Terminally ill patients in California currently only have a few life-ending options, says Coombs Lee, and they’re less than humane. If a person’s pain becomes intolerable, they have the option to ask their physician to sedate them to unconsciousness and then withhold food and water until they die. “That can take days,” says Coombs Lee, adding that some people have simply stopped eating and drinking without sedation. And, of course, she says, “violent options are available.”
O’Donnell refuses to go that route. “I’m not going to be a lawbreaker at the end of my life and then have the police come into my home and interrogate my family because it’s part of what they’re required to do when they investigate a suicide under the penal code,” she tells Couric. “I would never do that to my family.”
O’Donnell says it’s important that people know that she’s not suicidal: “I don’t want to die … I would do anything to live.”
A preliminary motions hearing for O’Donnell’s suit will be held on July 24, her birthday.
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