State: 111 terminally ill end lives under new California law
SAN DIEGO (AP) — California health officials reported Tuesday that 111 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in the first six months after a 2016 law made the option legal in the nation's most populous state.
According to the data generated from forms doctors were required to submit between June 9 and Dec. 31, 2016, a total of 191 people received life-ending drugs after being diagnosed with having less than six months to live and 111 people took them and died.
Christian Burkin, spokesman for California Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman, who helped write the law, said while the data is limited, the numbers showing who took the drugs and also how many requested the prescriptions but did not take the drugs indicate the End of Life Option Act is being implemented as Eggman and the other authors of the law intended.
Some see providing the choice to the dying as a logical evolution in a medical care system advanced in helping people live longer but limited in preventing slow, painful deaths.