men must die. I will not die suffocating to death as I stare at a blank ceiling, blasted out of my brains on drugs, while a TV blares in the background to cover up the sobs of my family. In my late sixties I am going to start going to the doctor complaining of back pain, stockpile enough Percocet to kill me, and when the time comes (with good fortune many many decades later) I am going to settle my accounts, write a note with some directions, have a party, and say goodbye. That's why I'm "for" MAID.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- InitialLastName 1y ago
  Me borrowing your car is also very different, morally speaking, depending on whether you agreed to it or not.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
It's had it ever since the Kevorkian blowup 35 years ago, I think. >Regardless, these types of laws are a step in the right direction. What direction would that be?
- hypeatei 1y ago
  > What direction would that be? Providing people with options on how/when they leave this world and making suicide less taboo. You could say most technically have this option already but I think it's more humane if we provide reliable methods to do so via medical professionals. Leaving it up to individuals can be messy and violent. On the cultural side, I guess I'd like to see less sanctioning of suicide so that we don't make people's lives more complicated for merely expressing their desire to do so (e.g. getting the police called and being held for days) All of that to say that death is sad regardless of what time you leave and I'm not advocating for people to do it. Just that we should have the option like any other healthcare service with guardrails of course.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    The status quo is that the people who are most able to avail themselves of non-medical means tend to be the ones least in need of it. A healthy, able-bodied person can pretty easily off themselves in all sorts of ways. A person no longer able to care for themselves will find it impossible unless they can somehow secure the cooperation of a helper.
    - ty6853 1y ago
      Non able bodied people can commit suicide via dehydration within a couple days (longer if they are healthy), provided they can avoid getting treated for it.
gusmally 1y ago
The NYT recently did an interesting review of Canada's program: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/magazine/maid-medical-assistance-dying-canada.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OE8.iv68.tijbQmKouiF1&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/magazine/maid-medical-ass...
- dralley 1y ago
  I read that article a few weeks back - it was a great read. Incredibly complex topic both legally and ethically, but I thought they did a good job with it.
- alexpotato 1y ago
  > Wonnacott had met Paula once before, and he found her to be a fairly accurate narrator of her own medical history. This line reminded me of a lecture from my Psych 101 class back in college: There are three "views" of ourselves 1. Reality 2. What we wish we were 3. Where we think we are If 2 and 3 match but are far from 1: we are happy but "delusional" If 1 and 3 match but we are far from 2: this is VERY often found in people who have depression. And, ideally for long term happiness, 1 and 3 are close together and 2 is a "reasonable" distance away or close to 1 and 3.

AStonesThrow 1y ago

[dead]

altairprime 1y ago

Between the timber wars and assisted death, it was a hell of a decade. They introduced statewide vote by mail I believe around then as well.

bufordtwain 1y ago

Yes, other states have it you can Google for a list.

hypeatei 1y ago
Hah, yeah, I could. I guess it was more of an invitation for people to discuss specific state programs and their experience with them (e.g. if they had relatives who used it)

gadders 1y ago

I don't know why people are so for it. The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it.

