Voters in Colorado approved a measure Tuesday allowing terminally ill patients to end their own lives, making their state the sixth in the nation to allow physician-assisted suicide.
Proposition 106, known as the Medical Aid in Dying initiative, was approved by an overwhelming percentage of voters. Closely mirroring the first assisted suicide law passed in Oregon, it requires a patient to be told by two physicians that they have six months or less to live and make three separate requests for life-ending medication, two verbal and one written.
Advocates for physician-assisted suicide had focused their efforts on getting a ballot measure passed, after the issue failed to gain traction in the Colorado legislature last year and again this year. The national group Compassion and Choices was the effort’s chief funder, spending several million dollars in support of the measure.
Five other states already allow doctor-assisted suicide: California, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont. The California legislature approved its law earlier this year.
The Colorado measure had support from Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and medical societies in Denver, Boulder and Pueblo. But it also faced some strong opposition from some influential religious groups, including the Archdiocese of Denver, Focus on the Family and some disability rights groups.
Opponents had argued it could result in patients being coerced to end their lives and prompt insurers to refuse to pay for expensive treatments that could extend a terminally ill patient’s life by months or years. They spent about $2.5 million trying to defeat the measure, but were outspent 2-1 by supporters.
The ballot question asked voters whether “any mentally capable adult Colorado resident who has a medical prognosis of death by terminal illness within six months” should be able “to receive a prescription from a willing licensed physician for medication that can be self-administered to bring about death.”
The measure also requires doctors to inform patients of their other care and treatment options and mandate the patient to recieve evaluation by a mental health professional if they’re believe to be mentally incapable. If patients are given access to lethal drugs, they must take the medication on their own without help from someone else.
