Blue states continue to lead on end of life care

Neither nitrogen hypoxia nor death by firing squad will ever be medically sanctioned procedures for ending a human life in the good ol’ US of A.

But in 2021, despite objections from a Roman Church that preys on children and props up dictators, New Mexico's Democratic governor and unpaid legislators passed laws making a death with dignity legal for people with terminal illnesses. Some 120 people made the choice in 2022 including a nurse familiar to Our Lady of the Arroyo. 

Since suicide by violent means is epidemic in red states, blue states Vermont and Oregon erased residency requirements for end of life medications. Now, after Colorado passed legislation in 2016 and over a thousand souls have taken advantage of the statute, that state's legislature could allow advanced practice nurses to prescribe and out-of-state patients to administer the medicine in end of life decisions.

New Mexico, whose law went into effect in 2021, also has a 48-hour waiting period between when an aid-in-dying prescription is written and when it is filled. Under Senate Bill 68, Colorado’s 48-hour waiting period could also be waived if a patient is unlikely to live that long. (New Mexico’s law has a similar provision.)Senate Bill 68 is scheduled to get its first hearing in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee in late February. [Colorado may become the 3rd state to drop its medical aid-in-dying residency requirement]

Minnesota's legislature is also considering a death with dignity statute.

The proposed legislation in Minnesota requires two providers to confirm a patient is facing a terminal illness with six months or less to live; the patient must be mentally competent; and the patient must be able to administer the lethal medication themselves. Under the bill, doctors can opt out of prescribing the medication, but must refer their patient to another provider. The bill does not require patients to be Minnesota residents. [Advocates: End-of-life bill gives patients 'personal liberty and autonomy' in the face of terminal illness]

Despite urging from the primate of the Church of of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers to get inoculated during a pandemic a Sioux Falls, South Dakota school district with ties to the sect joined a 2021 lawsuit against the Biden administration's vaccine or testing/masking mandate. Representing the Diocese of Sioux Falls pro bono is the Alliance Defending Freedom, identified as a hate group in 2016 by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

White guy, Fred Deutsch has been raising campaign cash gallivanting around South Dakota with a crusade calling Death with Dignity "Don't Eat Grandma" or something but won't spend a dime for mental health. Fred is a sectarian who attends anti-civil rights conferences featuring the Duck Dynasty philosophers.

In 2023 ADF represented a few religionist doctors and sued the State of New Mexico in federal court over language in the End-of-Life Options Act that they say compelled providers with christianic beliefs to prescribe life-ending medications for terminally ill patients.

After learning he had advanced liver, kidney and colon cancer and making the decision to decline treatment, Stanley Crawford, a Dixon, New Mexico author and garlic farmer, ended his life on 25 January by medically-assisted suicide at 86. His wife, RoseMary passed in 2021.