Broadening California's End of Life Option Act (EOLOA)
End-of-Life Choices
No Californian should have to leave home to have a comfortable and dignified death.
Proposed Changes To Broaden California's End-of-Life Option
Legislative Proposal
Senator Catherine Blakespear is authoring a bill to expand the current EOLOA by incorporating our three requests shown below. After reviewing this page, click on the "Join Our Effort" button below to support our proposal. You will be redirected to a form in support of the three proposed requests. Your voice matters!
Request #1:
Request #1:
Request #1:
Broaden the eligibility criteria for MAiD to allow for inclusion of individuals that are suffering from grievous and irremediable diseases and have longer life expectancies than six months.
Rationale: Most other countries with MAiD do not require that the individual has less than six months to live. Instead, the person requesting MAiD mu
Broaden the eligibility criteria for MAiD to allow for inclusion of individuals that are suffering from grievous and irremediable diseases and have longer life expectancies than six months.
Rationale: Most other countries with MAiD do not require that the individual has less than six months to live. Instead, the person requesting MAiD must have a grievous and irremediable disease that is causing them unbearable suffering. There are many people who may not be within six months of dying, but who suffer greatly every day from their disease. For those on palliative care, it may not necessarily alleviate their suffering or if it does, renders them drowsy, dull, and unable to adequately participate in their own life. Because they are not eligible for MAiD, some who suffer from grievous and irremediable diseases may choose to utilize violent means to end their lives or purposely overdose on their prescription medications.
Request #2:
Request #1:
Request #1:
Allow an individual the choice to self-ingest or self-administer the aid-in-dying drugs with an IV infusion in accordance with their personal preferences and medical needs.
Rationale: There are people who are otherwise currently eligible for MAiD but are unable to ingest or self-administer the medications. Better provisions must be made
Allow an individual the choice to self-ingest or self-administer the aid-in-dying drugs with an IV infusion in accordance with their personal preferences and medical needs.
Rationale: There are people who are otherwise currently eligible for MAiD but are unable to ingest or self-administer the medications. Better provisions must be made for this group of people. While having a nasogastric tube placed or an enema with rectal tube placed has been offered as a potential “fix” for those who can’t swallow, these options are physically trying and/or humiliating for the dying individual. In countries that allow either ingestion or IV infusion, the vast majority of individuals and physicians (95% in the Netherlands and 98% in Canada) choose IV infusion as it is more reliable and faster than ingestion.
The decision to utilize oral or IV delivery of MAiD drugs should be left up to the agreed upon preference of the patient and physician as is the case with every other medical decision.
Request #3:
Request #1:
Request #3:
Allow a person with early to mid-stage dementia to be evaluated for and access Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) when two physicians find that they have sufficient capacity to understand the consequences of their choice.
Rationale: A recent update to the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Facts and Figures in California: Current status a
Allow a person with early to mid-stage dementia to be evaluated for and access Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) when two physicians find that they have sufficient capacity to understand the consequences of their choice.
Rationale: A recent update to the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Facts and Figures in California: Current status and Future Projections report showed the number of people living with dementia will more than double from 991,263 estimated in 2019 to over 2.1 million in 2040. One in five Californians over the age of 65 will develop dementia.
Today it is virtually impossible for people with dementia to get MAiD within California; however, many within the early to mid-stages of the disease have the capacity to make their own health care decisions and to understand what they desire when they request MAiD. People living with dementia maintain the right to make medical decisions if they have capacity, so why should it be different when requesting MAiD?
Key Points
Polling results show that a significant number of Americans support MAiD:
In 2019, 75% of Californians supported the EOLOA.
In 2020, a Gallup poll showed that 74% of Americans think that when a person has an incurable disease, doctors should be able to end a patient’s life upon their request.
In 2021, a Susquehanna Polling & Research Poll found that nationally, voters are eight times “more likely” to vote for a candidate for the state legislature if they sponsor or support MAiD legislation.
In 2023, a nationwide poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling found that 79% of respondents with a disability believe that MAID should be legal for mentally competent adults.
Additional compelling reasons to support our three requests:
Respect for autonomy: Decisions about the time and circumstances of death are very personal. A competent individual should have the right to choose when, where, how, and with whom their death will happen.
Individual liberty vs. state interest: MAiD is health care, and as such should be a private discussion between a person and their health care provider. The state should not interfere with an individual’s freedom in this most intimate decision and their constitutional right to privacy.
Cost: Expanding California’s EOLOA has no financial impact on California, but potentially saves millions of dollars for constituents and insurance companies.
Rebuttal #1
The “Slippery Slope”: An argument sometimes used against MAiD is that it is impossible to set secure limits and that an individual could be taken advantage of. Since the first MAiD law was passed in Oregon almost 30 years ago, there has not been a single documented case of abuse. Over two decades of rigorously observed and documented MAiD experiences show that the law works with none of the problems that opponents predicted. In the California Department of Public Health’s July 2023 report, the majority of the 853 Californians that utilized MAiD in 2022 were 60 years or older, educated, and had health insurance, with 66.0% having cancer, 11.8% having cardiovascular disease, 8.6% having a neurological disease, 6.8% having a respiratory disease, and the remaining 6.8% having other diseases such as kidney disease, endocrine/nutritional/metabolic disease, immune-mediated disease, or cerebrovascular disease.
Rebuttal #2
The Moral/Religious Argument: Some religious groups are opposed to MAiD; however, their opposition to abortion has not led the state of California to take away a woman’s right to choose. Why should it be different with respect to an end-of-life choice?
While some religious groups may not support MAiD, other religious leaders around the world do support MAiD. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Dying people should have the right to choose how and when they leave Mother Earth. I believe that, alongside the wonderful palliative care that exists, their choices should include a dignified assisted death.” Bishop Shelby Spong said, “I am a Christian whose faith has led him to champion the legal, moral, and ethical right that I believe every individual should be given — to die with dignity and to have the freedom to choose when and how that dignified death might be accomplished.”
Resources
Download Our Legislative Requests Which Broaden California's End-of-Life Option Act (EOLOA)