June 12, 2019: Governor Janet Mills signed the “Maine Death with Dignity Act” (LD 1313) into law today, making the state the nation’s tenth jurisdiction to legalize medical aid in dying. (The others are California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.) In a statement that weighed arguments for and against the act, she said “it is not up to the government to decide who may die and who may live, when they shall die or how long they shall live.”
The governor said that the “right to decide the means of ending one’s life by lethal prescription may be seen as an extension of the right to decline life-sustaining care,” which had been articulated by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1987. The Court had found that the law recognizes a patient’s “right of self-determination in matters of health care to be essential to the integrity and dignity of his person.”
The new law will go into effect later this year, 90 days after the end of the legislative session.