A Minnesota man and two doctors have filed a federal lawsuit insisting the man should be allowed to access assisted suicide in Colorado despite not being a state resident.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- The plaintiff physicians who offer assisted suicide in Colorado want to be able to offer it to out-of-state residents; the plaintiff patient from Minnesota, Jeff McComas, hopes the case will pressure his own state to legalize assisted suicide.
- They argue that Colorado’s law violates the U.S. Constitution in two different ways.
- McComas believes assisted suicide is a pain-free way to die; research indicates otherwise.
- The drugs most often used for assisted suicide have not been tested for efficacy or safety for such a purpose.
THE DETAILS:
Jeff McComas, 55, of Woodbury, Minnesota, was diagnosed with stage 4 intestinal cancer in January 2023, according to People Magazine. He underwent chemotherapy, but doctors said his condition is “terminal.”
“The news came as a shock, and my family and I were in a state of disbelief. We have gone from shock to denial and anger, to negotiating, and finally to acceptance,” he said in a statement. “While the side effects of cancer and its treatments can be burdensome, I fight through them, try not to complain and make the best of my time.”
He added, “I don’t want a long, drawn-out end. I didn’t pick this road, but I’m on it, and I want control in deciding when I’ve suffered enough.”
McComas wants the option to access assisted suicide, Colorado law restricts this to state residents; it is not legal for a Colorado doctor to prescribe a deadly drug cocktail to patients in Minnesota.
In May, the pro-assisted suicide group Compassion and Choices filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of McComas and two Colorado doctors — Dr. Barbara Morris and Dr. Jennifer Harbert. The plaintiffs argue:
- Colorado’s End-of-Life Options Act violates the U.S. Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause that “prohibits State officials from restricting non-resident visitors’ access to medical care within its borders absent a substantial State interest and restrictions narrowly tailored to those interests.”
- The law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits state laws that discriminate against interstate commerce by preventing providers from providing specific and appropriate medical services to persons who are non-Colorado residents.
The lawsuit seeks to force Colorado to allow out-of-state persons to travel to the state to die. Both Morris and Harbert are actively prescribing deadly drugs to their patients with the intent of causing death, and claim that their ‘services’ are frequently sought by out-of-state residents.
They label suicide as “care” and argue that “all” patients, regardless of what state they live in, should be able to travel to Colorado to pay them to prescribe them deadly drugs that the patient can take on their own at any time or never at all. One in three never takes the drugs prescribed to them.
Colorado appears to be the state closest to McComas that has legalized assisted death. However, Oregon and Vermont both allow assisted suicide for out-of-state patients, meaning McComas could travel to either of those states to die. However, his primary goal for the lawsuit is to get assisted suicide legalized in Minnesota.
“If the end is here, I’m of the mindset that it is better a day too soon than a week too late,” McComas said. “I need to be allowed to pick the day and manner of my choosing, and have my wife and children at my side. I will not slowly, painfully, inexorably pass away. I will be in charge of my own passing. I’m willing to do what it takes and travel, but I’d much prefer to die painlessly in our home in Minnesota.”
ZOOM IN:
Colorado defines “terminal illness” as “an incurable and irreversible illness that will, within reasonable medical judgment, result in death.” The Colorado End-of-Life Options Act states that anyone with this type of illness who has a prognosis of six months or less to live can access assisted suicide.
But its broad definition opens the door for individuals with chronic illness and disabilities to choose assisted suicide, even if death is not imminent unless they cease treatment. For many chronic conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, stopping treatments could change the person’s prognosis drastically.
If Colorado is forced to become a suicide destination, this could mean anyone with a chronic illness that could cause death in six months without treatment could travel there to die.
REALITY CHECK:
“As the law is currently written, I cannot provide the same medical care that I deem appropriate to non-Colorado residents,” said Harbert. “I am simply saying that all the patients I treat in Colorado should have access to the same care.”
But she isn’t offering a form of specialty care or experimental care that isn’t accessible elsewhere; she is offering drugs to kill people.
And despite McComas’ impressions, assisted suicide is not necessarily without suffering. An annual report by the Oregon Health Authority on its “Death with Dignity” assisted suicide scheme shows that since assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon in 1999, the drugs utilized for it have changed repeatedly. A study published in the British Medical Bulletin found that patients prescribed drugs for assisted suicide are at risk of a “distressing death.”
Not so peaceful:
- It is unknown if a patient can communicate if he or she is suffering or how long it may take to die.
- A patient may drown to death after taking a paralytic drug.
- An Anaesthesia medical journal study found that long, painful deaths from assisted suicide and euthanasia are alarmingly common; a third of patients took 30 hours to die, while four percent took seven days to die.
- Experiments with assisted suicide and euthanasia revealed that with one assisted death drug cocktail is allegedly “burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.”
It is unclear which medications Colorado has approved for use in assisted suicide, and the online prescription forms provided do not list options for the drugs. This could mean that, like New York, Colorado may allow the Department of Health, individual doctors, and participating pharmacies to determine what life-ending mixtures of medications would be used.
Since 2013, Oregon has been using varying drug combinations meant to induce drowsiness and other symptoms to cause death, most commonly diazepam, which causes sedation; digoxin, which slows or stops the heart and is used in certain methods of abortion; morphine, an opioid; phenobarbital, and amitriptyline, an antidepressant. But researchers have concluded:
Drugs used for medical purposes are required to undergo a stringent approval process in order to assess efficacy and safety. But the drugs being used for ‘assisted dying’ have not undergone such process; the safety and effectiveness of previous and current combinations of lethal drugs is largely unknown.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
McComas has been sold the idea that suicide by prescription is painless and will free him from suffering.
Pro-assisted death attorneys and doctors who stand to profit are exploiting his suffering to force states that have legalized assisted suicide for residents to also kill non-residents, expanding the deadly grip of assisted dying and putting the pressure on additional states to legalize assisted death.
