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Showing posts with label Right to Die. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Right to Die. Show all posts

Friday, October 11, 2019

Dying is a Moral Event. NJ Law Caught Up With Morality

T. Patrick Hill
Star-Ledge Guest Column
Originally posted September 9, 2019

New Jersey’s Medical-Aid-in-Dying legislation authorizes physicians to issue a prescription to end the lives of their patients who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, are expected to die within six months, and have requested their physicians to help them do so. While the legislation does not require physicians to issue the prescription, it does require them to transfer a patient’s medical records to another physician who has agreed to prescribe the lethal medication.

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The Medical Aid in Dying Act goes even further, concluding that its passage serves the public’s interests, even as it endorses the “right of a qualified terminally ill patient …to obtain medication that the patient may choose to self-administer in order to bring about the patient’s humane and dignified death.”

The info is here.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

N.J. approves bill giving terminally ill people the right to end their lives

Susan Livio
www.nj.com
Originally posted March 25, 2019

New Jersey is poised to become the eighth state to allow doctors to write a lethal prescription for terminally ill patients who want to end their lives.

The state Assembly voted 41-33 with four abstentions Monday to pass the “Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act." Minutes later, the state Senate approved the bill 21-16.

Gov. Phil Murphy later issued a statement saying he would sign the measure into law.

“Allowing terminally ill and dying residents the dignity to make end-of-life decisions according to their own consciences is the right thing to do," the Democratic governor said. "I look forward to signing this legislation into law.”

The measure (A1504) would take effect four months after it is signed.

Susan Boyce, 55 of Rumson, smiled and wept after the final vote.

“I’ve been working on this quite a while," said Boyce, who is diagnosed with a terminal auto immune disease, Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, and needs an oxygen tank to breathe.

The info is here.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Right-to-die report will call for prior consent in dementia cases

By Robert Fife and Laura Stone
The Globe and Mail - Ottawa
Originally published February 24, 2016

A special parliamentary committee will propose Parliament adopt a new physician-assisted dying law that includes advance consent for people in early stages of dementia, sources say.

In a report to be tabled in Parliament Thursday, sources say the joint Commons-Senate committee will also address how doctors should deal with people with debilitating mental disorders and young people enduring painful and terminal illnesses.

The report recommends the government should first see how medically assisted dying works with adults before allowing it for children or people with mental illnesses.

The article is here.

Friday, October 16, 2015

UK end-of-life care 'best in world'

By Nick Triggle
BBC News
Originally posted October 6, 2015

End-of-life care in the UK has been ranked as the best in the world with a study praising the quality and availability of services.

The study of 80 countries said thanks to the NHS and hospice movement the care provided was "second to none".

Rich nations tended to perform the best - with Australia and New Zealand ranked second and third respectively.

But the report by the Economist Intelligence Unit praised progress made in some of the poorest countries.

The article and the rankings are here.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Your Right to Die Isn’t Enough

By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig
The New Republic
Originally published July 15, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Some opponents of assisted suicide legislation are concerned that, with assisted suicide on the table, exhausted doctors and cash-strapped families might coerce ill family members into taking this cheap, quick way out rather than suffering through further treatments and payments for terminal illness. Others worry that legal assisted suicide will transform culture in such a way that the option to die will eventually be interpreted as an obligation to do so after a certain point, creating a slippery slope from legal to de-facto compulsory. Still others fear that euthanasia advocates don’t appropriately take into account the possibility of spontaneous remission, and worry that readiness to end the lives of terminally ill patients would foreclose the possibility of recovery for those with the potential for it, however slim.

There is little evidence that legal euthanasia contributes to the coercion of the poor, and numbers on spontaneous remission can usually be adduced for any given terminal disease, which helps prevent the what-if objection from gaining much traction. Yet there is reason to worry about a slippery slope forming between the legal but rare option of euthanasia for the terminally ill and the haphazard elective suicide of persons with no real physical illness. At this moment, for example, a 24-year-old Belgian woman is awaiting assisted suicide for no reason other than her unhappiness. She won’t be the first: a friend of hers who also suffered from depression was euthanized for that condition less than two years ago, following in the footsteps of numerous people with sad life experiences or momentary shocks who, thanks to Belgian law, sought death instead of treatment.

The entire article is here.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Safeguarding choice at the end of life

By Dominic Wilkinson
J Med Ethics 2015;41:575-576
doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-102990

Across the world, in countries with permissive or restrictive existing legislation, debates about Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (EAS) continue to grip politicians, ethicists, physicians and the wider public.

