Seniors champion right-to-die issue
The Times-Standard
Eureka Times Standard
The Congress of California Seniors announced that it will make the issue of end-of-life choices -- and the right to make them -- its top 2006 legislative priority.
Leaders of many of California's premier senior citizens groups, and Assembly co-authors Patty Berg, D-Eureka, and Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, joined the congress at a capitol news conference to launch a push for aid in dying for terminally ill patients through passage of Assembly Bill 651, the California Compassionate Choices Act, according to a statement from the senior group.
”Seniors who are faced with a terminal diagnosis deserve the dignity and self-empowerment to make their own end-of-life decisions without interference of the courts, political bodies or other institutions,” said Hank Lacayo, president of the Congress of California Seniors. “Seniors, and all terminally ill Californians, deserve the peace of mind to know they will be able to make critical choices about their final days.”
Other senior groups have also joined the cause, including the California Commission on Aging, Older Women's League of California, Gray Panthers and the California Seniors Coalition.
”Evidence from Oregon shows that when dying patients are empowered with a legal choice for peaceful dying the medical system responds with more and better care,” said Ruth Kletzing, president of the Sacramento chapter of the Older Women's League.
AB 651 would allow a terminally ill adult of sound mind who has less than six months to live to obtain a prescription for life-ending medication. The measure, modeled on Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, includes a list of safeguards and restrictions.
It requires two physicians to agree that the patient is terminally ill without hope of recovery, that the patient wait through two cooling-off periods and that the patient administer the medication.
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