Nearly 200 People in New Mexico Received Lethal Prescriptions for Assisted Suicide Last Year

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, , , , ,

Government data shows healthcare providers in New Mexico prescribed lethal drugs to 170 people last year under the state’s End-of-Life Options Act.

New Mexico legalized assisted suicide in 2021, and at the time the law was considered one of the worst of its kind. The law lets non-physicians like advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants prescribe assisted suicide drugs, and it does not require patients to see a mental health professional before ending their lives.

New Mexico’s 2025 assisted suicide report shows 170 people received lethal prescriptions last year. All of those prescriptions came from 26 healthcare providers in the state.

The report does not reveal how many people may have traveled to New Mexico for assisted suicide, and it does not provide details about government oversight to ensure healthcare providers complied with the law.

Experience has shown again and again that assisted suicide does not help people who are sick and dying.

Oregon first allowed assisted suicide in 1998, and official state reports have shown for years that the reasons people give most often for wanting to end their lives are loss of autonomy, decreasing ability to participate in activities that make life enjoyable, and loss of dignity.

Most patients do not express concerns about pain. They are lonely, and they feel like they are losing control because of their illnesses. These patients need counseling and support — not a prescription for deadly drugs.

That is part of the reason why Family Council has worked hard to block assisted suicide legislation in Arkansas.

In 2019 and 2021, Arkansas lawmakers wisely rejected very bad end-of-life laws that were flawed and fundamentally disrespected the right to life. Family Council worked closely with our friends in the legislature to stop these proposals.

Being pro-life means respecting innocent human life from conception until natural death. Just like abortion, euthanasia and assisted-suicide are murder, and they violate the sanctity of human life.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Colorado’s Assisted Suicide Reports Show Incomplete Medical Data, Lack of Mental Health Evaluations

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, , , , ,

Public health data from Colorado shows that patients approved for assisted suicide likely are not being screened by mental health experts, and the assisted suicide reports that doctors submit to the State are sometimes incomplete.

Colorado legalized assisted suicide under its 2016 End-of-Life Options Act. Since then, the State has recorded nearly 2,600 prescriptions for lethal drugs under the law.

Assisted suicide’s supporters have claimed the law contains strong safeguards to protect vulnerable patients, but statistical data from the State of Colorado raises questions about whether that really is the case.

For example, last year 580 patients were approved for assisted suicide in Colorado. Out of all of those patients, only one reportedly was referred to a mental health professional for evaluation. That’s due in part to the fact that mental health evaluations are optional in Colorado. Under the End-of-Life Options Act, mental health referrals typically are limited to cases where the physician prescribing the drugs has doubts about the patient’s decision-making ability. Doctors are not required to get a mental health professional’s opinion about whether the patient may be suffering from mental illness.

It’s very troubling that doctors would let patients end their lives via assisted suicide without referring them to mental health professionals first. But it is also troubling that official reports from Colorado show some of those doctors may be submitting incomplete patient data to the State when they fill prescriptions for assisted suicide.

For example, Colorado law says the patient’s primary medical provider must consult with a second provider to verify that the patient’s condition is terminal and to help ensure the patient is not being coerced into requesting assisted suicide. Patients must also record their request for assisted suicide in writing.

All of this information is supposed to go to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment when providers write prescriptions for assisted suicide.

But statistical data shows that since 2017, there have been at least 88 cases in which public health officials did not receive copies of the patient’s written request for assisted suicide. There were also 126 cases in which the paperwork did not include documentation from a secondary provider who reviewed the patient’s case.

The 2025 assisted suicide report from Colorado’s Department of Public Health explains these gaps in the data by saying:

“While reporting of the required documentation (including prescribing forms, patients’ written requests, consulting providers’ written confirmations, and mental health provider confirmation when applicable) may be incomplete, attending/prescribing forms received contained providers’ signed attestations that all requirements of the Colorado End-of-Life Options Act have been met, and that required documentation is complete and contained in patients’ records. Efforts continue to educate health care providers about reporting requirements.”

In other words, Colorado’s public health officials will accept incomplete records as long as doctors say they are following the law.

But without proper oversight, there really is no way to know if doctors are following state law.

For example, a 2024 peer-reviewed article found that people with eating disorders like anorexia may sometimes be approved for assisted suicide in Colorado.

A case study published in 2022 revealed a Colorado doctor specializing in anorexia treatment helped patients obtain assisted suicide.

Cases like these are deeply concerning.

But even with government oversight, assisted suicide is still a problem.