Early debates about EAS focused on whether it could ever be ethical for a physician to actively cause the death of a patient. However, most contemporary writers, including most of the contributors to this special double issue of the JME appear to accept that such actions could, in some circumstances, be ethical. Current debate is mostly focused instead on which actions are permissible, when they are permissible, and what safeguards are necessary to protect the vulnerable.

There are two separate justifications for EAS. The first of these is based on the autonomy of competent patients, on their right to make important decisions about their own lives. Arguably, a decision about continuing or not continuing your life in the face of severe suffering is the most important decision that you could make. Correspondingly, we have strong autonomy based reasons for permitting that choice. (While some Kantians might claim that a decision to die, and thereby to end one's autonomous agency could not be compatible with autonomy and dignity, Michael Cholbi points out (see page 607) that a sophisticated Kantian position on EAS is neither completely restrictive nor permissive). The second justification for EAS is based on the interests of a patient, and a concern that continued life for some individuals may be so extraordinarily and intensely unpleasant that it would be better for them to die.

The entire article is here.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

The Death Treatment

When should people with a non-terminal illness be helped to die?

By Rachel Aviv
The New Yorker
Originally published June 22, 2015

Belgium was the second country in the world, after the Netherlands, to decriminalize euthanasia; it was followed by Luxembourg, in 2009, and, this year, by Canada and Colombia. Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide since 1942. The United States Supreme Court has recognized that citizens have legitimate concerns about prolonged deaths in institutional settings, but in 1997 it ruled that death is not a constitutionally protected right, leaving questions about assisted suicide to be resolved by each state. Within months of the ruling, Oregon passed a law that allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs for patients who have less than six months to live. In 2008, Washington adopted a similar law; Montana decriminalized assisted suicide the year after; and Vermont legalized it in 2013.

The right-to-die movement has gained momentum at a time of anxiety about the graying of the population; people who are older than sixty-five represent the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, Canada, and much of Europe. But the laws seem to be motivated less by the desires of the elderly than by the concerns of a younger generation, whose members derive comfort from the knowledge that they can control the end of their lives.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Stigma Around Physician-Assisted Dying Lingers

By Clyde Haberman
The New York Times
Originally posted on March 22, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Arguments, pro and con, have not changed much over the years. Assisted dying was and is anathema to many religious leaders, notably in the Roman Catholic Church. For the American Medical Association, it remains “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.”

Some opponents express slippery-slope concerns: that certain patients might feel they owe it to their overburdened families to call it quits. That the poor and the uninsured, disproportionately, will have their lives cut short. That medication might be prescribed for the mentally incompetent. That doctors might move too readily to bring an end to those in the throes of depression. “We should address what would give them purpose, not give them a handful of pills,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a prominent oncologist and medical ethicist, told Retro Report.

The entire article is here.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Supreme Court strikes down Canada’s assisted suicide laws

By Laura Stone
Global News
Originally posted February 6, 2015

Canada’s high court has struck down the country’s laws against physician-assisted suicide.

That means it will no longer be against the law for a doctor to help someone who is terminally ill to end their life – but the new rules won’t kick in for a year.

And it can only be done under several conditions.

In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the Criminal Code laws prohibiting physician-assisted death infringes Section 7 of the Charter, which states that everyone has right to life, liberty and security of the person.

The entire article and videos are here.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Elderly cousins undergo joint euthanasia for fear of being separated

By Lyndsey Telford
The Telegraph
Originally posted February 1, 2015

Two elderly Scottish cousins who relied on each other to get by have undergone joint euthanasia because they feared being put in separate care homes.

Stuart Henderson, 86, and Phyllis McConachie, 89, took their lives together in a Swiss clinic in November last year. Neither was terminally ill.

The pair had lived together for 40 years and managed to look after each other in a sheltered housing complex.

But, with Ms McConachie having injured her hip in a fall and with Mr Henderson’s onset dementia, the cousins worried they would be sent to different homes and separated.

Their joint deaths have sparked outrage among anti-euthanasia campaigners, who have described their case as “the ultimate abandonment” due to a lack of patient-centred care in the UK.

The entire article is here.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Why the Right to Die Movement Needed Brittany Maynard

By Keisha Ray
Bioethics.net
Originally published November 12, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Choice

In life many choices are not our own, but how we live our life is our choice. Maynard did not choose to have cancer invade her brain, but she did choose how to live her life after her diagnoses. After her diagnosis, Maynard remained doing the activities that had always made her life fulfilling—traveling, volunteering, and spending time with family and friends. Maynard made an informed choice to not let brain cancer kill her. She made the decision to choose how her life ends. And that’s one of the major aims of the right to die movement—that terminally ill patients ought to be able to choose how long they live with their disease and whether their disease will be the cause of their death. Disease takes away so many choices and puts people at the mercy of doctors, nurses, and most importantly it puts people at the mercy of their failing body. The right to die movements aims to take some of that power back.

