America’s euthanasia debate has taken a chilling new turn after a devoted father revealed how his bright, funny and caring daughter was tragically pushed toward assisted suicide by her doctors because of her devastating battle with anorexia.
Jane Allen, a former occupational therapist for children, had been struggling with the eating disorder for decades.
Yet, her doctors in Colorado didn’t try to help her recover — instead, her grief-stricken dad says, they wrote her a prescription for a lethal overdose, telling the young woman her case was ‘terminal.’
The horrifying case of Jane — who died from natural causes soon after her father intervened to save her — is now at the center of a national firestorm, as Colorado emerges as the unlikely epicenter of a terrifying question: should sufferers of psychiatric disorders like anorexia be greenlighted for medically assisted suicide?
DON'T MISS
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Jane’s father, Dan Sescleifer, 63, slammed her clinicians for an ‘irresponsible diagnosis’ and a system that failed to protect his daughter.
‘When you’re anorexic, you’re not getting proper nutrition, so you’re not thinking straight. And she was also heavily medicated — probably over-medicated. That compounded everything,’ said the heartbroken father.
‘A person in that situation should never be allowed to make the decision to end their own life.’
Jane, who suffered from anorexia since her teens in Missouri, moved to Colorado Springs for work where she sought treatment at an exclusive boutique eating disorder practice in 2018.
Jane Allen in hospice in Colorado Springs with a chilling ‘terminal anorexia’ diagnosis in December 2020
More than 500 people received prescriptions for assisted dying drugs in Colorado in 2024
However, her condition was not improving, and her clinician delivered the crushing blow of a ‘terminal anorexia’ diagnosis.
Then came the staggering suggestion: the clinician offered to ‘make an exception’ and ‘allow’ the 28-year-old to die under Colorado’s controversial End-of-Life Options Act (EOLOA).
In emails gathered by the Institute for Patients Rights, Jane later described the terrifying coercion she felt as her doctors abandoned hope.
‘It didn’t feel like my choice — I felt coerced and spent an incredibly agonizing few months in an assisted living facility,’ she wrote.
The clinic then referred the young woman to another doctor, who swiftly approved her for assisted suicide.
A prescription for a deadly cocktail of drugs was written.
But a father’s love saved her — at least for a time.
Dan rushed to court and secured a guardianship order from a Colorado judge, which allowed him to have the lethal drugs destroyed before his daughter could take them.
Jane then began to fight back, as she wrote, stopping taking ‘morphine and all the other hospice drugs that kept me in such a fog’ and moving to Oregon in 2021 to begin the painful process of rebuilding her life.
She was making slow but steady progress — a good job, a puppy, and hiking trips with a ‘great group of friends.’
Tragically, the years of malnutrition had already done irreversible damage. Jane died in 2024 from cardiac problems and other complications linked to her long-standing condition. She was just 32.
‘Her body had just been so ravaged by years of anorexia that it finally gave out,’ a grieving Dan said.
Jane’s story is not an isolated one.
Colorado’s assisted dying law, which was meant only for the terminally ill, is now being quietly expanded to include those with psychiatric disorders.
Jane Allen was getting her life back together in 2024 when she died as a result of complications linked to years of malnutrition
Anorexia affects 0.5 percent of women over their lifetime, most often starting between the ages of 12 and 25
Jane Allen at the Oregon Coast in November 2023, when she was recovering from anorexia
Last year, the state saw a record number of people approved to use its end-of-life law because of dietary problems.
In 2024, some 510 people received prescriptions for assisted dying drugs.
EOLOA is technically for terminally ill, mentally competent adults with less than six months to live. They must be Colorado residents, over 18, and confirmed as terminal by two doctors.
Mental health assessments are not mandatory unless a provider raises concerns.
While cancer remains the leading cause (58 percent of cases), a new trend has emerged.
At least 18 people were approved because of ‘severe protein calorie malnutrition’ — a condition that can be result from anorexia and other eating disorders, but also some cancers, HIV and intestinal diseases.
This is a surge from the previous period of 2017 to 2024, when there were just 30 such cases.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment says it doesn’t record specific diagnoses, meaning the true number of anorexia sufferers being offered death is unknown.
The department’s data chief Kirk Bol told the Daily Mail that most of the 30 malnutrition cases were elderly patients. Just six of them were aged under 65.
Advocates warn that vulnerable young women are increasingly in the crosshairs of a system designed to encourage suicide over recovery.
