article_snippet.sent: Swangard joined a California lawsuit last month seeking to let doctors prescribe lethal medications to certain patients who want to hasten death.
article_snippet.sent: The right-to-die movement has gained renewed momentum in California and around the nation following the highly publicized death of an East Bay woman with brain cancer.
article_snippet.sent: Brittany Maynard, 29, moved to Oregon to take advantage of Oregon "Death with Dignity" law and died in November after taking a fatal dose of barbiturates prescribed by her doctor.
article_snippet.sent: a California lawsuit asks the court to protect physicians from liability if physicians prescribe lethal medications to patients who are both terminally ill and mentally competent to decide physicians fate.
article_snippet.sent: a California lawsuit argues that while a California lawsuit is against the law in California for anyone to assist in another's suicide, these cases are not suicides.
article_snippet.sent: Rather, the suit argues, it is against the law in California for anyone to assist in another's suicide, these cases are not suicides are choices by a dying person on how his or her life should end and decisions about one's own body protected under the state constitution.
article_snippet.sent: Separately, two California state senators have proposed a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to certain terminally ill adults.
article_snippet.sent: Three states -- Oregon, Washington and Vermont -- already have laws allowing physician-assisted deaths.
article_snippet.sent: Courts in New Mexico and Montana also have ruled that aid in dying is legal, and a suit was also recently filed in New York.
article_snippet.sent: Legislation is pending in several other states.
article_snippet.sent: the retired obstetrician believes having medication to hasten death helps terminally ill people live fully in terminally ill people last weeks or months without being immobilized by fear.