14 DAY TRIAL // A lawsuit filed against the state of California by advocacy group Compassion & Choices last Friday, May 15, asks that lawmakers pass the End of Life Option Act, a bill that would allow people diagnosed with incurable diseases to die on their own terms.
Specifically, the lawsuit asks for medical aid in dying in this US state. If approved, the End of Life Option Act would make it legal for terminally ill people in California to request a doctor's prescription for medication to end their own life.
The medication would only be prescribed to adults who are mentally competent and can make informed decisions about how, when and where they want to die. At the end of the day, it's about giving people complete power over their life, advocacy group Compassion & Choices says.
46-year-old Christy O'Donnell is one of the plaintiffs
Nonprofit organization Compassion & Choices filed its lawsuit against the state of California on behalf of three people living in this part of the US and diagnosed with a terminal or with an advanced disease. Attorney and single mother Christy O'Donnell is one of the plaintiffs.
The 46-year-old woman, mother to 20-year-old Bailey, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in last year's June. When informing her of her diagnosis, doctors told her that she only had about 6 months left to live and that her death would most likely be a painful one.
In a video that advocacy group Compassion & Choices posted on YouTube this past Monday and that is available below, Christy O'Donnell explains that, without a prescription making it possible for her to end her life on her own terms, her cancer will fill her lungs with fluid and ultimately drown her.
“The most likely way that I’m going to die with the lung cancer is that my left lung will fill with fluid, I’ll start drowning in my own fluid. I spend an inordinate amount of time being afraid of the pain that I’m going to endure,” Christy O'Donnell says in the video, recorded on March 4.
Apart from struggling to come to terms with her diagnosis, Christy O'Donnell is worried about all the suffering she is causing her 20-year-old-daughter Bailey, left with no choice but to watch her mother get sicker and sicker each day.
The other two plaintiffs are facing the same ordeal
The other people listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by Compassion & Choices against the state of California are stage 4 colon cancer patient Elizabeth Wallner of Sacramento and blood cancer sufferer Wolf Breiman from Ventura.
Since receiving her diagnosis, Elizabeth Wallner has been through 18 rounds of chemotherapy, 4 surgical interventions to remove part of her liver and colon, and many other medical procedures.
Together with Wolf Breiman, left weakened and with a compromised immune system by his blood cancer, Elizabeth Wallner says she is ready to die and demands the right to end her life when and where she feels would be right.
The group calls for medical aid in dying in all US states
Only 5 US states have until now passed legislation legalizing physician-assisted dying. To advocacy group Compassion & Choices, this is incomprehensible. More so since the US Supreme Court recognizes palliative sedation, i.e. medicating patients into a coma and waiting for them to die, as a legitimate medical practice.
The nonprofit organization argues that people diagnosed with terminal diseases have the right to choose how they wish to go and asks that all US states adopt legislation making medical aid in dying legal.
“Some dying people face unbearable suffering in their final days that even the best hospice and palliative care cannot relieve. These people desperately need the option of medical aid in dying so they can die painlessly, peacefully in their sleep,” said Kevin Díaz on behalf of the advocacy group.
