Colorado Doctors Allegedly Coerced Woman Into Assisted Suicide for “Terminal Anorexia”

Family and friends of a woman who passed away in 2024 are speaking out against assisted suicide policies and alleged coercive tactics that took place in Colorado after the woman sought treatment for anorexia in 2018. Matt Vallière, the executive director of the Patient Rights Action Fund and the Institute for Patient Rights, wrote an op-ed for the Denver Post talking about the pressure his friend Jane Allen faced when she was seeking treatment for her anorexia.

Allen was approved for and allegedly coerced into assisted suicide in Colorado Springs after she was diagnosed with “terminal anorexia.” Vallière shared written statements from Allen stating that her doctor would “make an exception” and “allow” her to die if she chooses to do so. But Allen said she didn’t feel like it was a choice, and she felt coerced. Allen’s dad saved her at the last moment, allowing her to improve her quality of life. 

“I moved from Colorado to Oregon,” Allen wrote. “I have a job that I love, a new puppy, and a great group of friends. I’m able to fuel my body to hike and do the things I love. I’m repairing my relationship with my family, and I have a great therapist who is helping me process all of this. Things obviously aren’t perfect, and I still have hard days. But I also have balance, and flexibility, and a life that is so much more than I was told would ever be possible for me.”

Allen passed away in 2024 due to complications from anorexia, but she was able to live a fulfilling life after the point at which Colorado medical professionals thought assisted suicide was her best option. Allen was receiving treatment from an unnamed “boutique eating disorder practice” in Colorado Springs. After she was “in and out of hospitals and residential treatment,” she was diagnosed with terminal anorexia and given the option of assisted suicide.

Her doctor referred her to another doctor “who promptly checked the boxes required under Colorado’s ‘safeguards,’ and saw to it that Jane got the lethal drugs,” according to Vallière’s op-ed. Allen’s father received guardianship from the Colorado court system and was able to have the lethal drugs destroyed. Allen said she “ate just enough to not die right away” and then ate more. “I weaned off the morphine and all the other hospice drugs that kept me in such a fog,” Allen wrote. “I was getting better, and then I was told that I was too much of a liability and dropped from the [boutique] clinic.”

Oregon passed the Death With Dignity (DWD) Act in 1997 to legalize the practice of physician-assisted suicide, which has since been rebranded as “Medical Aid in Dying” (MAID). This language shift has been an attempt to remove the stigma that comes with “judgmental language” so that individuals can feel free to make their own choices without feeling judged, according to DeathWithDignity.Org, which advocates for MAID access and the patient’s ability to choose.

Oregon had 16 patients who died via the DWD program in 1998, and that number increased steadily every year to 278 in 2022. In 1999, 37% of patients were referred to psychiatric evaluation prior to receiving lethal drugs, and only 1.1% of patients were referred for psychiatric evaluation in 2022.

Colorado, Oregon, and other states require patients to have a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months or less to qualify for MAID. Eating disorder doctors Patricia Westmoreland, Philip Mehler, and Harry Brandt published an article in Psychiatric News in 2022 stating that “terminal” is not an appropriate word to use to describe a psychiatric disorder with a known cure like anorexia. “Terminal anorexia” was first formally proposed by Dr. Jennifer L. Gaudiani and her colleagues in a 2022 paper. Gaudiani said the criteria require the patient to be age 30 or older, an understanding that further treatment is “futile,” prior persistent engagement in high-quality multidisciplinary eating disorder care, and an acceptance that death will be the natural outcome of the individual’s anorexia.

“We add our voices to the growing number of eating disorder professionals who have expressed their concerns around the use of this term,” Westmoreland, Mehler, and Brandt wrote. “‘Terminal’ is not an appropriate descriptor for a psychiatric condition for which there is a known and proven cure. Unlike medical concerns such as end-stage cancer or a neurodegenerative disorder, almost all the medical complications of anorexia (with the exception of osteoporosis) are reversible. We must protect vulnerable patients (and their caregivers) who may be easily persuaded that there are no treatment options available for them.”

Westmoreland, Mehler, and Brandt criticized Guadiani’s “fleeting attempts at treatment” for the two patients in her report as hardly being enough to be considered “prior persistent engagement in high-quality, multidisciplinary eating disorder care.” They wrote “One patient underwent two brief stays in intensive treatment before leaving against medical advice, while another was hospitalized for medical stabilization but thereafter reneged on enrolling in a residential program.”

Westmoreland, Mehler, and Brandt say that individuals with anorexia experience malnutrition and, thus, often lack the capacity to make these decisions with a clear understanding of all options. They say that these individuals may be more susceptible to the suggestion of hopelessness.

“Finally, persuasion and encouragement of a vulnerable individual is coercive,” Westmoreland, Mehler, and Brandt wrote. “A patient’s capacity to consent to MAID must be assessed along with coercion. [Dr. Angela] Guarda and colleagues noted that in at least one case mentioned in Gaudiani’s report, MAID was suggested by the treating physician. To another patient, the idea of treatment futility was reinforced despite the patient’s not completing a full course of intensive treatment. The treating physician’s implicit or explicit agreement with a vulnerable and symptomatic patient’s assertion that “further treatment is futile” is ill-advised, highly problematic, and likely to be further demoralizing to the patient.”

While Jane Allen’s story unfolded in Colorado, similar ethical questions echo north of the border. On The HighWire, Angelina Ireland, Executive Director of the Delta Hospice Society and a cancer survivor, described how Canada’s MAiD program has grown into what she calls a “culling” of the vulnerable, disguised as compassion. Her hospice was stripped of funding and property after refusing to offer euthanasia—an experience that underscores how policies framed as “choice” can evolve into systemic pressure toward death, rather than genuine patient support.

Eleven states and the District of Columbia have legalized assisted suicide. In these jurisdictions, deaths from MAID account for less than 1% of all deaths. Canada legalized MAID in 2016 and expanded the program in 2021. In 2023, 4.7% of all deaths in Canada were attributed to MAID.