The entire article is here.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Physician-Assisted Death

Religion and Ethics Weekly
Originally posted October 31, 2014

Cathy Lynn Grossman, senior national correspondent for Religion News Service, talks with R&E host Bob Abernethy about the case of 29-year-old Brittany Maynard, who was given six months to live after being diagnosed with advanced brain cancer. She made headlines when she pledged to end her life with the help of a doctor rather than continuing to endure her debilitating symptoms.

Several other videos on the topic can be found here.



Thursday, November 20, 2014

Terminally ill 'death with dignity' advocate dies

By Steven Dubois and Terrence Petty
The Associated Press
Originally published November 2, 2014

A terminally ill woman who renewed a nationwide debate about physician-assisted suicide has ended her young life with the lethal drugs available under Oregon's Death With Dignity Law. Brittany Maynard was 29.

Maynard, who had brain cancer, died peacefully in her bedroom Saturday "in the arms of her loved ones," said Sean Crowley, a spokesman for the advocacy group Compassion & Choices.

Weeks ago, Maynard had said she might use the lethal drugs Nov. 1, just a couple weeks short of her 30th birthday. Last week, she said she might delay the day. But she went ahead with her original plan.

The entire article is here.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

A Contemporary Death: Death with Dignity and Autonomy

By Peggy Battin
TEDMED 2014
Originally published October 29, 2014

Philosopher and bioethicist Peggy Battin tells us the moving story of how and why her husband chose to die.  She addresses death, end of life issues, and individual choices in the process.  She shares her emotional reactions to the process.


Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Last Right: Why America Is Moving Slowly on Assisted Suicide

By Ross Douthat
The New York Times Sunday Review
Originally posted on October 11, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

The tragedy here is almost deep enough to drown the political debate. But that debate’s continued existence is still a striking fact. Why, in a society where individualism seems to be carrying the day, is the right that Maynard intends to exercise still confined to just a handful of states? Why has assisted suicide’s advance been slow, when on other social issues the landscape has shifted dramatically in a libertarian direction?

Twenty years ago, a much more rapid advance seemed likely. Some sort of right to suicide seemed like a potential extension of “the right to define one’s own concept of existence” that the Supreme Court had invoked while upholding a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Polls in the 1990s consistently showed more support — majority support, depending on the framing — for physician-assisted suicide than for what then seemed like the eccentric cause of same-sex marriage.

The entire article is here.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Judge rules patients in New Mexico have fundamental right to get aid in dying

By Susan Montoya Bryan
Associated Press
Originally posted January 13, 2014

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A New Mexico judge has ruled some patients can choose a physician's aid in getting prescription medications to peacefully end their lives.

Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash ruled Monday that the ability of competent, terminally ill patients to choose aid in dying is a fundamental right under the state constitution.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Assisted Suicide on Legal Agenda in Several States

By Susan Haigh
Associated Press
Originally posted February 8, 2013

A push for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide is under way in a half-dozen states where proponents say they see strong support for allowing doctors to prescribe mentally competent, dying individuals with the medications needed to end their own lives.

The large number of baby boomers facing end-of-life issues themselves is seen to have made the issue more prominent in recent years. Groups such as Compassion & Choices, a national end-of-life advocacy organization, have been working to advance the cause.

Advocates received a boost from last year's ballot question in Massachusetts on whether to allow physicians to help the terminally ill die. Although the vote failed, it helped to spark a national discussion, said Mickey MacIntyre, chief program officer for Compassion & Choices.

"The Massachusetts initiative lifted the consciousness of the nation and in particular the Northeast region to this issue that there are other alternatives patients and their families should have an opportunity to access," MacIntyre said.

Bills legalizing assisted suicide are being considered in Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Kansas and Hawaii — and in Massachusetts, where proponents decided to resume their efforts after the public vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks legislative trends. There are also bills related to the issue under consideration in New Hampshire, New York, Arizona and Montana.

In Connecticut, which has banned the practice since 1969, a group of lawmakers said Tuesday that the legislature's first public hearing on the subject would probably be held this month. At least two bills on the issue have so far been proposed in this year's session of the Connecticut legislature.

