Aid in Dying Soon Will be Available to More Americans. Few Will Choose It.

In the next coming months a couple more states are joining the ranks that are allowing terminally ill patients to choose medical euthanasia, or physician assisted suicide. The procedure will become legal in New Jersey on August 1 and in Maine on September 15, becoming the 8th and 9th states, respectively. Meaning that by the end of September, 22% of Americans that have six months or less to live theoretically will have the option to choose their own way to go.

But often the process of getting approval for the procedure is complex and contains many stumbling blocks. Opt-out provisions, which allow doctors to decline to participate and health care systems to forbid their participation, are restricting access even in some places where physician assisted suicide is legal. The newest states had a rough time getting the laws passed, as well. New Jersey’s legislature had passed a similar bill back in 2014, but Chris Christie, the governor at the time, had threatened a veto. The incoming governor was a Democrat who signed the Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act this April after it passed during the winter. Maine was unsure if the new governor, Janet Mills, would sign after her predecessor also threatened a veto. But sign she did, stating that “I do believe it is a right that should be protected by law — the right to make ultimate decisions.”

Records kept by California showed that the feared “slippery slope” that opponents said would occur indeed has failed to emerge. In 2017, just 632 people made the necessary two verbal requests to a physician, after which 241 doctors wrote prescriptions for 577 patients. So out of the 269,000 Californians that died that year, only 577 people did so through physical assisted suicide. Kim Callinan, chief executive of Compassion & Choices, says “a lot of the hypothetical claims our opponents made no longer carry so much weight with lawmakers.”

Polls also consistently show widespread approval for aid-in-dying laws.

See Paula Spain, Aid in Dying Soon Will be Available to More Americans. Few Will Choose It., New York Times, July 8, 2019.

Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.