California now has a law in effect allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill.
The law is strict, intended to ensure that patients have thought through the decision and are making it voluntarily, says a story in the New York Times.
Patients must make multiple requests for the medication that hastens their dying and have a prognosis of less than six months to live.
Many hospitals have not released policies for dealing with the law and no doctor or pharmacy or health system will be made to comply with a person’s request.
Catholic health systems have said they will not comply.
The law was passed last year after Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old schoolteacher who had brain cancer, got international attention for her decision to move to Oregon, where terminally ill patients have been allowed to take drugs to die since 1997.
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