Caroline Tucker
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) This week two groups will weigh in on a proposal that would allow an adult with a terminal disease to receive medication to end their life.
The bill before the D.C. City Council would only apply to people who have fewer than six months to live.
The organization, Compassion and Choices, is pushing to move the measure forward.
“This option enables people that are suffering intolerably to die in their sleep peacefully at home surrounded by their loved ones instead of in a hospital hooked up to tubes and machines,” said Sean Crowley, a spokesperson for the organization.
J.J. Hanson, President of the Patient Rights Action Fund, has cancer and does not support the measure.
“You can call it whatever pretty name that you would like to call it. But at the end of the day this is still ending one’s life by their own means and that is suicide,” said Hanson.
Hanson says his disease has led him through depression and pain but he did not think taking pills was an option for him.
“That would have been two years that my son would not have had with me. That would have been two years that my wife would not have had with me,” he said.
This end-of-life option is available in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, and California.
The D.C. bill only allows “mentally capable, terminally ill adults” the ability to get a doctor’s prescription to end their life.
The Patients Rights Action Fund is a part of the No D.C. Suicide Coalition, which plans to lobby at the Wilson Building on Wednesday.
Compassion and Choices will follow with lobbying efforts and a press conference on Thursday.
Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (Photo: AP, Charles Dharapak)
