The following is a news release issued by Compassion & Choices, which filed the lawsuit and produced the video (taped March 4) displayed here.
A California judge has ordered expedited review of a lawsuit filed on behalf of three patients and a physician who assert that state law and the state constitution allow terminally ill adults to utilize the option of medical aid in dying to end their suffering.
The lead plaintiff is cancer patient Christy O’Donnell, 46, of Valencia.
Superior Court Judge Gregory Pollack will hold a preliminary motions hearing on Christy’s birthday, July 24. Despite receiving chemotherapy every week for the last 10 months, O’Donnell’s physicians have told her she will likely die painfully within the next few months from lung cancer that has spread to tumors in her brain, spine, rib and liver.
Medical aid in dying gives mentally competent, terminally ill adults like O’Donnell the option to request a doctor’s prescription for medication they can take in their final days to end their dying process painlessly and peacefully.
Christy’s cancer has spread and causes her more pain and suffering each day,” said John Kappos, a Newport Beach-based partner in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, who argued the motion before Judge Pollack and is working with Compassion & Choices on behalf of Christy and other plaintiffs in the suit. “We thank the court for expediting review of any preliminary motions filed in this case.”
O’Donnell is a Christian, registered Republican, civil rights attorney and former sergeant in the LAPD, whose 20-year-old daughter, Bailey, lives with her in Santa Clarita.
“The last thing I want is for my daughter, Bailey, to see me die in agony because I cannot utilize medical aid in dying,” said O’Donnell. “The judge’s decision gives Bailey and me a ‘chance’ to experience a less painful time at my death.”
“Judge Pollack’s decision is another positive step toward making medical aid in dying available to terminally ill Californians who suffer enormously in their final weeks and days,” said Kevin Díaz, national director of legal advocacy for Compassion & Choices. “This ruling shows the court’s sensitivity to Christy’s urgent situation. We welcome the opportunity to present the merits of the case to the court.”
Death-with-Dignity advocate Christy O’Donnell and daughter Bailey O’Donnell (Photo: Compassion & Choices)
The other plaintiffs are Sacramento resident Elizabeth Wallner, who has stage IV colon cancer that has metastasized to her liver and lungs; a retired landscape architect from Ventura, Wolf Breiman, who was diagnosed six years ago with an incurable cancer of the white blood cells called multiple myeloma; and La Jolla physician Lynette Cederquist, M.D., who is board certified in internal medicine, hospice and palliative medicine, and a clinical professor of medicine.
The suit also asserts that medical aid in dying is a more peaceful alternative to palliative sedation. Palliative sedation involves medicating the patient into a coma and withholding nutrition and fluids until the patient dies. Both the U.S. Supreme Court and California courts have recognized palliative sedation as a legitimate medical practice. The suit is posted at: www.compassionandchoices.org/userfiles/Complaint-CA-Lawsuit.pdf.
The suit coincides with the legislative campaign to authorize medical aid in dying in California by passing the End of Life Option Act (SB 128), recently approved by the Senate. SB 128 is closely modeled after the death-with-dignity law in Oregon, which has worked well for 17 years, without a single documented case of abuse or coercion. Currently, four other states authorize medical aid in dying: Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico. A recent poll shows that California voters support the medical option of aid in dying by more than a 2-1 margin (64 percent vs. 24 percent).
Compassion & Choices is the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization working to improve care and expand choice at the end of life. More information is available at www.compassionandchoices.org.
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15 Comments
I feel compassion but have difficulty taking our own lives ♡
She is going to die no matter what. Why should it have to be an agonizing death for her or the family? The article mentioned the option of putting the dying one in a coma and then withholding, nutrition. Causing death in an “unnatural” way. Same thing.
I have a real problem with people against legalizing life termination in these situations. They take the position that 1) all of us should live by their religious beliefs and/or 2) they are smarter than those seeking to legalize it and want to bail us out of our stupidity. Are they really smarter? To this point in time, laws indicate that our government thinks they are smarter than us and know what is best for us. Yes, the very same government that is promoting the California bullet train and other stupid ideas. The decision should clearly be up to the individual. If you don’t want to do it yourself, don’t do it. But it should be everyone’s freedom to decide. Good luck to the O’Donnell’s and thanks for taking up the fight!!!!
