SACRAMENTO — In a landmark victory for supporters of assisted suicide, the California State Legislature on Friday gave its final approval to a bill that would allow doctors to help terminally ill people end their lives.
Four states — Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont — already allow physicians to prescribe life-ending medication to some patients. The California bill, which passed Friday in the State Senate by a vote of 23 to 14, will now go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who will roughly triple access to doctor-assisted suicide across the country if he signs it. Mr. Brown has given little indication of his intentions.
The California bill is modeled on the law in Oregon, with several notable changes. The California law would expire after 10 years and have to be reapproved, and doctors would have to consult in private with the patient desiring to die, as part of an effort to ensure that no one would be coerced to end his or her life — a primary concern for opponents of the law.
read the whole piece on The Times
From The Economist:
WHEN California’s lawmakers passed a bill in September that legalised doctor-assisted dying, there were doubts it would ever become law. Between success and the statute book stood a possible veto by the state governor, Jerry Brown. Mr Brown is a pious Catholic—and the strongest opposition to assisted dying has come from the Catholic church. But Mr Brown had also spoken to Brittany Maynard, a young Californian whose diagnosis of terminal brain cancer had turned her into an advocate for the cause. In 2014 she moved to Oregon, the first state to legalise assisted dying, and took her own life there. Ms Maynard’s story, and a moving video she made asking California’s lawmakers to pass something similar to Oregon’s Death with Dignity law, transformed the debate in her home state and beyond.
Now the uncertainty is at an end. On October 5th Mr Brown signed the bill—a strong expression of his support, since it could have passed into law if he had merely declined to veto it. Next year California will join Oregon, Vermont, Washington state and Montana in allowing doctors, with appropriate safeguards, to prescribe drugs that terminally ill patients can use to end their own lives, if they choose. This will quadruple the number of Americans covered by such a law, to just over 50m.
In a plainly worded letter to the California State Assembly, Mr Brown explained his decision. Having read submissions from both supporters and opponents of the measure, and consulted with a Catholic bishop, two of his own doctors and various friends with differing opinions, he said that he was left to reflect on what he would want in the face of his own death. “I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain,” he wrote, “I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”
The decision has been criticised by opponents, who say that rather than thinking about how the law would affect people like himself—well-off, white, well-educated—the governor ought to have thought about less privileged folk, who might find themselves under pressure from relatives or health-care providers to take a quick and cheap way out. Mr Brown rejected such paternalism; and there is no evidence from states with similar laws that people end up taking their lives under duress.
For more information on how assisted suicide works, check out this backgrounder by The Economist.
