Death with Dignity

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Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin sent four proposed statewide ballot questions over to the legislature this week.  Lawmakers have until May 2nd to pass the ballot questions as bills. Or, if Beacon Hill balks, backers of the questions need to gather thousands of additional signatures to get the issue to the voters. Among the voter initiative petitions -- a measure that would allow terminally ill patients to request life-ending medication from their doctor that they then self-administer in order to die. Massachusetts Citizens for Life calls the measure -- 'poor public policy'.  Steven Crawford, the spokesperson for the question -- known as the Death with Dignity initiative, says the measure is modeled after a law already in place in Washington state, and similar to one in Oregon. In order to get the lethal drugs, the measure requires a terminally ill patient make two verbal requests to a doctor, and one written one separated by time.  New England Public Radio's Jill Kaufman asked Crawford if there were explicit protections in the measure that could stop a family member, for instance, from influencing a terminally ill person's decision: