The bill before the NSW parliament is primarily about assisted suicide - euthanasia becomes a possibility if the patient is incapable of taking the potion themselves.
When Dignity with Dying Act was proposed in Oregon part of the rhetoric was that it would reduce the incidence of suicide and violent suicides. This clearly has not been the case. As the article below observes, there is no way of directly correlating the rise in suicides in Oregon with the advent of the DWDA law, however, the possibility of suicide contagion cannot be dismissed - especially as the rates of suicide continue to rise well above the national average.
From Alex Schadenberg's Blog:
"Oregon's suicide rate has been increasing since 2000.
Just three years prior, Oregon legalized assisted suicide.
The article also says:
"New figures show a sharp rise in suicides among middle-aged Americans, and an even bigger increase in Oregon. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows suicides among men and women aged 35-64 increased 49 percent in Oregon from 1999-2010, compared to 28 percent nationally."
So much for the claim that legalizing assisted suicide will reduce other suicides.
And then there's the financial cost. The article says:
"In 2011, 685 Oregonians killed themselves, twice the number who died in vehicle crashes and six times the homicide rate. In 2012, the number climbed to 709 people who took their own lives, according to preliminary numbers. Oregon's suicide rate has been increasing since 2000.
The financial cost is high. In 2010, self-inflicted injury hospitalization costs exceeded $41 million."
It may not be possible to directly co-relate the increased suicide rate in Oregon in relation to the fact that assisted suicide became legal in Oregon in 1998, but it is a fact that the suicide rate in Oregon has steadily increased at a rate much higher than the national average.
It must also be stated that there were 77 assisted suicide deaths in 2012 in Oregon. These deaths are not counted among the number of suicide deaths.
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