Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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A judge ordered a halt Tuesday to California’s right-to-die law for terminally ill patients, ruling that it was illegally taken up and passed during a special legislative session devoted to health care funding. Unless a higher court intervenes, the law, in effect since June 2016, will become unenforceable next week.
The law allows a dying adult patient to take lethal medication that a doctor has prescribed. Before that, two doctors must have determined that the patient would die within six months and was mentally competent to choose death.
State health officials reported that between June 2016 and the end of that year, 173 Californians were prescribed life-ending drugs by their doctors and 111 of them took the drugs. Similar laws are in effect in six other states and the District of Columbia.
A group of doctors represented by the Life Legal Defense Foundation challenged the California law, arguing that it lacked safeguards and could be exploited by greedy relatives. Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia refused to block the measure from taking effect in 2016, citing its requirements for medical evaluation, but refused to dismiss the suit and expressed concern over how the law had been adopted.
On Tuesday, Ottolia agreed with opponents that the Legislature had lacked authority to consider and enact the bill during a special session that Gov. Jerry Brown called in 2015 to address emergency needs in the state’s health care system — specifically, funding shortages for Medi-Cal, disability care and in-home nursing care.
California’s assisted-dying law blocked by judge
Awe come on, man. Get it together.
The law allows a dying adult patient to take lethal medication that a doctor has prescribed. Before that, two doctors must have determined that the patient would die within six months and was mentally competent to choose death.
State health officials reported that between June 2016 and the end of that year, 173 Californians were prescribed life-ending drugs by their doctors and 111 of them took the drugs. Similar laws are in effect in six other states and the District of Columbia.
A group of doctors represented by the Life Legal Defense Foundation challenged the California law, arguing that it lacked safeguards and could be exploited by greedy relatives. Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia refused to block the measure from taking effect in 2016, citing its requirements for medical evaluation, but refused to dismiss the suit and expressed concern over how the law had been adopted.
On Tuesday, Ottolia agreed with opponents that the Legislature had lacked authority to consider and enact the bill during a special session that Gov. Jerry Brown called in 2015 to address emergency needs in the state’s health care system — specifically, funding shortages for Medi-Cal, disability care and in-home nursing care.
California’s assisted-dying law blocked by judge
Awe come on, man. Get it together.