Assisted suicide fundamentally changes the doctor-patient relationship from healing to killing.

Experts say that in some places where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal, palliative care specialists are being driven to quit practicing medicine. That hurts everyone.

Once doctors and policymakers decide some lives are not worth living, it’s practically impossible to choose where to draw the line on assisted suicide.

In parts of the U.S. where assisted suicide is legal, insurance companies have refused to pay for patients’ medical care, but have offered to cover assisted suicide drugs.

Patients in Europe and Canada reportedly have been denied care or actively euthanized as a result of assisted suicide laws.

Next year, Canada could expand assisted suicide to include people suffering solely from mental health conditions like depression or personality disorders.

All of this underscores why Family Council has strongly opposed assisted suicide in Arkansas. In 2019 and 2021, Arkansas lawmakers wisely rejected very bad end-of-life laws that were flawed and fundamentally disrespected the right to life. Family Council worked closely with our friends in the legislature to stop those proposals.

Being pro-life means believing innocent human life is sacred from conception until natural death.

Just like abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide violate the sanctity of innocent human life.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Beyond Crispr: Recreating Man with Genetic Editing

Bioethics, , ,

The “man-moulders of the new age” vs. Imago Dei.

Recently, the New York Times reported that scientists at Columbia University have used a new technology called “base editing” to alter the DNA of early human embryos with unprecedented accuracy.  

As the Times noted,  

On the one hand, the technology might one day enable parents to safely repair disease-causing mutations in embryos. But it might also be used to select desired traits—a practice that some ethicists have argued is nothing short of eugenics.  

These recent approaches differ from earlier gene-editing methods like CRISPR, which remove defective genes rather than improve them. So, what the Times has reported is not just a difference in degree, but in kind, though with the same moral questions still unanswered. As Andrew Walker said at WORLD, “We should recognize that this technology occupies a morally gray zone . . . Therapeutic intervention differs from genetic enhancement . . . Base editing enables both.”  

Neither base editing nor CRISPR will be the last foray into this kind of eugenics. In fact, some of us predicted that the imprisonment by the CCP of a Chinese scientist who used CRISPR to modify human embryos was more of a distraction than a punishment. If so, it worked. The public has moved on. The outrage at Dr. He has died down. His work continues, even as Columbia researchers add a degree of academic respectability to the efforts to edit human beings. 

And it always goes like this. As one of the geneticists from Columbia put it, we need a public “discussion” about gene editing. Do we? Before or after we do it? No, these scientists behave as if the moral questions are settled, or at least a matter of personal interest, and all that’s left is to discuss how best to use this technology.  

Both history and the Bible warn what happens when our technologies outrun our ethics. Many have now forgotten the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell (1927). Caught up in the euphoria of the Progressive Era’s zeal for scientific improvement, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke for an 8-1 majority and upheld a compulsory sterilization law of the mentally disabled. The aim of the law was, as the Court said, to “prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” According to Holmes, in the case of Carrie Buck being sterilized, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Lawyers representing the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials after World War II cited Holmes’ opinion in Buck v. Bell to justify their own eugenics efforts in the Nazi regime.  

New developments in gene editing are still plagued by essential questions regarding human nature. First, is human nature permanently flawed or are we constantly progressing toward perfection? And, second what will stop us from using this technology not just to repair, but to pursue perfection, or—dare I say—a master race?  

These aren’t far-fetched questions. One scientist quoted by the Times raised exactly that concern when he said, “In regular I.V.F., embryos are screened for genetic abnormalities,” but base line editing “is providing the ‘baby improvers’ with a how-to manual for forays beyond the ethical pale.” 

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis foresaw these dangers: 

Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men…But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the power of an omnicompetent state and irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please. 

Yet, what governs these “conditioners”? A “public discussion?” No. Without moral standards, we are left to the impulses of those in charge. 

Recently, Christian ethicist Scott Rae argued that those things resulting from the Fall are within the domain of medical treatment (such as disease), while those not resulting from the Fall are the “givens” of life and not in the realm of enhancement (such as your biological sex, eye color, etc.). This distinction is helpful, despite the real challenge of drawing such an ethical line in a Fallen world, much less expecting others to comply. 

Scripture is plain. Every person is made in God’s image and is endowed with eternal dignity, worth, and beauty. Any potential value to be found in this new base-editing technology will be outweighed by the consequences of not recognizing what is true of the human condition, both our value and our potential for evil. In this case as well, the potential consequences far outweigh the potential benefits.

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