I have a real problem with people supporting legalizing life termination in these situations. They take the position that 1) all of us should live by their religious beliefs and/or 2) they are smarter than those seeking to keep assisted suicide illegal and want to bail us out of our stupidity. Are they really smarter? To this point in time, laws indicate that our government thinks they are smarter than us and know what is best for us.
We all have compassion for the terminally ill.One answer may not be for everyone. In my family we lost our parents and two sisters to different cancers. It was a helluva road to go down 4 separate times. It effected those left behind in completely different ways.The palliative care given was not perfect but pretty good. My compassion, strength and faith all grew in a positive way through the experiences in spite of the immense grief, anger, loss and depression, My biggest take away, it was a priviledge to hold so many loved ones hands at the end and I walked away feeling blessed. I hope there is peace ahead for these families struggling with the end…….
I think family’s should have a choice to “their” life not our court system. ….
Prayers for you and your daughter. It is YOUR right. I hope you can make the choice. Thank you for your story.
I’ll never understand why we have the compassion to put suffering dogs down but humans are forced to suffer.
I have a real problem with people supporting legalizing life termination in these situations. They take the position that 1) all of us should live by their religious beliefs and/or 2) they are smarter than those seeking to keep assisted suicide illegal and want to bail us out of our stupidity. Are they really smarter? To this point in time, laws indicate that our government thinks they are smarter than us and know what is best for us.
“Only I know what is right for me” is inconsistent with the Christian worldview that only God knows what is right for me.
I know this is a horrible struggle, but we need to be truthful about this or we will not hear from God.
I pray she will receive the wisdom and peace she so seeks, but it will not come from legislation. Nor assisted suicide.
Is it true that God numbers our days?
As a Republican, Catholic woman, mother, grandmother, and wife, a cancer survivor with a hereditary cancer condition which pretty much insures I will die a devastating death as Christy is looking forward to and has lived a life and career over close to hers…I support the right of persons to die when they wish, where they wish, how they wish, and with whom they wish when faced with terminal disease or conditions which strongly affect quality of life to a point whereupon we cannot function in the manner of a quality of life. We are a nation if individual choice and individual rights. Should any religion sent us that choice, or religious views, we have lost our freedoms and stand in the same place as the Taliban and religious extremists. IT is between each person and their God
..not each person, another person’s religious values, the religious beliefs of any elected leader and all their Gods.
I am very sorry for your health condition and am glad God has given you the days he has to be a good grandmother, mother, and citizen. I know how trying this is having lost my father to cancer, and my mother facing Stage 4 cancer right now. We are trying to determine the best course for her in this season.
But as Christians– which you also profess to be– should not the overriding basis for any behaviors we choose be, “Is this in accordance with God’s Will as revealed in His Word?” If it becomes a choice we make because we determine it to be “our” choice, and not God’s, then aren’t we relegating Him to second place while we take the first position? (If you recall, that was how Satan tricked Adam and Eve in the garden, persuading them that they should eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore becoming a god in their own right.)
I do know how excruciating these decisions are. And I know we have a God Who is not surprised by our life’s circumstances, including how and when it will end and we will enter into eternity with Him. But to claim to be a believer in Jesus and trusting in God’s Word while simultaneously claiming that you get to make decisions based on your feelings and desires (however legitimate those may be) seems to be contradictory. It is easy for use to be overwhelmed with pain, depression, sadness, fear– especially when the culture we live in is teaching generations that some lives are less valuable than others (the unborn, the elderly, the infirm.) It is easy for us to lean on our own understanding and not God’s (Proverbs 3:5-6.) I have been there, I know. But God’s Word is unchanging and He teaches us that He knows when His appointment with us is, and He will never be late nor early for that appointment.
Alan Shlemon of Stand to Reason (STR.org) makes some very valuable observations worth considering in this conversation:
There’s one fact about you I’m sure of: even though you’ll live forever, someday your earthly body will die. But that’s not really a problem. The real concern is that you may not die instantly. You might linger on after an accident or disease and someone else will be responsible for your care. And if right-to-die advocates have their way, you’ll have a duty to die – a moral obligation to kill yourself.
That’s the result of the slippery slope to legalize physician assisted suicide. First, the culture grants suffering individuals a right to die. Then, there’s an implicit obligation for those who are a burden on society to take the death doctors’ lethal prescription.
Duty-to-die-champion John Hardwig of the University of Tennessee, explains that “A duty to die is more likely when continuing to live will impose significant burdens – emotional burdens, extensive care-giving, destruction of life plans, and yes, financial hardship – on your family and loved ones.”
