The group pushing to legalize assisted suicide around the country is poised to win a big battle on its home turf.
Compassion and Choices is headquartered in Colorado, where voters next week will consider a ballot measure allowing terminally ill patients to obtain lethal medications from doctors to end their lives. If the measure passes, Colorado would become the sixth state in the U.S. where physician-assisted suicide is allowed.
Compassion and Choices, which was a major force in getting assisted suicide legalized in California this year, has poured money into the effort, supplying 79 percent of the $5.7 million spent in support of the Colorado initiative.
The group gained widespread attention two years ago, when it partnered with brain cancer patient Brittany Maynard, who moved to Oregon to take advantage of its assisted suicide law. Apart from California, the legislation has struggled to gain traction in statehouses, so organizers have focused on getting the question on ballots instead.
“Colorado was just one of those places where we had the infrastructure and we felt we had the voters’ support,” said Toni Broaddus, the group’s national director of political affairs. “We have done all the things you need to do to win a successful campaign.”
Supporters of the measure have well outspent opponents, who have given just $2.7 million. Most of those dollars come from the Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Evangelical organizations including Focus on the Family and Colorado Christian University also are actively opposing it.
Polling shows nearly 70 percent of Colorado residents support physician-assisted suicide, forcing opponents of the measure to acknowledge its victory is likely.
“We have been disappointed with the polls here in Colorado,” said Autumn Stroup, director of public policy for the Family Policy Alliance, a policy group affiliated with Focus on the Family.
National polls also show increasing support for physician-assisted suicide. A Gallup poll last year found that 68 percent of Americans think doctors should be allowed to help patients commit suicide if requested by the patient, up 10 percentage points from the year prior.
Physician-assisted suicide soon may also become legal in the District of Columbia, where the city council preliminarily approved a bill Tuesday to allow patients given six months or less to live to obtain life-ending medication. It would need to go through a final vote and be signed by Mayor Muriel Bowser and be approved by Congress to become law.
Yet many doctors are uneasy about physician-assisted suicide. Thirty-five percent of doctors opposed it while 56 percent supported it in a survey taken by the Colorado Medical Society, which has taken a neutral position on the issue.
The Denver Post also opposes the measure, writing recently about concerns that it could incentivize insurers to refuse to fund expensive treatments for terminally ill patients that could extend their lives by months or years.
“We worry the present measure … would entice insurers to drop expensive treatments for terminal patients even when medical advances might add months or years more to a life that a patient might wish to take,” the paper wrote earlier this month.
Supporters push back by noting the Colorado measure includes a number of safeguards, such as requiring patients to gain permission for the lethal medication from two doctors, make two separate requests for the medications 15 days apart and make an additional request in writing with two witnesses present.
Doctors also might comply with a number of regulations, including providing patients with their full range of treatment options and giving patients multiple opportunities to withdraw their requests.
“There are some people who think it’s too stringent,” said Holly Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the committee supporting the measure, Yes on Colorado End-of-Life Options.
