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Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Tuesday intended to streamline the state’s process of approving requests by terminally ill patients to end their lives.
Senate Bill 380 will reduce the current mandatory 15-day waiting period between requests for assisted suicide medication to 48 hours and will require health care providers to post their assisted suicide policies on their websites.
A 2018 study by Kaiser Permanente Southern California found that roughly one-third of nearly 400 terminally ill people who requested assisted suicide medication died during the 15-day waiting period.
Newsom signed SB 380 six years to the day that former Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s End of Life Option Act, which first gave terminally ill but mentally capable people the option of ending their life via prescribed medication.
Assembly member Jim Wood, D-Santa Rosa, and state Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, co-authored the law, which received support from advocacy groups such as the Compassion and Choices Action Network.
“We cannot thank Gov. Gavin Newsom enough for his support of this compassionate act,” Kim Callinan, Compassion and Choices Action Network president and CEO, said in a statement. “With his signature, eligible terminally ill adults will soon be able to more easily access the End of Life Option Act without needless suffering and unnecessary roadblocks.”
The provisions of SB 380 will take effect after Jan 1, 2022.
The sub-headling “New bill streamlines assisted suicide approval process” and repeated use of the word “suicide” in the text of the article are inappropriately prejudicial. The wording reveals either opposition to the new law or ignorance of progress on the right to die for the terminally ill. “Assisted death” would have been the better/correct term.
And who picked that picture of a bleak ward-like room with empty beds? I can’t help but think that the picture editor is editorializing against the new law, too. Or is, at best, ignorant about the right-to-die movement and those who can take advantage of it to end suffering – usually at home and surrounded by their families.
Thanks to the legislators who passed SB380 and to Governor Newsom for signing it.
Dear Monroe,
Yes, I totally agree with your remarks. Thanks for posting them here. I am disappointed that the Palo Alto Online Editor(s) would opt to feature this negative, prejudicial article in Palo Alto Online.
pearl
Amazingly, the state of CA still has on its books the state death penalty (state lynching?) but now has better right to die legislation. Someone with Alzheimers’ diagnosis still can’t ask help to die when still sentient, and has to go to Dignitas in Zurich or to Holland to effectuate that end. Reminds me of Texans having to go to Mexico, New Mexico, Oklahoma etc. to abort the product of incest or rape.
Do you think that Tesla is moving its headquarters to Texas because it wants to continue to have discriminatory practices which landed the company with ?$130m in damages for hate crimes it permitted to continue at its work place? Forum shopping?
Dear Editor,
In any future articles on the subject of end-of-life laws or choices, please use the term, “aid-in-dying,” the current and least prejudiced term. Make sure article authors do their research, including sources such as Compassion and Choices.
In Catholicism, suicide is considered a sin and I assume this medical-assisted version is also deemed unacceptable in other faiths.
Based on their non-deity beliefs, this measure is perhaps best suited and reserved for agnostics and atheists.