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Finally, when all requirements have been met, the physician will prescribe the medications and the patient must wait at least 48 hours to pick up the medication from the pharmacy. Once the patient picks up the medication, they are allowed to use it whenever the patient chooses, knowing that using it is completely voluntary and optional. The Death with Dignity Act got a lot of attention in the U.S. when the young beautiful Brittany Maynard brought new attention to the topic when she highly publicized her decision to end her own life under the Oregon Death with Dignity laws.
Maynard was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at the age of 29 after suffering from months of debilitating headaches. Four months after being diagnosed she was given a prognosis of six months to live. Because her tumor was so large, her doctors recommended radiation treatment which had horrible side effects, and her quality of life as she knew it would be gone. After a lot of research Maynard and her family came to the heartbreaking conclusion that no treatment was going to save her life and the recommended treatments would literally destroy any quality of life that she did have.
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She considered hospice in her San Francisco Bay area home but didn't want her family to watch her suffer and die that way. Maynard started looking into Death with Dignity laws and quickly decided that this would be the best option for her and her family.
She had to uproot from California and move to Oregon because Oregon was one of the only states (there were only five at the time) that offered Death with Dignity.
Maynard met all of the requirements for Death with Dignity in the state of Oregon but would have to establish residency, find new doctors, buy a new home, get an Oregon driver's license, change change her voter registration, and her husband had to take a leave of absence from his job. Most of these things are not easy tasks. They can be very time to consuming, especially trying to perform them with a terminal illness. Maynard received her life-ending medication and kept it until she was ready. She was not suicidal, she did not want to die, but the fact was that she was dying and she wanted to end her life on her terms. Maynard became a huge advocate for the Death with Dignity act and felt that nobody should have the right to take away the option from someone who is terminally ill. Maynard celebrated her husband's birthday on October 26th with him and their family and decided that she wanted to pass soon after that unless her condition took a dramatic turn for the better. On November 1st, 2014, Maynard decided that her suffering was too great. She chose to end her life upstairs in her bedroom with her husband and family by her side to say goodbye. She took her prescribed medications and went to sleep forever peacefully.
Even though Maynard’s story raised new awareness about the legalization of assisted suicide, a Marist poll taken in 2016 that was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus found that 61 percent of Americans do not support physician-assisted suicide, and 57 percent said that the legalization of such measures would lead them to distrust their doctors, and only 22 percent said they saw the issue as a legislative priority in that year. On October 5th, 2015 California became the fifth state to enact an assisted suicide law. This law is called the End of Life Option Act (EOLOP) and runs along within the same guidelines as the other states that have aid in dying laws. Getting this law passed in California was not easy. Bill SB128 was introduced by State Senator Lois Wolk in Sacramento, California. There were many terminally ill patients present when the bill was announced the capital who were begging for the law to be enacted. One of the women there was representing her aunt who had taken her own life by shooting herself to end her suffering. The opposing side argued that assisting and taking a human life is against everything that physicians stand for and defiles the reputation and meaning of being a physician. They also argued that we the people are not God’s and that God is watching us and God will judge us if we pass this bill. The bill had the support of nearly 70 percent of Californians but the powerful Catholic church helped to persuade lawmakers to stall it in the legislature. That opposition was led by Ned Dolejsi, the church's top strategist in the state. Catholic leadership is so opposed to the EOLOP bill because from the perspective of their faith, there is the reality that God is God and we are not. From the perspective of society and public policy, there are dynamics of a very competitive healthcare system, and when you become a burden, or when you need cancer treatment or need 24-hour care, the interest in the society of providing those over time will go away, which places people in a very vulnerable situation.
The mentally, ill, disabled, and those who are poor will be the people who are inappropriately steered to move toward being for the bill to pass To get Death with Dignity laws to be legalized in all 50 states, someone would need to contact their states local elected officials and propose their ideas for getting the law into place. If the elected official wants to try to make it a law they will then write a bill. A bill can start in either house of Congress when it is introduced by its primary official, Senator, or a Representative. The Representatives or Senators will then meet in a small group to research, talk about, and possibly modify the proposed bill. They will vote to accept or reject the bill and its changes before sending it to the House or Senate floor for debate or to a subcommittee for further research. Members of the House or Senate can now debate the bill and propose changes or amendments before voting. If the majority vote for and passes the bill, it will then move to the other house to go through a similar process of committees, debate, and voting. Both houses have to agree on the same version of the final bill before it goes to the President. When the bill reaches the President, he or she can sign and approve the bill to which the bill now becomes law. The President can also veto the bill and send it back to Congress with the reasons for the veto. Congress can override the veto with a ⅔’s vote of those present in both the House and the Senate and the bill will become law. The President also has the option to choose no action. If Congress is in session, after ten days of no answer from the President, the bill will then automatically become law. If Congress adjourns within the ten days after giving the President the bill, the President can choose not to sign it and the bill will not become law.
Patient must wait 48 hours to pick up prescribed medication. (2022, May 27). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/right-to-die-essay
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