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August 15, 2016 02:53 PM UTC

"End of Life Options" Qualifies For 2016 Colorado Ballot

  • 19 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Statement from Yes on Colorado End of Life Options:

The Yes on Colorado End-of-Life Options campaign today was notified that Coloradans will be able to vote for the measure on their November ballots. The measure will allow terminally ill, mentally capable adults who are Colorado residents access medication to that would allow them to shorten the dying process if suffering becomes unbearable.

“Today we are one step closer to ensuring that Coloradans have control over all of their health care decisions when facing terminal illness,” said Julie Selsberg, co-petitioner of the measure. “End of life decisions are very intimate and personal. This proposal encourages more discussion between patients and doctors about the patient’s end of life wishes and allows doctors who wish to provide this very compassionate care the ability to do so. “

Selsberg was at her father’s side as he slowly died from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) and helped him write an open letter to Colorado lawmakers asking them to authorize medical aid in dying…

The measure is modeled after Oregon legislation that has been in place for nearly 20 years without any proven instances of abuse or fraud. Like Oregon, the Colorado measure includes precautions to protect patients.

—–

euthanasia-supporter-speaks-with-other-supporters-outside-scottish-parliamentA release from Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams announces that a statewide ballot measure to allow certain terminally ill patients in Colorado to receive physician assistance with ending their own lives has qualified for the 2016 ballot:

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced today that a proposal that would allow terminally ill Coloradans to obtain a prescription drug to bring about their deaths will be on the ballot this November.

Backers of the “Medical Aid in Dying” proposal on Aug. 4. submitted their signatures. A 5-percent random sample of the submitted signatures projected the number of valid signatures to be greater than 110 percent of the total number of signatures required for placement on the ballot.

The “aid in dying” measure, which would change state law, is the third citizens’ initiative to successfully make the ballot. Initiative No. 145 permits” mentally capable” Colorado adults who have been diagnosed with an illness and have less than six months live to self-administer a drug that would cause their death.

Euthanasia opponents are frequently, though not always, motivated by similar “sanctity of life” religious arguments that we’ve seen used in long-running debates over reproductive choice. The issue has gained prominence in recent years, especially after a young California woman with an inoperable brain tumor named Brittany Maynard put a human face on terminally ill Americans seeking a compassionate end to their suffering in 2014. Maynard moved from California to Oregon specifically to take advantage of that state’s “death with dignity law.” Five states including California now have such a law on the books.

Should Colorado be next? We expect this to be a debate that plays out both in the public and most private of spheres.

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19 thoughts on ““End of Life Options” Qualifies For 2016 Colorado Ballot”

    1. Well, maybe not only God.

      Moderatus says:

      August 28, 2014 at 10:21 AM MDT

      Moderatus says:

      August 28, 2015 at 2:01 PM MDT

      Please Democrats, run on abolishing the death penalty in 2016. Bank the state senate on it. Please do that!

      Moderatus says:

      September 15, 2015 at 3:11 PM MDT

      Put your money where your mouth is, Colorado Pols! Tell the Democrats to run in 2016 on abolishing the death penalty. Tell the candidates only 5% of voters care. See what happens.

      This poll isn't worth its weight in cowpies.

    2. We aren't governed by religious law. If your religion says there is a God who should choose… fine for you. You won't have to choose a medically assisted exit if you don't want to.  Nobody else is required to live by your religious beliefs so leave your personal  beliefs about God and what that God wants out of  it. We're talking about secular, not religious, law in a country in which government is confined to the sphere of secular matters leaving religious matters up to each individual.

      There are legit reasons to support or oppose. Forcing the law to conform to your particular religion isn’t among them.

      1. I dunno' . . . 

        if Dildus is right on this,

         (. . . and, oh yeah, you bet I'm fully aware of the humor and irony in that absurdist assumption)

        wouldn't that make war and many of those other CIA specialities sort of, you know, immoral ???

    6. She's busy right now working on her immigration status in the off event Drumpf peels one off in November . . . 

      (. . . and here you probably thought that she already knew everything that's going to happen in the future???)

      Give her a break, try exercising some puny thought yourself occasionally — let god concentrate on the big stuff . . . 

      . . . like finally getting the Cubs into The Series !

      (PS — she tell's me she thinks you're a hopeless dumb ass.  She'll be conserving her effort for folks who have a chance.)

  2. I'm frequently interested in how "small government" supporters oppose efforts to limit the power of government.

    It seems to me every time someone goes on a mechanical ventilator, installs a pacemaker, or takes advantage of medical care, it is "interfering" with the hour God has ordained. If you can justify the "it is medicine, and God provides that as a way to live" theology, can't you do the same with medicine for the right to die?

    1. Don't humor him. It doesn't matter what his views on what God thinks are. They are not relevant in matters of law that affect everyone of every and no religion. We don't live under Christian or Judeo-Christian Sharia law. 

  3. Bravo. The voters will get a chance to inject some much-needed liberty and enlightened civilization into this area of the law. Arguably not everything it should be, but it's a step in the right direction.

  4. I've unfortunately been at my share of hospice care death beds, both in people’s homes and in a hospice facility, over the last few years which have thankfully ended as well as one could hope with excellent care, compassion and pain management. We also lost a 105 year old loved one in her sleep after no particular illness besides the winding down of life. But such relatively gentle deaths aren't always possible. Sometimes there are true horrors of suffering and agonizing entrapment. In those instances and in accordance with the express wishes of the dying I believe the way out should be eased. 

    A member of my dying father's girl friend's church overheard a nurse conferring with me in hospice about pain management very close to the end. This woman had the nerve to stick her nose in and tell me that I shouldn't let them give him morphine, that he should offer his final suffering up to Jesus. After she heard what I had to say to her intrusion, including that she could offer her own damn suffering up to Jesus about whom my secular Jewish dad didn't give a flying f&*#k,  she scurried off as fast as she could.

    Funny… she didn't show up at the funeral.

    And if Modster ever finds himself with no hope of ever recovering or of living another moment in his life without agony, he can follow his own beliefs if he wishes but the availability of legal assisted suicide will prevent people like him and that outrageous church lady twit from forcing others to suffer.

    1. You've hit the nail squarely on the head, so to speak. These religious ideologues; time to start calling them jihadists; keep trying to insert their personal religious beliefs into other peoples' private & personal lives. 

      I will definitely vote for this initiative; it's a matter of personal freedom and liberty. But I'm also not optimistic for its chances as the religious jihadists will rally against it. 

      As for Moderatus ("only God should choose the day and hour of our death……"), what if one does not believe in a Judeo/Christian/Islamic supreme being? 

      2. For the Talibangalists, whose only objection to Sharia Law is that Muslims thought of it first, it's unimportant what misconceptions heathens adhere to.  God's law, as revealed through their tortured biblical interpretations, prejudices, and ignorance is supreme.

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