A bill seeking to legalize physician-assisted suicide cleared the House on Tuesday with a minimum of 21 votes, sending the controversial measure to the Senate for consideration. House Bill 140 is sponsored by State Rep. Eric Morrison (D-Glasgow). It seeks to create a multi-step process allowing Delawareans with a life expectancy of less than six months to obtain and self-administer a lethal dosage of a prescribed drug. Under the bill, a designated medical professional must confirm that the patient seeking suicide could make an informed, rational, and voluntary decision. Individuals seeking this option must be presented with all available alternatives, including comfort care, hospice care, and pain control. The process would also include two waiting periods. The bill would not allow anyone to request the fatal dosage on behalf of another. Proponents maintain that assisted suicide allows terminally ill patients to end their lives at a time and place of their choosing while potentially avoiding a painful, prolonged death. House Republicans opposed the bill, objecting to perceived flaws in the process and noting troubling issues that have arisen in other jurisdictions were the practice has been legalized. State Rep. Jeff Hilovsky (R-Long Neck, Oak Orchard), in photo, cited the example of Canada, which enacted a physician assisted suicide law in 2016. In its first year, 1,018 people chose to end their lives under the program. According to the most recent statistics, 15,343 people received suicide assistance in 2023--about one out of every 20 deaths in the country that year. "That's an increase of 1,507%," Rep. Hilovsky told the chamber. "That is just an incredible amount." He said he believed the rapid increase is symptomatic of a growing societal acceptance of devaluing the lives of certain people. State Rep. Rich Collins (R-Millsboro), who spent a career in the insurance industry, said he feared an assisted suicide law would lead to coercion of the elderly. "I had clients that I was absolutely convinced wanted their parents to die so they could get the money. When you have older folks that have money...and their children desperately need it, don't think [they won't use this law to get it]." State Rep. Valerie Jones Giltner (R-Georgetown) said she views the bill as a slippery-slope issue. She said should it become law, she believes its scope would be quickly expanded to include non-terminal conditions. Citing a conversation she had with a handicapped man in the chamber just prior to the debate, she said people with costly medical needs could easily feel pressured into opting for physician-assisted suicide to give their families financial relief. Rep. Jones Giltner's argument is bolstered by a recent column authored by Drs. Mark S. Komrad, MD & Annette Hanson, MD in the journal Psychiatric Times. It noted: "While we recognize that individuals of good conscience may differ on the ethics of physician-assisted suicide, we have consistently maintained—as the American Medical Association has opined—that it is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks...Despite such clear statements, we and others have called attention to the ever-expanding eligibility criteria for physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia, particularly in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In essence, every one of these foreign jurisdictions that has legalized physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia has eventually expanded them...The expansion typically begins with...end-stage or terminal illness and gradually broadens to “chronic, nonterminal, or treatment-refractory illness." House Bill 140 is pending action in the Senate Executive Committee, from which it is expected to win release.