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CA Lawmakers Consider Making End of Life Options Act Permanent
In 2023, more than 12-hundred terminally ill Californians obtained prescriptions for medical aid in dying and 69 percent took the medication.
The State Assembly is considering a bill to make permanent the law that authorizes medical aid in dying. The measure was already passed by the state senate in May. Comments from Dan Diaz, widower of well-known patient Brittany Maynard and an advocate for the bill, and Leslie Chinchilla), California state manager, Compassion & Choices Action Network.
California’s law legalizing medical aid in dying could be made permanent if lawmakers approve a bill currently before the State Assembly. Senate Bill 403 would eliminate the sunset clause in the 2015 End of Life Options Act. The law allows mentally capable, terminally ill patients with less than six months to live to get a prescription to end their life. Advocate Dan Diaz says his wife, Brittany Maynard, moved Oregon in 2014 to make use of the state’s Death With Dignity Act.
| “Brittany is gone, so now I’m fighting for all terminally ill individuals that might find themselves in Brittany’s predicament, so that they don’t have to do what she did, of leaving their home state, after being told you have six months to live.” |
The End of Life Options Act is currently set to expire in five years. Medical aid in dying is legal in 11 states plus Washington D-C, but California is the only jurisdiction with a sunset provision.
| “The California Department of Health does a yearly report on medical aid in dying. There has been no instance of coercion or abuse, and really the law is working as intended.” |
— California News Service, A Bureau of the Public News Service