COLORADO
Legalized Assisted Suicide and Passed Expansions That Remove Safeguards
2024—Senate Bill 24-068 passed. It removes voter-approved safeguards, further violates patient autonomy and discriminates against those with depression and disabilities who are most likely to pay for these changes with their lives. Changes include:
Reduces the waiting period from 15 days to 7 days. This violates patient autonomy by removing the only right guaranteed in the original law—the right to change one’s mind.
Eliminates the waiting period if the patient is expected to die within 48 hours. Patients within a few days of death typically have loss of brain function and swallowing ability, making consent unethical and unlikely and ingestion dangerous. The determination that death is near is difficult for specialists, but the bill allows one practitioner without specialization and without a second opinion to provide immediate lethal drugs. This demonstrates reckless disregard for patients given the complexity and dangers of this situation.
Allows advanced practice nurse practitioners to determine eligibility and prescribe lethal drugs. No physicians need be involved in the process. There is no scientific data or plausible reason to eliminate the safeguards of time and expertise—the risk of harms for doing so outweigh any benefits.
2016—Colorado passed legalization of physician-assisted suicide: End-of-Life Options Act