HONOLULU — Hawaii Gov. David Ige has signed a bill legalizing medically assisted suicide.
HONOLULU — Hawaii Gov. David Ige has signed a bill legalizing medically assisted suicide.
Ige signed the bill Thursday, making Hawaii the sixth liberal-leaning state plus Washington, D.C., to legalize the practice.
Ige said the measure gives full control to terminally ill patients. He says everyone knows their loved ones will eventually die, but they don’t need to suffer.
The law allows doctors to fulfill requests from terminally ill patients for prescription medication that will allow them to die. The legislation includes safeguards intended to prevent abuse.
The other states that allow medically assisted suicide are California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
Montana doesn’t have a specific law on the books, but the state Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that doctors could use a patient’s request for life-ending medication as a defense against criminal charges.
Thank you to everyone who helped pass this law It is about time that we let humans have a conscious Death. When a dog gets sick and old and is suffering we have the humanity to put the dog to sleep In a lethal injection given by the vetranarian. Yet we have left our own families suffer beyond imagination when they are sick terminally ill and dying why why why. Then when people like Dr. Devorkian the death DR. who tried to help people to euthanize themselves when they were so suffering, & we put him in prison tortured him and ruined his life until he himself died. that behavior was insane, how primitive. For years Many people secretly, quietly, broke the law to assist their love ones in dying no only they could go to prison for it. O recently had to take them to another state where they did allow sacred death to happen. Now we can finally choose if we’re done, if were sick, if were suffering there is a point in time where you can just call it and say I’ve had enough put me to sleep. I am grateful that dying consciously and making a choice to do it is finally our right.