self-elected suicide

A phrase used in this record, in a statement recorded on 17 May 2025, for ending one's own life by one's own choice. The record sets it against repeated suggestions that people be pushed toward death.

Colorado: medical aid in dying under the End-of-Life Options Act (2016), for adults with a terminal illness and six months or less to live, who take the medication themselves. No US state lets a clinician administer it. Outside the Act, causing or aiding a suicide is manslaughter in Colorado.

Canada: medical assistance in dying (MAID, since 2016) requires a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability, irreversible decline, and suffering that cannot be relieved; since 2021 death need not be foreseeable, and a clinician may administer it. Financial or social hardship is not a criterion. Mental illness as the only condition is excluded until 17 March 2027: Parliament delayed it twice, in 2023 and 2024, after a joint committee found practitioners concerned about judging whether a mental illness is incurable and telling a request apart from suicidal intent. In 2022 a Veterans Affairs Canada employee raised it with four veterans unprompted; the case was referred to the RCMP.

Elsewhere: some form of assisted dying is legal in fewer than 20 countries, plus most Australian states and 13 US states, covering about 300 million people. In most of the world it is illegal.

If you or someone you know needs support: in the US, call or text 988; elsewhere, findahelpline.com.

Related terms: euthanasia, Nuremberg Code, crimes against humanity

Sources: Medical aid in dying — Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment · C.R.S. 18-3-104, manslaughter · Medical assistance in dying — Government of Canada · Legislative Summary of Bill C-62 — Library of Parliament · Veterans minister on assisted-dying discussions — Global News · Where assisted dying is legal — TIME, July 2026