June 4, 2024
Two-thirds of Massachusetts adults support giving certain terminally ill patients the legal option to end their lives with a doctor’s prescription, according to a survey that assessed residents on a controversial policy that Massachusetts voters rejected in 2012.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll, released Tuesday morning, found that 44% of Bay Staters strongly support so-called physician-assisted dying, while another 23% said they somewhat support the idea. Eleven percent were somewhat or strongly opposed and 22% said they neither support nor oppose it.
The issue of physician-assisted dying has persisted on Beacon Hill for years, and advocates say progress has been made as the Massachusetts Medical Society voted to abandon its long-standing opposition and instead adopt a neutral compromise position. and then when aid-in-dying legislation was passed. a favorable report from the Public Health Commission after at least five consecutive sessions after being sent for study.
Massachusetts voters directly addressed the issue in 2012 when they rejected a ballot question by 51% against and 49% in favor, a margin of 67,891 votes.
“Now, 12 years later, about seven in 10 residents favor giving terminally ill patients only a few months to live to make the decision to end their life,” said Tatishe Nteta, provost professor at political science at UMass Amherst and said the poll’s director. “With the state Legislature currently contemplating legislation that would grant this right to Bay State residents, it may only be a matter of time before Massachusetts becomes the 11th state to legalize physician-assisted dying.”
The legislation (S 1331/H 2246) by Senator Jo Comerford and Representative Jim O’Day would allow mentally healthy adults with a prognosis of six months or less to live “to voluntarily make an oral request for medical aid in dying and a prescription of medication that the patient can choose to self-administer to achieve a peaceful death.
Comerford’s bill has been approved by the Public Health Committee and the Health Care Financing Committee and is pending before the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Seventeen senators, close to a majority in that branch, are listed as cosponsors.
Supporters of the bill plan to gather on the House floor on Wednesday as the End of Life Options Coalition holds a lobby day to push for passage of the Comerford/O’Day bill. Senator Su Moran, Representatives Jim O’Day, Ted Philips and Simon Cataldo, Advocate Sir Porte, Caregivers Janet Simons-Folger and Dan Diaz are scheduled to speak in the Nurses’ Lounge at 11am.
Opponents argue that authorizing the policy will expose patients to coercion and abuse. Disability advocacy groups previously pointed to Oregon, which legalized doctor-prescribed fatal doses in 1997, where some insurance companies have reportedly told patients that the recommended treatment is not covered by their insurance, although death assisted yes it is.
“Assisted suicide instantly becomes the cheapest treatment,” John Kelly, New England regional director of the advocacy group Not Dead Yet, said at an advocacy day in 2017.
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