Published August 28, 2025
In 2020, Jane, a 29-year-old Colorado woman with eating disorders, was “provided with lethal drugs … in the midst of a mental-health crisis”, according to a lawsuit filed this year by the Institute for Patients’ Rights, an advocacy group seeking to overturn Colorado’s assisted-suicide program. Jane qualified for assisted suicide, the lawsuit contends, yet she was discharged from a hospice because she no longer qualified for hospice care, and her hospice considered her no longer competent to consent to medical treatments. So how could she have consented to suicide-by-doctor?
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Alexander Raikin is a Visiting Fellow in the Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His research focuses on the dignity of human life and end-of-life issues, especially on its impact on the field of medicine and broader ethical questions of social belonging.