The entire story is here.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Massachusetts Debates ‘Death With Dignity’

By Paula Span
The New Old Age Blog: Caring and Coping
The New York Times
Originally published May 29, 2012

Consider this an update. Last fall, when I talked with some of the 350 volunteers circulating petitions, they sounded confident about collecting 70,000 certified signatures by the end of the year. They more than succeeded, which meant the state legislature had until May 1 to act. It didn’t — to no one’s surprise — so volunteers for the organization backing the referendum, Dignity 2012, have headed back out with their clipboards.

If they can gather another 11,000 signatures by July 2, the public will decide whether the state’s physicians can lawfully prescribe medications with which terminally ill patients can end their lives. (You can read the exact language here.)

Oregon enacted essentially the same law allowing self-administration of lethal drugs in 1997, and Washington in 2009. Though their adversaries often used “slippery slope” arguments, the number of residents who have taken advantage of the laws remains quite small. After meeting all the requirements and undergoing the mandated waiting periods, 114 people received lethal prescriptions last year in Oregon and 103 in Washington. In both states, about a third of those who qualified ultimately decided not to use the drugs.
But the controversy was intense in those states, with contentious public debate and expensive media campaigns, and it will be this round, too. In both camps, fund-raising has already begun.

“It has potent national implications,” the Rev. J. Brian Hehir, secretary for health care and social services at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, said of the referendum. “We are talking about fundamental human values, deeply personal choices.”

The entire blog entry is here.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

British Court: Right-to-Die Case Can Proceed

By Maria Cheng
Originally published March 12, 2012

Tony Nicklinson
In a case that challenges Britain's definition of murder, a severely disabled man who says his life has no "privacy or dignity" will be granted a hearing on his request that a doctor be allowed to give him a lethal injection.

Tony Nicklinson suffered a paralyzing stroke in 2005 that left him unable to speak or move below his neck. The former rugby player and corporate manager requires constant care and communicates largely by blinking, although his mind has remained unaffected.

"I am fed up with my life and don't want to spend the next 20 years or so like this," Nicklinson said in a statement.

In January, Nicklinson asked the High Court to declare that any doctor who kills him with his consent will not be charged with murder. On Monday, a judge said the request may proceed, making it the first right-to-die case of its kind to get a hearing in a British court.

The 57-year-old's condition is stable, though Nicklinson has refused since 2007 to take any life-prolonging drugs recommended by doctors, including heart medication or blood thinners.

The ministry of justice argued that granting Nicklinson's request would require changing the law on murder and that such changes must be made by Parliament. The government had applied to have the case dismissed.

In his ruling, Justice William Charles said Nicklinson was "now inviting the court to cross the Rubicon" and that his case had "an arguable base."

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Georgia Court Overturns Assisted Suicide Restrictions

Court Finds that Law Banning People from Advertisng Suicide Violated Free Speech Rights

By Greg Bluestein
Associated Press

Georgia's top court struck down a state law that restricted assisted suicides, siding on Monday with four members of a suicide group who said the law violated their free speech rights.

The Georgia Supreme Court's unanimous ruling found that the law violates the free speech clauses of the U.S. and Georgia constitution. It means that four members of the Final Exit Network who were charged in February 2009 with helping a 58-year-old cancer-stricken man die won't have to stand trial, defense attorneys said.

Georgia law doesn't expressly forbid assisted suicide. But lawmakers in 1994 adopted a law that bans people from publicly advertising suicide, hoping to prevent assisted suicide from the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the late physician who sparked the national right-to-die debate.

The law makes it a felony for anyone who "publicly advertises, offers or holds himself out as offering that he or she will intentionally and actively assist another person in the commission of suicide and commits any overt act to further that purpose."

The court's opinion, written by Justice Hugh Thompson, found that lawmakers could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction of free speech, or sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide that were followed by the act. But lawmakers decided to do neither, he said.

"The State has failed to provide any explanation or evidence as to why a public advertisement or offer to assist in an otherwise legal activity is sufficiently problematic to justify an intrusion on protected speech rights," the ruling said.

State attorneys said they were reviewing the order. The network's members said they were thrilled with the decision.

'Turned out to be a boondoggle'

"This was politically motivated and ideologically driven as opposed to being, in any way, motivated by sound legal practice," said Ted Goodwin, the group's former president and one of the four defendants. "I'm just sorry that as many people have been put through what they've been put through in what turned out to be a boondoggle."

The challenge was brought by four members of the network who were arrested in February 2009 after John Celmer's death at his north Georgia home. They were arrested after an eight-month investigation by state authorities, in which an undercover agent posing as someone seeking to commit suicide infiltrated the group. Prosecutors say group members helped Celmer use an "exit hood" connected to a helium tank to kill himself.

The entire story is here.