Assisted suicide became legal in Maine from 17 September 2019.
The Maine Death With Dignity Act is essentially modelled on the Oregon and Washington laws and creates the same risks of wrongful deaths. It passed the House by just one vote (73-72) and the Senate by just two votes (19-16) before being signed by the Governor on 12 June 2019.
Minimal reporting
Section 17 of the Act requires an annual statistical report to be issued based on reports from attending physicians.
The End-of-Life Closure Form, mandated by the rule, unlike Oregon or Washington, does not provide for any detailed information whatsoever.
In Maine we will not know why people request assisted suicide, how long they take to lose consciousness and die after ingesting the prescribed poison, if there were any complications and so forth. No demographic data apart from age and sex is recorded and the only medical information is the underlying condition.
Numbers
A total of 1470 people have died after ingesting a lethal substance prescribed under the Act – 1 in 2019; 30 in 2020; 46 in 2021 (0.26% of all deaths); 40 in 2022 and 53 in 2023 (0.3% of all deaths).
In April 2024, six of the nine people who had made a request for a lethal substance in 2023 and were still alive had made the request more than six months ago and so had outlived the legally required prognosis of death within six months.
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