pseudosavant 1y ago
The question of choice/agency is probably at the heart of the difference. One, the state is taking someone's life against their will. The other is allowing someone to exercise their own agency to end their own life.
aradox66 1y ago
It's a different chemical cocktail, but more importantly consenting to it makes a bit of a difference in terms of how it registers morally.
maxsilver 1y ago
> The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it. Because consent matters. Many things work this way, they're wonderful or useful or helpful when you request/consent to it, but are despicably evil when done against your will.
- noworriesnate 1y ago
  Children are incapable of consent. In the same way, people who are having big mental burdens are not capable of consenting to this. It’s a system as ripe for abuse as allowing children to consent to sex. I’ve had my dark moments, but I learned to deal and I’m sooo glad I didn’t end it. You know, you always hear about people who survive a suicide attempt often find out after they’ve jumped that they really didn’t want to die! It’s an irreversible choice, and something about realizing that changes people.
  - qualeed 1y ago
    >You know, you always hear about people who survive a suicide attempt often find out after they’ve jumped that they really didn’t want to die You don't just walk into a building and say "I would like to die please" and then get assistance on the spot. The two people I know who chose assisted death both had to go through various evaluations (over a period of several months) to determine that they thoroughly understood the decision they were making and that they had the mental capacity to make the decision. The comparison to a child 'consenting' to sex is completely nonsensical.
    - noworriesnate 1y ago
      Of course that’s not how it works. People will doctor shop. If one doctor rejects them, they go to the next and learn the right things to say to get the doctor to say yes. It’s just ripe for abuse. What they really need is help, not death.
      - qualeed 1y ago
strongpigeon 1y ago
> The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it. You seem to be saying that as this is inconsistent. I'm curious why do you think that is? Whether someone agrees to have something done to them or not is a crucial factor in whether doing said thing is OK.
hypeatei 1y ago
Well, the death penalty is certainly a different discussion since the government is deciding to take your life. I don't support it, personally. Assisted suicide, in my view, is more like an escape hatch for people who don't want to participate any longer regardless of how much "potential" they may have. Making it available for terminally ill patients is good, but it misses the mark for people who struggle with more "invisible" illnesses like ones in their own mind or lifelong ones like a physical deformity.
Nextgrid 1y ago
My understanding is that the death penalty process is kind of a hack job and can't be done properly because no medical personnel will participate in it due to the Hippocratic oath. This is not a concern in consensual euthanasia. There's also an issue with the death penalty process seemingly requiring suffering, as evidenced by the lack of use of inert gas which appears to be painless considering accidents with poorly-ventilated spaces where people unknowingly pass out (and sadly those who go help them suffer the same fate). Even in states where the "gas chamber" is a thing, cyanide is used instead of just inert gas despite it making the post-execution cleanup process safer (so would make sense even if you did not care one bit about the suffering of the condemned).
- baseballdork 1y ago
  Even if the death penalty was perfectly humane, there are so many other considerations that this comparison is clearly in bad faith. The GP doesn't understand why the state murdering people is a different consideration entirely from doctor assisted suicide?
  - Nextgrid 1y ago
    Absolutely, I'm not defending the death penalty in any way. But even if you do support it, my response tries to bring up how bad and intentionally cruel the current implementation is.
  - gadders 1y ago
    The OP wants to know why the same process using the same drugs is described as full of suffering in terms of symptoms for criminals, but blissful when used for assisted suicide. (And I'm not in favour of the state killing criminals or terminally ill people).
    - the_af 1y ago
      But it's not "the state killing terminally ill people". It's terminally ill and suffering people asking for help to end their lives and their suffering. The situation is completely unlike the death penalty, where it's about punishment.
noworriesnate 1y ago
I think it should be an option for the terminally ill but nobody else. There are people who are suicidal who don’t feel they deserve help and feel that assisted suicide is an option for them. We should not give them that option. Instead, we should spend that effort as a society helping them deal / get better.
- the_af 1y ago
  I don't think this option is given to people who feel suicidal, so that's a moot point. Also, people who find suicidal often will find a way, legal or illegal. This is about terminally ill people, and about not making things harder for them, or getting their loved ones in legal trouble.
qualeed 1y ago
>The process is "cruel and unusual" when it's done to criminals but the same process is fine when you request it. Yes, of course. This is a concept called "consent", and it drastically changes the context and morality of various situations.
jvanderbot 1y ago
Is it unreasonable for you to imagine any of the following scenarios? * A person believes that choosing to die is different than having that forced upon you * A person disapproves of assisted suicide and capital punishment? * A person approves of assisted suicide and capital punishment? * The process is quite different for criminals vs voluntary medical participants? etc etc? Seems to me you're twisting things pretty hard to find a false equivalence.
- gadders 1y ago
  I'm not convinced that the process is that different, medically.
  - the_af 1y ago
    But it demonstrably is. Unless you think medicine is just injecting stuff? How the health professional accompanies the subject is a major aspect of medicine. So some uncaring prison personnel carrying out an execution vs a caring health professional, a terrifying process vs acceptance/calm/accompanying is wildly different, re: "the medical process". A careful surgical procedure on a toenail is wildly different to someone torturing you by taking your toenail.
  - jvanderbot 1y ago
    Then perhaps you could accept one of the others as true or think of others?
os2warpman 1y ago
Because I am practically alone in having avoided addiction, felonies, poverty, becoming handicapped, and/or morbid disabling obesity over the course of my life I have become the "responsible adult" in my family. Over the last six years it has been my responsibility to oversee the end-of-life care for three people: my paternal grandfather and grandmother, and maternal grandmother. My grandfather died at home of congestive heart failure. He spent a week on hospice in a medical bed in the living room staring at the ceiling, barely conscious due to the morphine and pain, pissing and shitting himself, as he slowly suffocated to death. My paternal grandmother lingered for two weeks in the hospital due to an embolism after falling and breaking her hip. Again, two weeks bedridden staring at the ceiling barely conscious due to the morphine and pain, with a machine breathing for her, until diffusion/perfusion stopped enough that no mechanical or pharmaceutical intervention could oxygenate her blood enough and she died. My maternal grandmother was the worst. Having fought off COPD for the last 20 years it finally became too much. After a year of coughing fits that led to torn muscles and spine/rib fractures leading to her being in a near-constant state of opioid-induced stupor the oxygen and albuterol stopped working and she very slowly and painfully drowned to death. She had been aware of her impending death for about two years and constantly expressed her desire to die on her own terms, but she had made the mistake of moving into an assisted living facility. So she spent the last few years of her life in a recliner hooked up to oxygen as the albuterol treatments got more and more frequent until the point that she would have to wake up every couple of hours 24 hours a day to do them, with coughing fits between them to the point that she would paralyze herself due to neck or back pain and spend six weeks on pain killers, unable to urinate or defecate or dress or eat without assistance, as it became harder and harder to breathe until she mercifully slipped into unconsciousness and died. We already have medical aid in dying, it's called "giving a little more morphine every time the patient starts gurgling in order to 'soothe their pain'". In a just world the patient has the choice to accelerate the process. All men must die. I will not die suffocating to death as I stare at a blank ceiling, blasted out of my brains on drugs, while a TV blares in the background to cover up the sobs of my family. In my late sixties I am going to start going to the doctor complaining of back pain, stockpile enough Percocet to kill me, and when the time comes (with good fortune many many decades later) I am going to settle my accounts, write a note with some directions, have a party, and say goodbye. That's why I'm "for" MAID.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
InitialLastName 1y ago
Me borrowing your car is also very different, morally speaking, depending on whether you agreed to it or not.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

