Florida’s ‘Death with dignity’ bill would allow assisted suicide for terminally ill patients

“Death with dignity” is the name of proposed legislation by Florida Senator Lauren Book. The bill would allow terminally ill people to end their lives legally in Florida.

A 76-year-old woman from Daytona Beach will likely spend the rest of her life in prison after she shot and killed her terminally ill husband of 53 years when he asked her to end his suffering.

Ellen Gilland’s story is one reason Book recently introduced Senate Bill 864. The bill would allow adult, terminally ill Floridians to request and receive medical aid in dying from a physician.

Tony Ray is the founder of Florida Death with Dignity. He explained how he watched his 96-year-old aunt Connie suffer after a fall. “We had to watch her for over two weeks suffer with pain, and agony, and the hallucinations. And she was already dying. So what, to what end, did all that suffering? What did it accomplish?”

That’s why Ray founded Florida Death with Dignity. He’s all for Senator Book’s bill. The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics is not.

Its official position is that “Pysican-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”

Steven Hannan is a pulmonologist. “I mean, we’re here to cure. We’re here to comfort. And no part of our profession should deal with helping people kill themselves,” said Hannan.

Republican lawmakers typically do not support assisted suicide, and the GOP has a supermajority in the Florida legislature. There’s no guarantee the proposal will ever come for a vote.

As for Ellen Gilland, a grand jury refused to charge her with first-degree murder. Instead, the panel indicted her on an assisting self-murder manslaughter charge.