Update: Governor Brown has signed the bill.
One of the most controversial pieces of legislation currently on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk is the “End of Life Option Act,” which would allow physicians to prescribe lethal medication to patients who meet residency, life expectancy and other requirements.
Wait, didn’t that measure stall earlier this summer?
It did. In January, similar provisions were introduced in Senate Bill 128 of 2015. While that bill passed three Senate policy committees, it ended up stalling in the Assembly Committee on Health. (It was set for hearings twice this summer, but both hearings were canceled at the author’s request. At that time, authors stated they may retry this legislation again next year.)
In the meantime, Governor Brown called two extraordinary sessions of the Legislature to discuss California infrastructure and Medi-Cal financing.
It was during the second extraordinary session when lawmakers introduced a second end-of-life bill: AB 15XX of 2015. Lawmakers passed the bill the last day of the legislative year.
Governor Brown has not indicated whether he would sign this bill. His office did, however, criticize the Legislature for re-introducing these provisions during an extraordinary session.
If signed into law, California would join just a handful of other states to date that allow physician-assisted suicide.
The first state to pass a “Death with Dignity” Act was Oregon. It was approved through a voter initiative, Measure 16, in 1994. It went into effect in 1997, it survived a 1997 voter initiative to repeal it, and it was found constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006.
Oregon’s act should sound familiar to those following California’s bill. Oregon is where former California resident Brittany Maynard moved in order to end her own life after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Maynard gained national attention late last year when she took her story public. California Representative Lois Wolk has said the California effort is modeled after Oregon’s law, and was inspired by Maynard’s story.
Washington’s voters approved that state’s Death with Dignity Act via ballot initiative on November 4, 2008. Like Oregon’s act, in Washington a terminally ill patient who has less than six months to live, and who has met residency requirements, can “request lethal doses of medication from medical and osteopathic physicians.”
Physician aid for the dying became legal in Montana in 2009, but it was not the result of legislation or a voter initiative. In Baxter, et al, v. State of Montana ((2009) 354 Mont. 234), the Montana Supreme Court held that under Montana statute, “a terminally ill patient’s consent to physician aid in dying constitutes a statutory defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician when no other consent exceptions apply.” (Id. at 251) Please note this means that while there is a defense under some circumstances, there is no statutory framework like there is in Oregon and Washington.
Four years after Montana’s decision, the Vermont General Assembly passed the Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. This 2013 act allows “eligible Vermont residents with terminal diseases the option to be prescribed a dose of medication that, if taken, will hasten the end of their life.”
The Vermont statute, as originally enacted, had a sunset date of 2016, but the Legislature repealed that provision earlier this year.