And in case you don’t kill yourself, you can be sure someone will be happy to do it for you. That’s what has happened in the Netherlands since they legalized euthanasia in 2001. Doctors started by killing terminally ill patients who were competent and asked to be killed. But soon they moved on to patients who were neither terminally ill, nor competent enough to ask for it.
Now, Dutch doctors decide which lives are worth living. Studies show that doctors kill three to four patients each day (though they call it “death with dignity”). These are people who never ask to be killed but are competent to make their own medical decisions.
You think it couldn’t get any worse, but it does. Pediatricians in the Netherlands are also killing children. The University Medical Center of Gronigen kills around 20 disabled newborns each year. Eduard Verhagen, medical director of the pediatric department, made the following asinine statement in an interview: “You are trained to save the life of a child but with these children the suffering can only be stopped by ending their lives. It takes courage to do that.”
Killing a defenseless and disabled child is not courageous, but cowardice. Courage is fighting to improve the conditions of disabled children who, some in our culture believe, are not worth caring for.
But killing disabled children is the logical absurdity of a culture that buys into the right-to-die movement. Unfortunately, America has begun to buy in. Washington and Oregon have already passed laws making it legal for a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of a drug to a person who wants to commit suicide.
It’s a culture of death that needs the life-saving truth of Jesus. And given the high stakes, I’m committed to protecting vulnerable people from a philosophy that denies the intrinsic value of human life.
This is so valuable and worth watching… even if you disagree:
http://www.str.org/videos/putting-them-out-of-their-misery#.VXyET-eHxW0
Melinda Penner offers some very important considerations as well… we must consider such:
I’m very sorry to hear that Brittany Maynard ended her life Saturday. My sincere condolences to her husband, family, and friends.
Brittany literally became the cover girl for doctor-assisted suicide when she went public with her decision and was on the cover of People magazine. She was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor and chose to end her life at her own timing rather than die of the disease. This is called death with dignity.
There has been criticism for those who have publicly disagreed with her decision. But Brittany went public in order to spark a change in public policy, so it’s in the public square for discussion.
“Death with dignity” is a phrase that suicide proponents have used. Of course, there’s rhetorical power to the phrase to identify it with suicide, bypassing the difficulty and suffering of dying naturally. But dignity has nothing to do with the mode of death, but the way someone handles dying. There’s nothing at all undignified about needing the care of others when we can no longer care for ourselves. There’s nothing undignified about a difficult death. Dignity is a virtue of how the person handles the very difficult circumstances they find themselves in.
I’ve become more personally acquainted with suffering and dying. For the last year my mother’s heart conditions have worsened. She’s become incapacitated and needs care for virtually every need she has. She’s bedridden and her memory is worsening. It’s nothing very unusual for someone nearly 90. She’s slowly dying. It’s very difficult for her and there have been times she’s yearned for it to end. But my mother has accepted every degradation in her condition with grace. She’ll die of natural causes. She is dying with dignity.
My mother often says she never imagined she’d be like this. She would rather die than linger like this. I can’t imagine how hard it is to be in her situation. And I know there are families dealing with much, much worse.
It isn’t pointless.
There’s a community aspect to anyone’s death. Each person’s death and how we handle it either communicates the intrinsic value of human life or the lack of it. It speaks of our value for those virtues or says they’re unimportant. It tells everyone that life is precious and not ours to take, or it says that we are our gods and personal autonomy is paramount.
Brittany Maynard went public because she wanted her death to tell us what she thought about suffering and dying. We need to think carefully about what she told us because it has consequences for all of us and how we treat the suffering and dying, the very vulnerable. My mom’s dying process also tells us something. And I hope that it teaches us that we aren’t the masters of our fate. That life is precious and valuable even when it’s extremely difficult and painful. That we need to care for the sick and dying with patience and compassion. And that there is dignity in the way we accept dying by natural means even when it’s very, very hard. In caring for the sick and dying, we affirm the value of every person by treating them humanely through sickness until death.
Obviously, there are worldview issues involved in this. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, the virtues gained during the end of life aren’t very valuable. If you don’t believe that we are God’s creatures and He gives us life and value, then we are the masters to exercise autonomy over our fate. The value – or lack of it – we put on life at the worst moments in life and death will have consequences for how we treat people at any point in life. This will have consequences for how we as a society provide for the suffering and dying. It will have consequences for the kind of people we are.
These are the issues that need to be part of the public discourse.