Terminally ill New Jersey adults will be able to decide when it’s time to die starting Thursday, when the state begins allowing patients to self-administer lethal drugs.
The “Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act” lets mentally sound Garden State residents with six months or fewer left to live request a cocktail of drugs to end their lives.
“This law provides incredible peace of mind to people in my situation, knowing they have this option within reach,” said Susan Boyce, an advocate for the law and potentially one of its beneficiaries, according to NJ.com. “It does a lot to counteract the fear and uncertainty about what the end is going to be like, and are you going to be able to stand it.”
Boyce, 56, has a slow-moving and incurable disease that will eventually leave her unable to breathe and render her immune system ineffectual.
The question of whether patients should be allowed to end their own lives has become increasingly pressing as medical technology’s ability to keep people physically alive has outpaced its ability to provide an acceptable quality of life while doing so.
Boyce and others have advocated for the law’s adoption in New Jersey for eight years.
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“I firmly believe in this law, and I had the ability to speak out, to represent a group of patients who are terminally ill and don’t have the strength,” Boyce said.
The state-approved the new measure and Gov. Phil Murphy signed the bill, despite his reservations as a Catholic, in April.
Patients must prove their residency by providing physicians with a valid state-issued ID, voter registration, recent New Jersey tax filing or “any other government record that the attending physician reasonably believes to demonstrate the individual’s current residency in this State,” according to the law.
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A total 3,478 people in the US have been allowed to end their lives under death-with-dignity laws passed in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, according to information compiled by NJ.com.
Legal challenges to right-to-die laws in Washington DC and Montana, meanwhile, have held up the practice there.