End of Life Options bill sent to full Senate for consideration

SANTA FE — It’s running short on time, but a bill that would allow terminally ill New Mexicans to seek help from a doctor to end their own lives is headed to the Senate floor.

The measure cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday evening, after the panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Española, changed his vote and allowed it to advance with no recommendation.

“I have a lot of mixed feelings about this particular bill,” said Martinez, who previously voted “no” on a motion to advance the bill with a positive recommendation.

The legislation, officially known as the End of Life Options Act, has been one of the most emotional issues at the Roundhouse during this year’s 60-day session, which ends Saturday.

Backers have urged lawmakers to approve the legislation, many of them sharing intensely personal stories about relatives who died after prolonged suffering.

But critics, who describe the issue as “assisted suicide,” have voiced concern about a perceived lack of safeguards in the bill and the potential for undue influence on ailing individuals. During Monday’s debate, one person urged senators not to “play God” by approving the legislation.

“If this is ever going to come to pass, it needs to happen in a way that’s effective for people,” said Sen. Ron Griggs, R-Alamogordo.

Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, who first sponsored similar legislation during her first stint in the Senate in 1995, said Monday she and other proponents are willing to keep trying to improve the bill.

Stefanics acknowledged the bill might face long odds this year — a similar measure has stalled in the House Judiciary Committee — but said supporters will not give up their quest.

“If we can’t get it through this year or in two years, we’ll be back again,” Stefanics said after Monday’s vote.

This year’s debate was prompted by a state Supreme Court ruling last year that said terminally ill patients don’t have a right to a physician’s help in dying under the law as it stands now.

The bill approved Monday, Senate Bill 252, would allow competent, terminally ill adult patients to obtain prescriptions from doctors for drugs the patients would have to selfadminister. Death certificates for patients opting to use the program would list their underlying illness as the cause of death, not the prescribed medication.