Jennifer Glass, a woman with cancer, was the focus of a thoughtful NPR story and is one of the people who traveled to Sacramento to testify in favor of the End-of-Life-Options Act on Tuesday.
The bill, SB-128, passed the state Senate in June, and the Assembly’s health committee is now voting on the matter. For the testimony, Glass, among others, is also joined by the mother of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old California woman who had brain cancer and moved to Oregon so she could could legally have control of how ended her life.
Maynard, who died in November, was a very vocal advocate for the right-to-die movement last year and made a significant impact through social media.
As NPR reported:
If the bill passes the committee, it moves to the Assembly’s judiciary and appropriations committees, after which the whole Assembly has until Sept. 11 to vote on it. From there it would it go to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his signature; neither the bill’s supporters nor its opponents seem to know how he leans on the issue.
For Glass, according to NPR, her support of the bill is primarily about having freedom to not only decrease the time she is in pain but to prevent her family from witnessing that.
“I’m doing everything I can to extend my life,” she said at the state capitol building last January at the time the bill was introduced. “No one should have the right to prolong my death.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Despite the fact that the law might not be effective until January 1, 2016, which might not be helpful for her individually, she’s still speaking out and fighting for that freedom. She has also blogged about the subject for The Huffington Post and put together a video with her husband to demonstrate the process she’s gone through titled “One Year With Lung Cancer.” It displays one photo a day as Glass has gone through her treatment.
Watch below:
