Ohio Senator Charleta Tavares (D – District 15, Assistant Minority Leader) plans to introduce legislation in 2017.
Lisa Vigil Schattinger, Liz Nuechterlein and Rev. Patricia Shelden met with her senior aide in April 2015 to bring education about Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act and share Vigil Schattinger’s experience.
This article in today’s Columbus Dispatch, “Chronic pain’s emotional toll can lead to suicide,” focuses on chronic pain and its relationship to suicide because September is the extremely important Suicide Prevention Awareness month. The articles continues on to explore medical aid-in-dying.
“A debate on the controversial law could begin in Ohio as early as next year, when state Sen. Charleta Tavares, D-Columbus, plans to introduce a version of the Death with Dignity Act. She met this year with advocates for the law and is convinced people with terminal illness or those with irreversible conditions that cause them to suffer should have the option to end their life.
“It’s time to have this discussion in our state, and we shouldn’t be afraid of that,” Tavares said. “I don’t want to see people suffer. I want people to have an expiration that meets their physical needs, their spiritual needs and their families’ needs.
“If they don’t want to continue life, because of their pain, that should be their decision and their right to make it. It would help stop a lot of these horrible deaths we see where people end life with violent means, and that’s so hard on families.”
Write to Senator Tavares and your own state legislators expressing your support for a Death with Dignity style law in Ohio. Representative Nickie Antonio (D – District 13, Minority Whip) also expressed willingness to move forward with legislation.