After more than a decade of work, a recently retired openly humanist member of the Delaware State House got to see his important “death with dignity” bill become law.
This was the end of a 10-year effort by the now-retired “Unitarian Universalist humanist" Paul Baumbach. It was actually passed last session only to be vetoed by Gov. John Carney. This year, with a new governor, Matt Meyer, it passed again and was signed into law.
The new law is crammed with safeguards so that this choice is available only to terminally-ill patients who are acting of their own free will and are fully aware of what they are doing. As Mehta puts it:
This was meant to be a last resort for patients with no other options available to them, not a first resort for the desperate. It’s the humane approach for people whose only path forward involves unimaginable suffering.
Delaware becomes the tenth state with such an end-of-life law even though a recent Gallup poll showed 66-71% of Americans support allowing physician-assisted suicide. The percentage variance came from how the question was phrased, with the higher percentage resulting from including the word "painless."
And in fact, there's more good news on the same front. On May 27, the French National Assembly approved a bill to legalize assisted dying. The bill, which has the support of President Emmanuel Macron, is expected to pass the Senate, with polls saying 90% of the public supports such laws.
France will join several other European countries along with Canada and Australia in having a right-to-die law.
I know this issue can be divisive but I have had the experience of watching someone grievously ill whose life had shrunk to just surviving suffering and who openly expressed a request to "pull the plug" have to continue to suffer to the end because this option was not available. Neither the patient nor those who care about them should have to go through that.
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