It's had it ever since the Kevorkian blowup 35 years ago, I think. >Regardless, these types of laws are a step in the right direction. What direction would that be?

hypeatei 1y ago
> What direction would that be? Providing people with options on how/when they leave this world and making suicide less taboo. You could say most technically have this option already but I think it's more humane if we provide reliable methods to do so via medical professionals. Leaving it up to individuals can be messy and violent. On the cultural side, I guess I'd like to see less sanctioning of suicide so that we don't make people's lives more complicated for merely expressing their desire to do so (e.g. getting the police called and being held for days) All of that to say that death is sad regardless of what time you leave and I'm not advocating for people to do it. Just that we should have the option like any other healthcare service with guardrails of course.
- wat10000 1y ago
  The status quo is that the people who are most able to avail themselves of non-medical means tend to be the ones least in need of it. A healthy, able-bodied person can pretty easily off themselves in all sorts of ways. A person no longer able to care for themselves will find it impossible unless they can somehow secure the cooperation of a helper.
  - ty6853 1y ago
    Non able bodied people can commit suicide via dehydration within a couple days (longer if they are healthy), provided they can avoid getting treated for it.

gusmally 1y ago

The NYT recently did an interesting review of Canada's program: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/magazine/maid-medical-assistance-dying-canada.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OE8.iv68.tijbQmKouiF1&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/magazine/maid-medical-ass...

dralley 1y ago
I read that article a few weeks back - it was a great read. Incredibly complex topic both legally and ethically, but I thought they did a good job with it.
alexpotato 1y ago
> Wonnacott had met Paula once before, and he found her to be a fairly accurate narrator of her own medical history. This line reminded me of a lecture from my Psych 101 class back in college: There are three "views" of ourselves 1. Reality 2. What we wish we were 3. Where we think we are If 2 and 3 match but are far from 1: we are happy but "delusional" If 1 and 3 match but we are far from 2: this is VERY often found in people who have depression. And, ideally for long term happiness, 1 and 3 are close together and 2 is a "reasonable" distance away or close to 1 and 3.