In signing emotionally charged legislation allowing terminally ill people to end their own lives using drugs that can now be legally prescribed by a doctor, Gov. Jerry Brown made a hard but correct decision. “It’s still painful that I’ve lost her and it would have been better if, for me too, if Jennifer would have had the death that she wanted, if she could have taken a medication very close to the end”, said Glass’ widower, Harlan Seymour.
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“I respect the governor’s thoughtful consideration of this bill, but my life experiences have led me to a different conclusion”, she said. “And I wouldn’t deny that right to others”, wrote Brown, whose church considers suicide a sin.
The new law, called the End of Life Option Act, allows adults to receive an aid-in-dying drug from his or her physician if the physician determines said patient is suffering from a terminal disease. New Mexico is also in the mix on the issue, now battling the topic in court as distinguished from assisted suicide.
The family of Maynard attended the legislative debate in California throughout the year.
The governor said the before reaching his decision he “considered the theological and religious perspectives that any deliberate shortening of one’s life is sinful”.
States that already allow the practice include Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana.
Among the most vigorous opponents of the bill were the California Catholic Conference and the Alliance of Catholic Health Care, and a number of independent living centers cancer doctor associations.
Assisted suicide will become legal in California under a bill signed into law by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. Maynard, who suffered from incurable brain cancer, was 29 when she died.
Advocates for people with disabilities also anxious that terminally ill patients could be pressured into choosing death.
In creating legal options for the mentally competent who can take end-of-life medications on their own and have the approval of two doctors, the governor issued a statement.
“This is a dark day for California and for the Brown legacy”, the group Californians Against Assisted Suicide said in a written statement. She has moved to Orgeon to kill herself legally in 2014.
The law, which goes into effect on 1 January, makes it a crime to pressure anyone into requesting or taking assisted suicide drugs.
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“This is the biggest victory for the death-with-dignity movement since Oregon passed the nation’s first law two decades ago”, said Barbara Coombs Lee, who co-authored the Oregon Death with Dignity Act of 2014. The group warned in an October. 5 statement that people and families in the state could be harmed “by giving doctors the power to prescribe lethal overdoses to patients”.
