(Oregon Right to Life) — Two Oregon-based mental health professionals with extensive expertise and knowledge in helping people who require hospice and palliative care spoke to Oregon Right to Life about Senate Bill 1003, Oregon’s radical new assisted suicide expansion bill.
SB 1003 was introduced in February during Oregon’s 83rd legislative session, and would reduce the state’s 15-day waiting period to just 48 hours. It would also allow nurse practitioners and physician assistants, instead of exclusively physicians, to prescribe lethal medication under Oregon’s “Death With Dignity Act;” and would require hospices and hospitals to publicly disclose whether they participate in assisted suicide.
The bill went before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a public hearing on Monday, March 3, where it was met with strong opposition from medical and mental professionals and advocates for the medically vulnerable.
Dr. Satya Chandragiri, M.D. and Dr. Angela Plowhead, Psy.D., spoke to Oregon Right to Life about the implications of SB 1003 and their strong reasons for opposing it.
RELATED: Oregon Assisted Suicide Bill Met With Overwhelming Opposition in Public Hearing
Dr. Chandragiri, a Salem-based psychiatrist, said in a phone interview February 27 that 48 hours is far too short a timeframe to assess a person’s consent to assisted suicide, and that even the current 15 day waiting period is insufficient.
People facing end-of-life decisions are typically very vulnerable, physically weak, and may be dealing with cognitive difficulties, Chandragiri explained. In that condition, they often change their minds and “lack capacity to give consent,” even if they may seem to have made a choice. Moreover, he explained, elderly people frequently feel and even express that they are “no use to anyone,” but that doesn’t mean they wish to die by assisted suicide.
Dr. Angela Plowhead, Psy.D., a licensed psychologist who specializes in cognitive and decision-making capacity assessment and testified virtually at the public hearing on Monday, told Oregon Right to Life in a February 28 phone interview that there ought to be “a pretty significant evaluation” for mental health and potential mood disorders when a person expresses a desire for assisted suicide.
She said mood disorders are common among people who are diagnosed with terminal diseases, and that ruling them out in the case of an assisted suicide request is impossible in 15 days – let alone 48 hours.
Weighing in on the bill’s proposed authorization of non-physicians to consult and prescribe deadly medication, Chandragiri said physician assistants and nurse practitioners would be pushed “beyond their scope of practice.”
And even without SB 1003’s changes, the current law lacks mandatory comprehensive mental health screening – a fact Dr. Plowhead said is already problematic.
“If you’re going to be assessing for the mood disorder pieces, you need someone who is a licensed mental health professional,” she said. “Not someone who may have had one course in treating depression from a medical standpoint with psychopharmaceuticals at some time in their residency.”
Oregon’s current Death With Dignity law requires a “counseling referral” to an Oregon licensed psychologist or psychiatrist “[i]f in the opinion of the attending [prescribing] physician or the consulting physician a patient may be suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment…”
But while Oregon physicians wrote 560 prescriptions during 2023, only three patients were referred for psychological or psychiatric evaluation.
SEND A MESSAGE: URGE YOUR SENATOR TO OPPOSE SENATE BILL 1003
In their remarks to Oregon Right to Life, Plowhead and Chandragiri said the expansion of assisted suicide could have a secondary effect of driving people away from seeking care – something elderly and medically vulnerable people are often already hesitant to do.
Plowhead said “the idea of someone going into hospice is a scary one” for many people, and that it’s common to be “suspicious of the drugs that are given at the end of life.” If elderly people or their family members are aware that medical professionals have a “license to deal out death drugs,” she said, they will be increasingly likely to forego any dealings with care providers.
That decision – avoiding hospice care or other medical support – could “prolong suffering” for people enduring serious illnesses, Chandragiri said.
In addition to increasing distrust of medical providers, Plowhead said the bill’s elimination of safeguards would place medically vulnerable people at risk of being “unduly influenced” or coerced to make life-ending choices that go against their own values and wishes. And according to Chandragiri, economically disadvantaged people would be in particular jeopardy since many are estranged from their families, taking Medicaid, and may be unable to afford a public guardian.
The push to expand Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act comes as Oregon has permitted physician-assisted suicide for nearly 30 years as of 2025. Oregon became the first state to legalize the practice with a narrowly-passed measure in 1994, which took effect in 1997 after overcoming legal challenges. In 2023, Democratic Governor Tina Kotek signed a law stripping away the residency requirement for assisted suicide, allowing Oregon physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to people from other states. The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) had already stopped enforcing the residency requirement in 2022.
The rollback of the rule was followed by an immediate surge in overall prescriptions and deaths. The OHA report for 2023, released in March 2024, showed an almost 30% increase in physician-assisted suicide prescriptions and a 20% increase in reported deaths following ingestion of the prescribed drugs. In a press release, the government agency attributed the uptick in part to the removal of the residency requirement.
Per the OHA report, a total of 4,274 people have been prescribed the lethal drugs since the passage of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, leading to the deaths of at least 2,847 people. The most common diagnosis for people seeking assisted suicide in 2023 was cancer (66%), and the primary reasons cited were “loss of autonomy (92%), decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (88%), and loss of dignity (64%).”
RELATED: Delaware Governor Vetoes Assisted Suicide Bill
In the Thursday phone interview, Chandragiri questioned why Oregon appears “so fascinated with death” that lawmakers would seek to make it easier for medically vulnerable people to end their lives rather than helping them find physical and emotional relief.
For Dr. Plowhead, the “the trend toward death on demand” in Oregon and the broader acceptance of physician-assisted suicide and even euthanasia in other countries, “is really a sad statement on our value on life.”
Plowhead told Oregon Right to Life she wants Oregon’s medical health professionals to focus their attention on assessing and treating mental health disorders “in a way that gives people hope,” rather than offering death as a solution.
Following the March 3 public hearing, the committee will determine if they will schedule SB 1003 for a work session, where they would vote on whether to advance the bill in the legislature.
Oregon Right to Life supports the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception until natural death. We oppose all cases of euthanasia, whereby a person is deliberately killed through direct action or omission even if that act is by their permission. Read the full statement and our other position statements here.
