California legislature approves physician assisted suicide

MoonHowler

New York Times:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — 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 own 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.

Leaders of the “death with dignity” movement said they hoped the passage of the California law could be a turning point.

As human beings, we should have control over our own deaths with dignity if we are faced with a terminal illness.  Good for California.  There are now 4 civilized states in the Union.  Only 46 more to go.

Of course there have to be safe-guards.  However, why should the state have the final jurisdiction over our very lives.  Anyone who has ever been with a loved one with a terminal illness knows exactly what I am talking about.

New York lawmakers introduces Death with Dignity bill

MoonHowler

Huffingtonpost.com:

New York state lawmakers have introduced a “death with dignity” bill that would make the state the sixth in the U.S. to allow terminally ill adults to end their own lives with doctor-prescribed medicine.

“The option to end one’s suffering when facing the final stages of a terminal illness should be a basic human right, and not dependent upon one’s zip code,” state Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island) said in a statement Tuesday.

Savino is the primary co-sponsor of the New York End-of-Life Options Act, which would allow doctors to prescribe “medication that a patient can self-administer to bring about a peaceful and humane death.”

The bill, introduced last week, is modeled after Oregon’s “Death With Dignity” law, which grabbed headlines in October after Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old with terminal brain cancer, moved to the state from California in order to end her life. Maynard was surrounded by her family in Portland when she died on Nov. 1.

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Diane Rehm: the voice for death with dignity

MoonHowler

rehm

Washingtonpost.com:

Diane Rehm and her husband John had a pact: When the time came, they would help each other die.

John’s time came last year. He could not use his hands. He could not feed himself or bathe himself or even use the toilet. Parkinson’s had ravaged his body and exhausted his desire to live.

“I am ready to die,” he told his Maryland doctor. “Will you help me?”

The doctor said no, that assisting suicide is illegal in Maryland. Diane remembers him specifically warning her, because she is so well known as an NPR talk show host, not to help. No medication. No pillow over his head. John had only one option, the doctor said: Stop eating, stop drinking.

So that’s what he did. Ten days later, he died.

For Rehm, the inability of the dying to get legal medical help to end their lives has been a recurring topic on her show. But her husband’s slow death was a devastating episode that helped compel her to enter the contentious right-to-die debate. “I feel the way that John had to die was just totally inexcusable,” Rehm said in a long interview in her office. “It was not right.”

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Judge rules pregnant brain dead woman must have life support removed

MoonHowler

New York Times:

FORT WORTH — A Texas judge ruled on Friday that a Fort Worth hospital must remove the life support of a pregnant brain-dead woman, siding with the husband and family in a case that has drawn national attention.

The judge, R. H. Wallace Jr. of State District Court in Tarrant County, ordered John Peter Smith Hospital to pronounce the woman, Marlise Muñoz, dead, and remove her from life support by 5 p.m. on Monday.

Ms. Muñoz, 33, has been on life support since Nov. 26, when she collapsed on her kitchen floor from what appeared to be a blood clot in her lung. She was 14 weeks pregnant. Ms. Muñoz’s husband, Erick Muñoz, 26, as well as her mother and father, said they were told by the hospital that she was brain-dead. They said they had asked the doctors to remove her from respirators, as Ms. Muñoz had urged them to do if she was ever in that situation.

Doctors refused, citing a state law that prevents them from withdrawing or withholding “life-sustaining treatment” from a pregnant patient, and her husband filed suit asking a judge to order the doctors to remove her from the machines.

Mr. Muñoz’s lawyer argued Friday that keeping her on life support would set a dangerous precedent in future cases of pregnant brain-dead women.

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