If you are fed with a terminal illness, doctors will now be able to help you rest in peace.
The assembly of New Jersey has passed a Medical bill to help terminally patients who would wish their death to be hastened.
The Assembly passed the Bill that allows medics to give prescriptions on conditions that the patients request to die.
In a report by US publication The Hill, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced he would approve the legislation. “I look forward to signing the Bill into law.
Terminally ill residents deserve the dignity to make end-of-life decisions in alignment to their consciences. It is the right thing to do,” said Murphy.
The Bill was passed by the State Assembly after the Senate reportedly endorsed it in a 21 versus 16 vote.
The development is set to make New Jersey the eighth state in US which permits the practice commonly referred to as assisted suicide.
Washington, D.C., California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, Hawaii, and Washington are other states which permit doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who want to die.
In a debate prior to the vote, state Assemblyman Jay Webber appealed to his colleagues to delay the approval as it would be irreversible thereafter. “Once you cross this line Speaker, there is no going back.
Don’t make the right to die an obligation to die,” the legislator was quoted. His counterpart, John Burzichelli who co-sponsored the legislation defended it, arguing that the state had enough measures to protect those vulnerable individuals against abuse of the new law.
Former US First Lady Barbara Pierce Bush who died on Saturday, April 17, decided to stop treatment for congestive heart failure after consultation with her family and friends, a move which ignited a heated debate even in Kenya.
Assisted suicide also referred to as death with dignity, mercy killing or euthanasia is illegal in Kenya.
In 1996, Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi, then an MP proposed people living with HIV/AIDS be allowed to undergo euthanasia but the proposal was strongly opposed as it was contrary to the right of life enshrined in the country’s Constitution.
In Kenya, a dominantly religious State, the clergy and medics have continued to differ on whether euthanasia should be permitted or not.
The clergy argue only God is supposed to determine when somebody should die though they somehow differ with the use of life support machines for clinically dead people.
Some medics allege the practice is done in a clandestine agreements between patients, their families and doctors who give in to persuasion to end lives just like they do for abortions.
Euthanasia can be passive, where life support machines and medication are withdrawn, or active, where doctors prescribe lethal medicine that hasten death of terminally ill patients with a desire to die.