The following is from the Fall 2021 issue of Illinois Compassionate Quarterly, published on Dec. 13, 2021, by Compassion & Choices to its volunteers and supporters in Illinois.
We won a big victory in California on October 5, when Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 380, extending the sunset provision of the California End of Life Option Act for five years; from January 1, 2026 until January 1, 2031. The law also improved access and transparency by reducing the mandatory minimum 15-day waiting period between the two oral requests for aid-in-dying medication to 48 hours for all eligible patients and requiring healthcare systems and hospices to put their medical aid-in-dying policies on their websites.
On the legal advocacy front, on October 28 Compassion & Choices filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the residency requirement of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The suit was filed on behalf of Dr. Nicholas Gideonse, an Oregon physician who regularly attends to patients from neighboring Vancouver, WA. If successful, eligible out-of-state people would be able to access medical aid in dying in Oregon.
Also in October, the NAACP — the nation’s first, largest and most influential grassroots–based civil rights organization — passed an end-of-life education resolution that recognizes the disparities that African Americans face in end-of-life planning. The resolution states, “The NAACP advocates that families educate themselves on all aspects of end-of-life planning including advance healthcare directives, healthcare proxies, organ donation, wills, trusts, powers of attorney and end-of-life options such as hospice, palliative care and achieving a physician-assisted peaceful transition.” This transformational resolution solidifies the importance of end-of-life education as a civil rights issue.