New Jersey Medical Aid

Allowing terminally ill Americans to choose the time and place of their death is slowly becoming more accepted in the US and that acceptance is officially law in New Jersey. The Medical Aid in Dying law was signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in late April and goes into effect August 1. New Jersey is the eighth state allowing terminally ill patients to request prescriptions for medication to end their lives.It took seven years for this bill to make it’s way through the legislature and onto the governor’s desk, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Often when a bill takes this long to become a law there’s a celebration all that hard work and perseverance paid off. Not so much with this bill, which is intended to make a terrible situation (death due to a terminal condition) less bad.

The Medical Aid in Dying law is intended to prevent mercy killing, euthanasia, or assisted suicide, though its critics claim they will result. To take advantage of the law a state resident would be required to,

• Get a diagnosis from two New Jersey doctors that the person is in the terminal stage of an irreversibly fatal illness, disease, or condition with a prognosis, based upon reasonable medical certainty, of a life expectancy of six months or less.
• Ask for the medication three times, twice orally and once in writing, before receiving it. The written request needs to be witnessed by two people. They can’t be a family member, a beneficiary of the patient’s will or the attending physician.

If the requirements are met the patient can be prescribed a lethal dose of a drug, often a barbiturate, a sedative which in a lethal amount stops the heart from beating. The person must take or administer the drug him or herself in the presence of a physician, loved one or others, or take it alone, but he or she must be of sound mind at the time.Those opposed to the law, including the Catholic Church and the Medical Society of New Jersey, voiced several objections, including,

• Disabled and vulnerable people may be pressured by family members or caretakers to end their lives.
• Not just those who are terminally ill will be impacted, but those who are handicapped, elderly, depressed and vulnerable may also seek to bring their lives to an end.
• A diagnosis of a terminal illness may not be accurate, and the person may actually have viable treatment options.
• A physician asked to help end a life would be asked to violate his or her oath to do no harm to patients.

Oregon has a similar law which was enacted in 1997. It requires a state agency, the Oregon Health Authority, to issue annual reports on its use. According to the 2018 report, relatively few people utilize the law.

• 249 people received lethal prescriptions approved under that law, out of a state population of almost 4.2 million,
• 168 people died that year from using them, including 11 who had received the prescriptions in previous years,
• Most patients were aged 65 years or older (79.2%) and most had cancer (62.5%), and,
• In 2018, two physicians were referred to the Oregon Medical Board for failure to comply with the law’s requirements.

In comparison, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2017 in Oregon, 528 people were killed with firearms, 530 people died of drug overdoses and 8,083 people died of cancer.How the law will play out in New Jersey is anyone’s guess, but for those facing death in the not too distant future, it may provide some control over what for most of us is out of our control, how and when we go.If you have questions about the new law or think you may need legal assistance regarding Medical Aid in Dying, please contact the Kingston Law Group.  Call us at 609-683-7400, or contact us online, to set up a near-term, reduced fee, initial consultation in Kingston, New Jersey.  We will listen to your facts, explain the law, and recommend your best pathways to social justice.  Call us today. You will be glad you did.