Reality: A key aspect of the Death with Dignity laws in Oregon and Washington is patients must self-administer medication prescribed under the safeguards of the laws. Euthanasia, on the other hand, refers to the act of painlessly but deliberately causing the death of another who is suffering from an incurable, painful disease or condition—most commonly administered through a lethal injection.

Conflating these two very different concepts is a specialty of people opposed to Death with Dignity Acts; their aim is to confuse people about what's allowed and what isn't. The fact is, these laws give patients control of their own dying process, and the option to shorten their suffering in their final days. The terminally ill individual is the only person who decides when or whether to take the prescribed medication—and fully a third of the people who request the medication never end up ingesting it.

The Oregon and Washington laws even go another step further with specific language barring euthanasia:

Nothing in this chapter authorizes a physician or any other person to end a patient's life by lethal injection, mercy killing, or active euthanasia.

Oregon's law has been in effect for 15 years and Washington's for three years. In order to change the scope of either law, it would take an act of the state legislature or approval of a ballot initiative by the voters. At no point in the long history of Oregon or Washington has there been any effort to expand or extend the Death with Dignity legislation to allow for euthanasia. There's been no slippery slope. It's a mentally competent, terminally ill individual's personal end-of-life decision and no one else's.