My first nursing job, near the end of my time in nursing school, was at a long-term acute care facility (LTAC). For those who don't know what LTACs are, they provide the same higher-level care that acute care hospitals do, but for extended periods when places like nursing homes or assisted living facilities aren't equipped to address complex medical needs.
This included patients who were on ventilators, required extensive wound care, needed administration of long-term IV antibiotics, or had other health conditions like Guillain-Barré syndrome. Sometimes, we were able to heal these patients enough to send them to rehab or discharge them home. Most often, these patients lingered in vegetative states. It was there that I grew to appreciate the philosophy of hospice, as many of these patients would have benefited from that level of care.
A few years later, after COVID at an acute care hospital broke me, I worked in hospice. To me, that wa the real form of "death with dignity" — an acknowledgement that one's illness was terminal, but with palliative treatment and support, we could focus on the quality of the life they had left. Had my career path not taken a sudden change, I always said my line in the sand was that if assisted suicide ever came to Wisconsin, I would never participate in it. Not only would assisted suicide do untold damage to hospice — after all, why pay for a nurse and pain meds and palliative care for a few months when a doctor can prescribe much cheaper medications that end the process early? — It is a slippery slope that we've seen other countries slide down at breakneck speed.
Well, now Wisconsin Democrats are introducing legislation to legalize assisted suicide here in the Dairy State. Even though I'm not working in healthcare anymore, I oppose it, because i know where it leads.
EXCLUSIVE: Wisconsin Democrats have introduced an assisted suicide bill that would allow doctors to kill patients who are believed to have less than six months to live. I mean, I guess that's one way for Dems to keep their massive Obamacare costs down.... pic.twitter.com/RxTf4kzprM
— Dan O'Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) February 26, 2026
Senator Kelda Roys is one of the Democrats running for governor.
The memo reads:
LRB 5643 would permit a Wisconsin resident who is at least 18 years of age, mentally capable, and has a terminal disease with a prognosis of less than six months to live to voluntarily request medication from their attending healthcare provider for the purpose of ending their life in a peaceful, humane, and dignified manner. Individuals with terminal illnesses should be allowed to spend their last days where and with whomever they choose, without being forced to endure additional pain and suffering. This legislation provides an option for dying individuals that respects and honors their final choices.
As we've seen in parts of Europe and with Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program, "death with dignity" soon becomes a "duty to die."
In Canada, MAiD began just as Wisconsin Democrats are proposing: death with dignity for those with terminal illnesses. It a few short years, that program expanded to include the mentally ill, the depressed, veterans, and the poor.
Yes, the poor. Even Left-wing Jacobin Magazine noticed that MAiD was being used in place of social welfare services, and a quarter of Canadians think it should be used on the poor. It's also used in place of routine medical care for non-terminal patients, thanks to the massive failure that is Canada's socialised medicine system. When a woman named Jolene, who had hyperparathyroidism, couldn't get in to see an endocrinologist for her treatable, non-terminal condition, the Canadian government offered to kill her instead. She was offered treatment in America, instead.
It's also been used on drug addicts, anorexics, and the homeless and officials are considering expanding it to disabled infants.
We're not supposed to worry, however, because the majority of people who are euthanized by our neighbors to the north are "privileged, white, and well-off."
That's supposed to make it okay?
Per capita, MAiD deaths now exceed gun deaths in America (which I've been told is a crisis requiring the dissolution of my Second Amendment rights), and because the right demographic is being euthanized, we're supposed to accept it and move on?
"Death with dignity" is always a lie. It's not about dignity; it's about control and cost savings. Such legislation never, ever remains the narrow and focused mercy politicians promise when they introduce these bills. They always evolve into hungry blobs, whose appetite for death is insatiable. Wisconsin is better than that, even if our Democrats are not.