Massachusetts voters soon will decide whether to become the third state to legalize the contentious end-of-life care option for the terminally ill.
Pink Sherbet Photography/Flickr
Should terminally ill patients have the right to kill themselves? Voters in Massachusetts will soon decide. Last Wednesday, the Secretary of the Commonwealth announced that on November 6, 2012, when Bay State voters go to the polls to pick the next President, they will also have their say on a ballot measure called the Death with Dignity Act. If passed, the law would make Massachusetts the third state to give adults diagnosed with six months or less to live the option to end their lives using a lethal dose of doctor-prescribed medication.
Last year, advocates from across the state began a petition drive to collect the 68,911 signatures needed to introduce the act for consideration by the state legislature; by the time they were done, they'd gotten more than 86,000 voters to sign on to show their support. Lawmakers had until the beginning of May to address the issue, but they declined to do so. In response, *volunteers and people retained by advocacy organizations fanned out for a second wave of signature gathering. An additional 21,000 people from the state's 14 counties signed on to support the Act. That's nearly double the number needed to bypass the statehouse and bring the issue directly to voters via ballot measure.