Healthy woman died by assisted suicide in Oregon after faking doctor and diagnosis

The anti-assisted suicide group Aging With Dignity has released a short film exposing the tragic death of 31-year-old Eileen Mihich, who was able to undergo assisted suicide in Oregon by faking a diagnosis, a doctor, and a prescription. Her diagnosis, her residency, and the medical license of the doctor who allegedly prescribed the lethal drugs were not verified.

Key Takeaways:

• In the short film, Mihich's aunt spoke to Aging With Dignity about her niece's assisted suicide.

• Mihich was raised by two parents who both struggled with mental illness and who abused her throughout her childhood, including sexual abuse and neglect.

• She struggled with mental illness and had considered traveling to be killed in the Netherlands.

• Mihich was able to fake paperwork from a fake California doctor, provide it to a pharmacist in Washington who supplied her with the legal drugs, and then take the drugs home with her to Oregon, where she took them and died in a hotel room.

• Despite not having any physical illness, not being a resident of Oregon, and not undergoing a waiting period, Mihich was able to be killed, even though she repeatedly admitted that she didn't actually want to die.

The Details:

In the film, "The Tragedy of Eileen Mihich," Mihich's aunt (whose name was not revealed) spoke about Mihich's tragic life and upbringing. "I'm Eileen's aunt, the aunt that she was closest to; she showed up on my doorstep many times over the years," she began. "Eileen was born to two mentally ill people who are both abusive in different ways. Her father was sexually abusive, and her mother was mentally and somewhat physically abusive and negligent, so she had a very, very sad origin. She was born in the Antelope Valley in California and spent a little time there. Then she moved to Bakersfield. She had a hard time there."

The family lived in a bad neighborhood where Mihich was bullied, although her aunt said she remained a smart, empathetic, caring person. Yet she still struggled; clips from Mihich's social media pages showed her repeatedly making cries for help and looking to heal from her past traumas and abuses. Ultimately, she became suicidal.

"She was going to school for a while, doing well," her aunt said. "Tried different jobs, and and then I don't know what the sequence of events were that kind of catapulted her into this abyss — you know, this feeling that she couldn't go on."

Mihich even struggled with basic things like hygiene. "She would show up on my doorstep, and she had not bathed in I don't know how long," she said. "I would have to force her to bathe, and I still have a bar of soap of hers in my bathroom, actually. And I would just I would get exasperated with her. She just didn't know any better. She really didn't. she wasn't raised with any, like, how do you properly take care of yourself, like, you don't steal. You clean up after yourself. She wasn't raised with any of those, so she was ultimately just like a child, like her mother."

How a Lonely 31 Year Old Woman Received Lethal Medication | Eileen's Story

Mihich's aunt said she tried to get her niece help, but it was incredibly difficult. "They created this system here a few years ago just for mental health emergencies," she said. "And I called that, and they really didn't do anything. I feel it's a shame that some people can't be committed at least on a temporary basis. I pleaded with her to take medication, but she just didn't believe — she was just anti-psychiatry. It was more like, if I could just get this all this healing... all this psychic healing."

At this point, Mihich reportedly became suicidal. She bought a gun, but was unable to go through with shooting herself, so instead, she decided to try "voluntary stopping eating and drinking" (VSED). But when she couldn't keep it up for more than a few days, she considered traveling to the Netherlands to undergo assisted suicide, knowing the country allows it solely for mental illness. When that plan didn't work out, Mihich began looking somewhere closer to home to die.

She successfully gained access to lethal drugs by faking a doctor, a diagnosis, and a prescription. She then died alone in a hotel room.

Failure to verify information

Washington's Death with Dignity Act requires that a person who receives assisted suicide must be 18 years of age or older, must be diagnosed with an incurable and irreversible disease that will cause death within six months, and must be a Washington resident.

Mihich forged documents from California claiming she had Stage 4 cervical cancer. No one from Washington made any effort to confirm if the diagnosis was accurate. Mihich was seemingly aided in her quest to die by a so-called "death doula" service. As Aging with Dignity explained, Mihich "was able to successfully impersonate a California physician, fill out Washington’s written request and compliance forms, forge a prescription, and submit it to a Washington pharmacist who dispensed the lethal medication. Nobody verified the impersonated doctor’s medical licensure for Washington, Eileen’s fake medical diagnosis of State 4 cervical cancer, her mental competence, or even her required Washington state residency.  Eileen returned to Oregon with the lethal medication and ended her life on or about March 8th in a room at the Hotel Deluxe in Portland."

Michich's aunt believes the pharmacist who gave her the drugs "was extremely negligent and lax." She said, "I don't think it was like a deliberate thing, but he should be held accountable."

"Eileen was able to fraudulently obtain some lethal medications through the Death with Dignity Act, which was designed for people who are within six months of dying from a terminal illness," her aunt said. "How she got access to those drugs is a little bit mystifying to us still, because the law is supposed to be very strict. She just slid through the cracks, you know? They did not verify that she was terminally ill, that she was a resident of Washington state. They did not have two doctors' documents you can sign off on this. They did not have a waiting period. It just should not have happened if it was as strict as it was intended to be... as it was written to be."

She added:

I reached out to Death With Dignity, and they did not respond in a way that I thought was human. They didn't want to take any accountability. They didn't want to be sobered by this... like, they should have been shocked. They should have responded in such a way that this was unacceptable, and they needed to try to do something to tighten this so it doesn't happen in the future. And there needs to be an investigation as to any other actors who were involved with this that might have played a role. If there were people who are involved in the right death movement who believe it should be liberalized for mental illness, a beautiful, bright young woman just is gone. Her life's just gone, and because of the best intentions of this policy, that started out with the best intentions. As they say, the road to hell is paved with the best intentions, but this is what happened. This needs to be looked at. It needs to be scrutinized, needs to be brought out into the open, so somebody else doesn't have to lose a precious person.

The Bottom Line:

In every jurisdiction where it has been legalized, assisted suicide inevitably gets expanded further and further until anyone can die. Safeguards continue to disappear despite the promises made by pro-assisted death legislators.

While most assisted death laws don't allow a person to die by assisted suicide or euthanasia solely based on a mental health diagnosis, those laws failed to protect Mihich as they should have. The devaluing of human life has continued to increase to the point that even those who profess to be in the business of healing and helping — like medical professionals and pharmacists — seem unwilling to take the steps necessary to protect vulnerable people.