The Oregon Compassion and Choices Assisted Suicide Enabling Act: C and C “stewarded” 88% of Oregon Assisted Suicides in 2008

The assisted suicide law called the Oregon Death with Dignity Act—as if dying without poisoning yourself to death isn’t dignified—should instead be called the Oregon Compassion and Choices Assisted Suicide Enabling Act. It turns out that representatives of the assisted suicide advocacy organization—formerly the Hemlock Society— are involved with the great majority of the assisted suicide deaths that take place in Oregon.

Physicians for Compassionate Care former president Kenneth Stevens, MD, has gone through the statistics and come up with some startling—and telling—numbers. From his report:

Officers of the assisted-suicide-proponent organization Compassion in Dying/Compassion and Choices of Oregon are authors of Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law and self-proclaim they are the stewards of the PAS law. They have reported that their organization has “participated in more than three/quarters of the state’s cases of doctor-assisted suicide.” (The Oregonian, March 10, 2005, “Pharmacy Board with review failed assisted suicide” by Don Colburn)

Here are the numbers, tallied by year, and note that last year C and C’s rate was a record was 88%:

1998 — 69%
1999 — 67%
2000 — 78%
2001 — 81%
2002 — 82%
2003 — 81%
2004 — 78%
2005 — 66%
2006 — 67%
2007 — 65%
2008 — 88%

Total 1998?2008 —75%

It is important to remember while pondering these figures, that C and C is a very ideological organization that has been using Oregon—and by extension, the people who died under the “C and C Assisted Suicide Enabling Act,” for political purposes in its national assisted suicide legalization advocacy campaigns. So the next time you hear one of its representatives soothingly assuring that everything is under control, realize that they are right—it is under their control. Or to paraphrase the opening of old TV show The Outer Limits : They control the horizontal, they control the vertical, they control almost all that you see and hear about assisted suicide in Oregon.