Is Assisted Suicide as Peaceful, Dignified and Humane as Advertised?
In a word, no. But people want so badly to believe otherwise.
Trish Randall for American Thinker
Research assisted suicide, and you’ll see it characterized as peaceful, humane, and dignified. The implication is that a lethal prescription is more serene and uncomplicated than natural death. Readers’ comments often affirm belief that the laws provide such serene ends.
Reading the laws, I noticed that the text often specifies a peaceful, humane, dignified death — as if legislation could guarantee any experience being peaceful, dignified, or humane.
In Delaware, “this Act permits a terminally ill individual who is an adult resident of Delaware to request and self-administer medication to end the individual’s life in a humane and dignified manner.”
New Jersey’s law allows a patient “protected by appropriate safeguards, to obtain medication that the patient may choose to self-administer in order to bring about the patient’s humane and dignified death.”
Oregon requires the patient’s medical records document “(1) All oral requests by a patient for medication to end his or her life in a humane and dignified manner” and “(2) All written requests by a patient for medication to end his or her life in a humane and dignified manner.”
It’s not unusual that multiple states’ laws are similarly worded. Model legislation is circulated by various interest groups that promote certain policies. For a legislature amenable to the group’s goal, using an existing draft is easier than starting from scratch. It also goes the other way. Oregon, Washington, and Vermont contributed to the Death With Dignity webpage: “An end-of-life option that allows certain eligible individuals to legally request and obtain medications from their physician to end their life in a peaceful, humane, and dignified manner.”
The formula also appears in the format of requests for the lethal prescriptions. None of these laws is very long, so it’s noticeable how often the same wording appears. California words the written request this way: “I request that my attending physician prescribe an aid-in-dying drug that will end my life in a humane and dignified manner if I choose to take it.”
Colorado’s wording is virtually identical: “I request that my attending physician prescribe medical aid-in-dying medication that will end my life in a peaceful manner if I choose to take it.”
Oregon law includes this: “I request that my attending physician prescribe medication that will end my life in a humane and dignified manner.”
The written request conforming to wording specified in legislation has overtones of putting words in the patient’s mouth. I envision Bart Simpson incessantly writing, “My assisted suicide will be peaceful, dignified, and humane.”
Accompanying the belief that a bureaucratically authorized, medically facilitated demise is more serene than a natural death is widespread belief that the prescription is a pill. Assisted suicide advocacy groups, including My Right to Die and Exit International, refer to the lethal prescription as “the peaceful pill.” There’s also a book by that title.
But the actual lethal agent is a liquid mixture. Nor is there any assurance that the individual will peacefully become still, then quietly slide from unconsciousness to death.
Patient Rights Action provides a list of serious concernsabout assisted suicide. They note that the prescribed drug mixtures are, by definition, experimental. Medical ethics forbids intentionally lethal combinations to be tested on living humans.
The earliest U.S. assisted suicide patients received a barbiturate. Patients would scream from burning in the mouth and throat. Later, combinations of four or five drugs became common. Time to death ranges from 5 minutes to 7 days. Up to 10 percent of patients vomit; up to 4 percent regain consciousness.
Many people believe that the lethal prescription offers an alternative to years of dementia. Current laws require the patient requesting the lethal prescription to be of sound mind. On paper, this rules out assisted suicide to escape dementia already being experienced. Still, few suicide candidates are given a psychological evaluation for mental fitness. Even when evaluated, patients see professionals who don’t seek to treat depression or other mental health difficulties. Their mission is deciding if the patient is legally competent to choose death under the law. Seeing depression as a normal reaction to a terminal diagnosis, they may ignore depression influencing decision-making.
A 2025 article details families’ suffering associated with assisted suicides. One patient kept upright for “the required ten minutes” to prevent vomiting still suffered severe burning. One patient moaned and shook severely for 30 minutes while his daughter held him down. Another patient choked and coughed with every sip of the prescription. After 20 minutes of gasping, he passed out, but four hours later, he regained consciousness. After eight hours, still partly conscious, he wretched, then stopped breathing.
The most frequently reported reasons for assisted suicide include less ability to participate in enjoyable activities, loss of autonomy, and being a burden to one’s family. What’s left out is how this information is collected.
The patient’s death must be reported to the state within 30 days. Details are documented in forms submitted by prescribers and pharmacies.
Often, it’s not longstanding personal physicians, but professionals recommended by advocacy groups who prescribe the lethal mixture. Prescribers are rarely present at the death. In 2023, only 16 percent of patients died attended by the prescribing professional.
One Oregon physician wrote 84 of the 607 prescriptions in 2024. Since Oregon and Vermont allow non-residents to obtain lethal prescriptions, those patients are unlikely to have a longstanding relationship with the prescribing professional.
Forms, formats, and checklists aren’t limited to doctors’ workloads. There’s bureaucratic busywork for patients, with distractingly mundane overtones to the process. There are formats and timeframes for the request by word of mouth, plus two written requests. There may be requests to transfer medical records to the prescriber, and maybe a psychologist. There might be an appointment for a psych evaluation. Arrangements must be made for the pick-up or delivery, and storage, of a uniquely dangerous mixture.
It’s not surprising that patients seeking assisted suicide want to control details of the death and funeral. But this can complicate emotions for family members. For one family, helping to make arrangements aligned with their father’s wishes, with multiple changes to the details, caused frustration for his children. Another man altered plans so many times that his children lost their tempers with him the night before his appointment.
As someone approaches the end, isn’t it expected that some activities will cease, while needing physical assistance from loved ones? Especially with the shock of receiving a terminal diagnosis, such prospects may be daunting. But after diagnosis, there may be months when priorities and focus can change.
A patient arranging death by prescription will be spending a certain amount of time focused on paperwork in a format similar to so many of modern life’s mundane and slightly annoying tasks. These chores might be a real distraction from the opportunities for quiet contemplation and special moments with loved ones.
Kathryn Mannix, a U.K. doctor who has worked in hospice care for decades, says that death is often far less frightening and more peaceful than people generally expect. It’s quite sad that people seeking the promise of a serene and painless exit via assisted suicide might lose opportunities for meaningful connection and true serenity at the end.
Image: qimono via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
