In just a moment, you will receive an automated phone call that will connect you to your lawmakers’ offices. Here are some talking points for your use during your call, please also consider sharing a personal story of why you support the Massachusetts End of Life Options Act:
- The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the profound tragedy of loved ones dying alone, in a hospital or nursing home, without the care and comfort of loved ones surrounding them.
- This pandemic also demonstrates the fragility of life, the limits of modern medicine to relieve suffering, and magnified the systemic racial disparities in our healthcare system.
- We must eradicate these disparities, so everyone has equal access to the full range of end-of-life care options.
- One small, but important step towards achieving this goal is to authorize medical aid in dying as an end-of-life care option for terminally ill, mentally capable adults in Massachusetts to peacefully end intolerable suffering.
- It would empower every state resident to make end-of-life care decisions based on their unique culture, beliefs, and spiritual values.
- These laws have improved care for many terminally ill people in the 10 other jurisdictions that allow medical aid in dying, by spurring doctor-patient conversations about all end-of-life care options, such as hospice and palliative care, and better utilization of them.
- 70% of Massachusetts residents support medical aid in dying, according to a November 2019 Boston Globe-Suffolk University poll, including a majority of those surveyed across the demographic, ethnic, and geographic spectrum.
- Please, pass the End of Life Options Act before the end of the 2020 legislative session. Our terminally ill neighbors can’t wait another year.