The End in
Two Acts
Should this next attempt be successful, California will be the second state — its neighbor, Oregon, is the first and only — to legalize physician-assisted death. The California bill, modeled after the Oregon law, will allow a doctor to prescribe lethal drugs to a terminally ill patient.
When the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the previous bill last June, Tom McDonald was there to testify. He was then six months into what he had been told would be the last year of his life.
“My doctor said I’d know when I’m near the end because I’ll be coughing up blood,” he told the committee. He was sitting motionless, a little slumped, at the witness table. “I’m not too thrilled with the prospect of ending my life drowning in my own blood.” He didn’t want to subject his family to “such horrors.” His voice cracked, and he struggled not to cry. Someone brought him a glass of water. He composed himself and went on. He didn’t want to lose his dignity, he told the committee. In the absence of a humane and legal way to end his life, in the absence of help from a compassionate doctor, Tom said he would “leave this life violently.” He had been more precise, and chilling, in a letter of support he had written to California Assemblywoman Patty Berg, co-sponsor of the June 2006 legislation. He would end his life, he told her, by “a 9mm injection to my head.”