On the same night as Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the US election, American states have also voted on assisted suicide and marijuana legislation.
In Colorado, a ballot to legalise assisted suicide passed. It becomes the sixth state to allow terminally ill people to take lethal substances which a doctor has prescribed. The proposal had previously been blocked in the state legislature.
Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver said the law would “make it easier for people with bad intentions to prey upon the disabled” and would lead to pressure on doctors, nurses and pharmacists. The archbishop said assisted suicide would, as with Oregon’s law, “place the lives of vulnerable people in the hands of an insurance and healthcare industry whose profit-driven culture would incentivise doctors to prescribe death.”
