WHEN California’s lawmakers passed a bill in September that legalised doctor-assisted dying, there were doubts it would ever become law. Between success and the statute book stood a possible veto by the state governor, Jerry Brown. Mr Brown is a pious Catholic—and the strongest opposition to assisted dying has come from the Catholic church. But Mr Brown had also spoken to Brittany Maynard, a young Californian whose diagnosis of terminal brain cancer had turned her into an advocate for the cause. In 2014 she moved to Oregon, the first state to legalise assisted dying, and took her own life there. Ms Maynard’s story, and a moving video she made asking California’s lawmakers to pass something similar to Oregon’s Death with Dignity law, transformed the debate in her home state and beyond.

Now the uncertainty is at an end. On October 5th Mr Brown signed the bill—a strong expression of his support, since it could have passed into law if he had merely declined to veto it. Next year California will join Oregon, Vermont, Washington state and Montana in allowing doctors, with appropriate safeguards, to prescribe drugs that terminally ill patients can use to end their own lives, if they choose. This will quadruple the number of Americans covered by such a law, to just over 50m.

In a plainly worded letter to the California State Assembly, Mr Brown explained his decision. Having read submissions from both supporters and opponents of the measure, and consulted with a Catholic bishop, two of his own doctors and various friends with differing opinions, he said that he was left to reflect on what he would want in the face of his own death. “I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain,” he wrote, “I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”

The decision has been criticised by opponents, who say that rather than thinking about how the law would affect people like himself—well-off, white, well-educated—the governor ought to have thought about less privileged folk, who might find themselves under pressure from relatives or health-care providers to take a quick and cheap way out. Mr Brown rejected such paternalism; and there is no evidence from states with similar laws that people end up taking their lives under duress.