Jane sought anorexia treatment in Colorado, was offered assisted suicide instead

A young woman with anorexia was offered assisted suicide rather than continued treatment in Colorado. A doctor hired to treat her told her he would "make an exception" for her to die under the state's assisted suicide law.

Key Takeaways:

• Jane Allen went to Colorado for anorexia treatment, but was offered assisted suicide instead.

• She wrote in a letter that she didn't want to die but was being coerced.

• Allen was given a cocktail of deadly drugs, but her father saved her after securing a guardianship order from a Colorado judge before she could take the pills.

• Allen died in 2024 from complications of anorexia.

• Her friend, Matt Vallière, who is also president of the Institute for Patients' Rights, said his group is filing a lawsuit to overturn the law legalizing assisted suicide in Colorado.

The Details:

Jane Allen's loved ones are sharing her story of being pressured into assisted suicide by her doctors after she sought treatment. Her friend Matt Vallière penned a recent op-ed for The Denver Post on the coercion Allen faced.

Allen was an occupational therapist for children and had been struggling with anorexia since she was a teenager. In 2018, she moved to Colorado Springs to receive treatment at an exclusive eating disorder clinic. She had been in and out of hospitals and residential treatment facilities, proving she was dedicated to defeating the disease.

Yet when she didn't improve in Colorado Springs, a doctor diagnosed her with "terminal anorexia." It was a huge blow, and in an e-mail, she wrote that the doctor said he “would ‘make an exception’ for me and ‘allow’ me to die, if that was my choice. It didn’t feel like my choice — I felt coerced and spent an incredibly agonizing months in an assisted living facility.” 

The clinic referred her to another doctor, who agreed to approve her for assisted suicide.

Her father, Dan Sescleifer, slammed the doctors for not protecting his daughter. "When you're anorexic, you're not getting proper nutrition, so you're not thinking straight. And she was also heavily medicated — probably over-medicated. That compounded everything," he said. "A person in that situation should never be allowed to make the decision to end their own life."

Still, Allen was given a cocktail of deadly drugs, only for her father to save her just in time. He was able to get a guardianship order from a Colorado judge before she could take the pills, and her life was saved.

After that, she began fighting for her own life... and the anorexia clinic dropped her as a patient. She said:

I ate just enough to not die right away. And then I ate more. I weaned off the morphine and all the other hospice drugs that kept me in such a fog. I was getting better, and then I was told that I was too much of a liability and dropped from the [boutique] clinic.

I moved from Colorado to Oregon. I have a job that I love, a new puppy, and a great group of friends. I’m able to fuel my body to hike and do the things I love. I’m repairing my relationship with my family, and I have a great therapist who is helping me process all of this. Things obviously aren’t perfect, and I still have hard days. But I also have balance, and flexibility, and a life that is so much more than I was told would ever be possible for me.

Unfortunately, 20 years of anorexia had taken a toll on her body, and she died of complications from the disease in 2024. "To this day, I wonder whether the months of treatment lost during Jane’s detour into 'terminal anorexia' care worsened her condition, whether she could still be with us today, doing all the good," Vallière, wrote for the Denver Post. "We’ll never know."

Zoom Out:

Disturbingly, Allen is not alone. In Colorado, 510 people — a record number — were given prescriptions for assisted suicide drugs in 2024, solely due to dietary conditions like anorexia. At least 18 were approved due to "severe protein calorie malnutrition," which could be caused by anorexia and eating disorders, as well as cancer, HIV, and intestinal diseases.

Vallière, who is also president of the Institute for Patients' Rights, said his group is filing a lawsuit to overturn the law legalizing assisted suicide in Colorado. "Most people in Colorado would be appalled to learn that young people with anorexia, like Jane, are being told their case is hopeless and receiving lethal drugs," he said. "Yet she received suicide drugs anyway at the age of 28 through medical professionals who had given up on her and a system that failed to protect her due to assisted suicide public policy."

He further criticized assisted suicide laws for targeting vulnerable people, often with disabilities, towards death rather than treatment. "Assisted suicide laws are engineered to operate fast and loose," he continued. "We have to ask ourselves as a society: how many coerced tragedies are we willing to accept for the sake of this supposed autonomy?"

Another woman signing onto the lawsuit is Mary Grossman, a survivor of anorexia and depression; she said she is terrified that, should her disease recur, she will end up being pressured to die as Allen was.

"If I had been offered life-ending drugs during my hospitalizations, I would have accepted them," she said in the lawsuit. "At the time, my judgment was clouded by my illness — I was trying to die through my anorexia."

Grossman is not wrong to have that fear; Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani, a registered dietician in Colorado, is known as the person who coined the phrase "terminal anorexia," and has admitted to giving her anorexia patients assisted suicide drugs.

The Bottom Line:

Assisted suicide is dangerous and puts vulnerable people at risk, including those struggling with mental illness, poverty, and disability.