Opposing Opinion Pieces Take on Calif. Assisted-Death Bill
In a Sacramento Bee opinion piece, Michael Saum, a Stage 4 brain cancer patient who recently entered hospice, argues that aid in dying "should be available to terminally ill Californians like me who want it." Saum urged the "Assembly to pass SB 128 so others don't have to go through what I have gone through at the end of my life." Meanwhile, an opposing Sacramento Bee opinion piece by Elliot Lapin -- a senior at Stanford University and summer intern at the Bee who has been using a wheelchair for the past 11 years after suffering an autoimmune reaction to a life-saving transplant -- argues, "The state of California cannot sanction a law that leads to needless deaths." He writes, "Patients who have been given an accurate prognosis ... should be helped by doctors to ease their pain ... in their final days, but it is unfair and immoral to smooth their path toward a decision that cannot be reversed."
- "Legislators Need To Pass Aid-in-Dying Bill" (Saum, "SoapBox," Sacramento Bee, 7/6).
- "Legislators Should Block Aid-in-Dying Bill" (Lapin, "SoapBox," Sacramento Bee, 7/6).