FRIDAY, June 14, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Maine has become the eighth state to legalize medically assisted suicide.
“It is my hope that this law, while respecting the right to personal liberty, will be used sparingly,” Gov. Janet Mills, told the Associated Press.
Under the law, doctors can prescribe a lethal dose of a drug to terminally ill patients, and it will not legally be a suicide. The bill had failed to pass in a state referendum and also a number of times in the State Legislature. It finally passed by one vote in the House and a narrow margin in the Senate.
The new law was praised by Staci Fowler, who took on the fight for the law in honor of her friend Rebecca VanWormer, the AP reported. VanWormer died of breast cancer in 2017 and had pressed for such a law for years before her death. “This is what she wanted,” Fowler told the AP. “And now everybody has the option that she didn’t have.”
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