California Medical Association goes neutral on death with dignity

MAY 20, 2015

California Medical Association goes neutral on death with dignity

The doctors association drops long-held opposition to legislation
CMA is nation’s first group of its type to drop opposition to assisted suicide

The move improves Senate Bill 128’s chances of passage

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editor...NR0_L124180036

Debbie Ziegler, the mother of Brittany Maynard, displays a photo of her daughter while appearing before the California Senate Health Committee in March. She urged lawmakers to approve legislation allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients. | Rich Pedroncelli The Associated Press

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Ever so slowly, attitudes change for the better.

The politically influential California Medical Association announced today that it has changed a long-held position and dropped its opposition to pending death-with-dignity legislation, Senate Bill 128.

The association’s decision to take a neutral position on end-of-life legislation is a landmark. It’s the first association of physicians of its type to remove its opposition from the fraught death-with-dignity issue. For that, it deserves credit and much thanks.

Dr. Luther F. Cobb, the association’s president, said in a statement that the decision to end one’s life “is a very personal” one between a doctor and patient, adding that:

“Protecting that physician-patient relationship is essential.”

The legislation, by Sens. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, and Bill Monning, D-Carmel, itself would be a landmark. If it is signed into law, California would join a handful of states that permit what many people view as the ultimate right, that being the right to choose to end one’s life when the pain and suffering of terminal illness becomes too great.

The Wolk-Monning bill, titled the End of Life Option Act, would allow a person diagnosed with six months or less to live to request a lethal dose of medication from a physician. The drugs would have to be self-administered, and doctors could opt out of participating in such decisions.

After learning of the association’s switch, Wolk told an editorial board member that the “removal of the (doctors’) opposition is a major breakthrough.” With the medical association becoming neutral, the bill, which faces a Senate vote in June, will gain additional support, including from Republicans, she believes.

“It speaks to the larger reality, which is that the attitudes about end of life are changing,” Wolk said. “This was a historic shift nationally for a medical association.”

The California Medical Association’s opposition to assisted suicide dates to 1987 when it stated that providing medicine, technique, advice or referrals necessary for a patient to end his or her life was unethical. In the 1990s, the association condemned voluntary active euthanasia by physicians as unethical and unacceptable, and opposed physician-assisted suicide clinics.

In the decades since, public acceptance of the concept has grown as baby boomers aged. Brittany Maynard brought new attention to the issue. The 29-year-old Bay Area woman, who had terminal cancer, moved to Oregon to use that state’s Death with Dignity Act, adopted 18 years ago.

She died, as she planned, last November.

In California, too many family members have been arrested for simply carrying out their loved one’s wishes.

With California’s leading association of physicians ending its opposition to the legislation, chances are greater that terminally ill Californians will gain the right to die on their own terms.

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editor...e21445725.html

Fri May 29, 2015 3:03am EDT

Assisted suicide bill advances in California legislature

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. | BY SHARON BERNSTEIN

California lawmakers on Thursday revived a bill that would allow physician-assisted suicide in the most populous U.S. state, after a renewal of debate on end-of-life issues prompted by the death of 29-year-old Brittany Maynard last year.

The bill, which is being fought by numerous religious and medical organizations, would allow adults suffering from incurable illnesses that their doctors say will kill them within six months to request medication to end their lives.

It was approved by the state Senate appropriations committee days after the powerful California Medical Association dropped its opposition.

"We are one step closer to ensuring Californians have access to all options when they are facing the end of life," said Senator Lois Wolk, a Democrat who co-authored the bill.

Another co-author, Democratic state Senator Bill Monning, said the bill was inspired by the death of Maynard, who moved to Oregon from California so that she could commit suicide under that state's aid-in-dying law.

It was one of several bills that made it out of legislative limbo on Thursday, as lawmakers faced a June 5 deadline for passing bills out of at least one house. It now goes to the full Senate.

Also approved by committees in the assembly and senate were bills to allow high school students greater access to community college classes, legalize Internet poker and allow undocumented immigrants to purchase health insurance through the state's Covered California health insurance exchange if the federal government approves.

Backers of the assisted suicide proposal made some changes to the bill to gain more support after it initially met with strong opposition from hospitals, doctors, anti-abortion organizations and disability rights groups.

As currently written, it allows hospitals and medical providers to refuse to comply with a patient's wish for assisted suicide, and also makes it illegal to pressure or manipulate people into ending their lives.

On May 20, the California Medical Association, which still opposes the concept of assisted suicide, removed its formal opposition to the bill.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0OE02P20150529