The media often tout the “statistics” from Washington and Oregon that, they claim, demonstrate no abuses in assisted suicide. What a crock.

First, the statistics come from doctor self-reporting. And second, most assisted suicides are herded through the system by Compassion and Choices or other suicide groups, meaning they have a huge potential influence on what the state learns, and what we are told.

Example: In Washington, a suicide facilitating group called End of Life Washington (formerly Compassion and Choices of Washington, which the national group once, more honestly, called the Hemlock Society) boasts that its volunteers “assisted” 93 percent of all assisted suicides in the state (without defining what that term means, exactly).

The same is true in Oregon, where Compassion and Choices is involved in a large majority of assisted suicides. The group refers death doctors to people whose own MDs won’t lethally prescribe.

The suicide pushers can say accurately, as in the old Outer Limits TV show, “We are controlling transmission. We control all you see and hear.”

Cross-posted at The Corner.