Legalizing Aid in Dying Doesn’t Mean Patients Have Access to It

January 26, 2017

(NPR) – Across California, and in the five other states where medical aid-in-dying is now allowed, access is not guaranteed, advocates say. Hospitals, health systems and individual doctors are not obligated to prescribe or dispense drugs to induce death, and many choose not to. Most of the resistance comes from faith-based systems. The Catholic Church has long opposed aid-in-dying laws as a violation of church directives for ethical care. But some secular hospitals and other providers also have declined.