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Healey wants lawmakers, not courts, to decide right-to-die issue

Dr. Roger Kligler, shown testifying last month before the Massachusetts Medical Society, filed the lawsuit against Attorney General Maura Healey and Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe. Jessica Rinaldi / Boston Globe

Two of the state’s top law enforcement officials are calling on a judge to dismiss a right-to-die lawsuit filed against them by a Falmouth cancer patient, arguing the case is premature and involves a highly controversial issue that should be decided by the legislature.

Still, Attorney General Maura Healey and Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe, in legal briefs, went out of their way to express sympathy for Dr. Roger Kligler, a retired physician with metastatic prostate cancer, and other very sick patients who want the option of obtaining lethal drugs to hasten their death if their condition precipitously — and painfully — declines.

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“There is no dispute that Dr. Kligler and those who suffer similarly are deserving of the utmost compassion, and their arguments . . . deserve close and serious consideration in various public fora, including the Legislature,” Healey wrote.

Read the complete story at BostonGlobe.com.

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