Matt Vallière, president of the Institute for Patients Rights, a group that is now filing a bombshell lawsuit to overturn the controversial law, says Jane’s story shows how assisted suicide laws are operating ‘fast and loose.’
‘Most people in Colorado would be appalled to learn that young people with anorexia, like Jane, are being told their case is hopeless and receiving lethal drugs,’ Vallière told the Daily Mail.
‘Yet she received suicide drugs anyway at the age of 28 through medical professionals who had given up on her and a system that failed to protect her due to assisted suicide public policy.’
Colorado eating disorder specialist Jennifer Gaudiani stoked controversy by recommending some ‘terminal anorexia’ cases should qualify for assisted suicide
Colorado is one of just ten US states, along with Washington, DC, that allows assisted dying
Vallière and his coalition of groups are now fighting to stop what they call a discriminatory law that ‘steers’ vulnerable people, often those with disabilities, toward suicide instead of recovery.
‘Assisted suicide laws are engineered to operate fast and loose,’ Vallière said.
‘We have to ask ourselves as a society: how many coerced tragedies are we willing to accept for the sake of this supposed autonomy?’
The federal lawsuit, filed in US District Court in June, claims that the law is already being used on people with non-terminal conditions, including spinal cord injuries — and that medical bias against disability may be influencing doctors’ decisions.
Among the plaintiffs is Mary Gossman, 26, from Littleton, who previously suffered from anorexia and depression.
She claims she now lives in constant fear that if her mental illness returns, she will be ‘steered’ toward assisted dying by the system.
Mary’s harrowing account in the 71-page complaint paints a bleak picture of life under Colorado’s current rules.
‘If I had been offered life-ending drugs during my hospitalizations, I would have accepted them,’ she revealed.
‘At the time, my judgment was clouded by my illness — I was trying to die through my anorexia.’
Mary’s illnesses are now thankfully under control, but she believes she is alive only because no one offered her a lethal dose when she was at her lowest ebb.
Now she lives with the constant fear that her eating disorder could one day be deemed ‘terminal.’
The push to end the lives of those suffering from psychiatric conditions has split medical opinion down the middle.
Critics say allowing access to lethal drugs for a psychiatric disorder risks turning suicide into a form of treatment.
But supporters of assisted dying say that in rare cases, anorexia patients whose bodies are irreparably damaged by years of starvation should be allowed a dignified death.
A handful of doctors have promoted the idea of ‘terminal anorexia.’
One such figure is Denver-based physician Dr Jennifer Gaudiani, who coined the phrase in 2022 and has sparked national outrage by prescribing assisted dying drugs to anorexia patients and publishing case studies of their deaths.
Gaudiani declined the Daily Mail’s request for an interview, but sent a statement, saying she was focused ‘on the important and prominent life-saving work our clinic and physicians offer.’
Mary Gossman, 26, says she fears she’ll be ‘steered’ by doctors toward assisted dying if her anorexia and depression return
Jane Allen, pictured in about 2022 as she recovered from anorexia, said her eating disorder doctors proposed an assisted suicide as her way out
But critics warn that the disease itself often fuels suicidal thinking, meaning that an individual suffering from anorexia is incapable of giving true consent.
With Colorado recently shortening waiting periods and allowing more providers to prescribe lethal medication, campaigners fear that vulnerable young women could be gently — and fatally — nudged toward death instead of recovery.
For Jane’s father, Dan, a retired finance executive, the ethical lines couldn’t be clearer.
‘No anorexia patient should ever be given assisted suicide drugs,’ he said.
‘There’s always hope. No matter how bad it gets, you never give up hope.’
For Dan, who now keeps photos of Jane displayed throughout his home to remember the smart, funny, and caring young woman he lost, his fight is far from over.
He remembers the joy of their trout fishing trips and the hours spent chatting and laughing on the sofa watching The Office and Parks and Rec together.
He hopes Jane’s tragic story can bring some light to other families facing a similar nightmare.
‘They’ll always be there. I always want to remember her,’ he says of the photos.
‘Hopefully, some good will come from this — maybe it’ll help another family, or another child, get through it.’
Colorado has become the testing ground for one of America’s most ethically fraught experiments.
And as malnutrition-linked deaths rise, and the explosive new lawsuit moves through the courts, Jane’s story has become a devastating warning of where compassion ends and surrender begins.
