US: California lawmakers to pursue right-to-die legislation

[webfact]

California lawmakers to pursue right-to-die legislation
By FENIT NIRAPPIL

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California lawmakers are pursuing right-to-die legislation after the highly publicized death of a young woman with brain cancer who moved to Oregon to legally end her life.

The proposal would allow doctors to prescribe life-ending medication nearly a decade after similar legislation failed. Terminally ill patients can legally take their lives in five states, including Oregon.

Advocates for aid in dying are ramping up their efforts across the U.S. using the story of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old San Francisco Bay Area woman who moved with family to Oregon and ended her life in November. She argued in online videos and national media appearances that she should have had the right to die in California.

"Why should someone who willingly wants to avail themselves of this option have to go to another state? It just adds to the suffering and challenge at an already difficult time," Democratic state Sen. Bill Monning said Tuesday.

Opponents say some patients may feel pressured to end their lives if doctors are allowed to prescribe fatal medication. Religious groups have condemned aid-in-dying legislation as against God's will.

Monning is among three Democratic lawmakers who plan to appear with Maynard's family to promote right-to-die legislation Wednesday. It would be limited to mentally competent patients with less than six months to live and requires they take deadly medication themselves without help from a doctor.

His bill is modeled off of Oregon's law, which was approved by voters in 1994. Since then, 752 people ended their lives through the law, according to Oregon state statistics.

Washington voters also approved right-to-die legislation, while court decisions in New Mexico and Montana have essentially legalized aid in dying.

Vermont's Legislature became the first group of lawmakers to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives in 2013, but other statehouses have been hesitant.

New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut have rejected similar legislative proposals recently. Right-to-die legislation failed in the California in 2007 over objections from Catholic and medical groups.

Molly Weedn, a spokeswoman for the California Medical Association, says her group has longstanding "opposition to physician assisted suicide because it is fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as a healer."

The group is waiting to review the new bill before taking a position.

Compassion & Choices, which advocates for right-to-die laws, hopes publicity around Maynard's story will reverse the string of legislative defeats. It is also considering taking the issue before California voters in 2016.

"Legislators now understand this is a social justice issue that has huge popular support, and they want to be part of it," said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices.

Since Maynard's story became widely known, elected officials in Washington, D.C., Wyoming and Pennsylvania have also proposed new end-of-life laws. Lawmakers in other states including New York and Colorado are also planning legislation.

Tim Rosales, a spokesman for a California coalition opposing right-to-die bills, says the focus on Maynard has been a "well-orchestrated" campaign that distracts from the broader consequences of allowing terminally ill patients to kill themselves.

"It's all the more reason for legislators and their constituents to take a real hard look at the issue and not one just individual," said Rosales of Californians Against Assisted Suicide.
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Follow Fenit Nirappil at http://www.twitter.com/FenitN . Associated Press Writer Ben Neary in Cheyenne, Wyoming, also contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-01-21

[hawker9000]

It's just another symptom of the nanny mentality we've now adopted toward government. Legislation like this shouldn't even be necessary! It's bizarre actually! A person with a terminal illness and/or in great pain that can't be treated and resolved, should simply be able to end their life without interference or after-the-fact involvement by the government. It's simple, and it's obvious. But instead, government sticks its nose into every aspect of our lives, cradle to grave, and if it can't get it's mitts on the victim (because he's dead), then it goes after anyone else who might've provided assistance.

By having to explicitly sanction right-to-die, we necessarily DO create something of a slippery slope where people now WILL have to wonder if some people, perhaps the less affluent or more easily led or the chronically ill who represent a burden on financially-challenged national public healthcare systems, AREN'T going to be coaxed & pushed into it by the same entities that have an interest in reducing healthcare costs. We shouldn't have been painted into this corner, and we wouldn't be if people weren't being so successfully weaned away from self-reliance and individual accountability by socialist-minded opponents of personal freedom and limited government.

Edited January 21, 2015 by hawker9000

[Seastallion]

Live and let live....live and let die. Why do churches have a say over what non-adherents do or don't do?

It's all well and good for a church to have it's philosophy, and it's congregation follows it voluntarily, but the church (any church or religion) should have absolutely no influence over what the rest of the citizenry do.

Then there's government interference in private lives (and deaths). What possible social good comes from stopping a terminally ill, pain-ridden person from ending their own suffering? None.

The legislation they're proposing is weak, but a step in the right direction. Assisted suicide should not be prohibited. I can understand the hesitation in allowing assistance, but the reality is that some/many terminally ill patients will most certainly need assistance....they are after all very sick and may not be able to raise their hand to their mouth.

[Berkshire]

Now this is something I can believe in. Let those suffering be allowed to die with some dignity. But as always, religion is on the wrong side.