Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Ottolia today ruled to allow the lawsuit against the California End of Life Option Act to proceed. While the judge had already rightly ruled the law poses no threat to anyone, he decided there was enough grounds for the challenge to go ahead.
The trial setting conference is scheduled for October 20, 2017. In the meantime, the End of Life Option Act is still in effect, providing peace of mind to Californians.
Even as the law continues empowering Californians to control their dying process, we remain vigilant. The Death With Dignity National Center will be relentless in our efforts to protect patients from these political attempts to derail your assisted dying law.
We must—and we will—protect the law we fought so hard to pass.
In every state where Death with Dignity laws have been approved, opponents have tried to stop implementation through the courts. Every time, the courts have rejected their challenges and sided with terminally ill patients. In Vermont in April, a case similar to California’s, using the same tactics of hiring doctors to serve as plaintiffs, was dismissed. We have won similar lawsuits in Oregon, Washington, and federal courts, when our opponents threatened to thwart those states’ Death with Dignity laws.
Three in four Californians support allowing terminally ill people who meet the safeguards in the Act to self-administer medication to end their life peacefully. By contrast, the plaintiffs are anti-choice physicians backed by a couple of shadowy groups, with a religious, radical-right agenda targeting LGBT Americans, a woman’s right to choose, and Death with Dignity. By attempting to derail the laws using the same tired, outlandish arguments we’ve heard for more than 20 years, they are trying to deny terminally ill Californians access to expanded options at end-of-life.
The Death with Dignity National Center is dedicated to bringing the option of Death with Dignity to eligible terminally ill patients everywhere. With your help, we will persist in our efforts to protect patients from these frivolous, misguided potshots at the law.
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