EDITORIAL: Death with Dignity promotes human choice
August 6, 2008
By Editorial Board
In June, Initiative 1000, Death with Dignity, was submitted to the state for inclusion on the state ballot. I-1000 didn’t just get the necessary signatures, its volunteers gathered 320,000 signatures, 50 percent more than was necessary.Gail Sorenson is a good example of why. Family members like Gail who have watched their loved ones suffer through their ending days in severe pain - and no other real options - are now the volunteers behind Washington State’s Death with Dignity campaign.
We hope voters will be, too. It’s not about right to life, it’s about the right to a semblance of quality of life. No one, like Gail’s mother, should have to consciously choose to starve to death to get out from under the pain of an illness whose prognosis is death. Without having walked in Gail’s shoes, readers can certainly imagine how hard that must be for both the patient and the family members who must bear witness to a slow, agonizing death.
If the majority of voters say yes, I-1000 will apply only to mentally competent patients who are capable of making their own decision and self administering the oral medication necessary to help them die a few months earlier than they would have otherwise. A medical professional must ascertain that they have six months or less to live, the decision must be made in writing and witnessed, and then there are two waiting periods built in to allow the patient to change his/her mind.
The Washington initiative is based on the Oregon model that was approved there more than a decade ago.
Opponents of the Right to Life movement should be in favor of this death option. Whereas a fetus has no choice, this law would allow the dying patient to make his/her own choice about how to exit. Some will argue that can only be God’s choice. Proponents see it as God helping those who help themselves.
Some opponents of I-1000 will refer to the life-death option as assisted suicide, but this has no resemblance to suicide. It is a humane end to a life that is already ending.
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What a shame that this editorial board has also bought into the big lie: Sometimes killing off innocent human beings can be an agreeable solution to our problems.
It’s a convenient solution, I admit. But convenience ought not be the sine qua non of society.
“If the majority of voters say yes, I-1000 will apply only to mentally competent patients who are capable of making their own decision…”
Um hmm. That’s how it always begins…
In Europe, where euthanasia has been legal for years now and is working in overdrive like a well-oiled machine, you don’t always have a say in your “medical treatment.” A Dutch survey, reviewed in the Journal of Medical Ethics, looked at the figures back in 1995 and found that in addition to 3,600 authorized cases there were 900 others in which doctors had acted without explicit consent. Research has shown that in the Netherlands roughly 1,000 patients every year are put to death by their physicians without request or consultation with the patient.
It’s a brave new world, folks. And this editorial board would like you to think fondly of it.
“The Washington initiative is based on the Oregon model that was approved there more than a decade ago.”
This is supposed to be encouraging? The Oregon law has a significantly flawed monitoring system featuring no investigations of abuse and no oversight. There are no penalties for doctors who fail to report assisting suicides. The State acknowledges its underlying data is destroyed after each annual report, making it impossible to verify those reports’ conclusions independently. And The Oregonian, the state’s major newspaper, complained in 2005 that the law’s reporting system “seems rigged to avoid finding” the answers. Its limitations keep hidden any abuses and irregularities. And if I-1000 passes, we’re promised more of the same here in Washington.
I can’t wait.
“Whereas a fetus has no choice…”
Also worth reflecting on.
“this law would allow the dying patient to make his/her own choice about how to exit.”
Wait a second. How come the ill and suffering are the only ones who deserve this “right to exit” how they please? Why can’t I take the drug? Why are we limiting it only to those with six months left to live (since our medical predictions are always 100% accurate)? Aren’t you discriminating against a healthy person like myself?
[More accurately, we're discriminating against the infirm; we have no problem killing them off -- it's only the healthy, productive individuals that we wish to keep around.]
“Some will argue that can only be God’s choice. Proponents [of assisted-suicide] see it as God helping those who help themselves.”
Right. And if my wife (who is quite young, beautiful and well) asked me to off her and I agreed, I suppose they would see that too as simply “God helping those who help themselves.”
“Some opponents of I-1000 will refer to the life-death option as assisted suicide, but this has no resemblance to suicide. It is a humane end to a life that is already ending.”
Memo to the editorial board: Your lives, too, are “already ending.” Oh, and suicide by any other name is still suicide.
Perhaps we should be more focused on caring for the sick and dying instead of trying to pass laws that allow us to kill them under the pretense of compassion.
If patients are suffering at the end of life in severe pain, it means they are not getting the care they need.
Initiative 1000 is not advocating for better care, pain management or other symptom relief for suffering, vulnerable people. It is advocating that patients end their lives. This is abandonment of patients by the medical community and the state.
Whether you call what Initiative 1000 legalizes as “physician-assisted suicide,” or not, matters little to the person who will die from ingesting a lethal overdose of pills prescribed by a participating physician. It is an inexpensive “quick fix” for inadequate treatment.
What the editorial board is not saying is that Oregon cannot legally investigate these cases, nor do they require physicians to report deaths by assisted suicide.
So no one really knows how many die by this method, nor the circumstances surrounding those deaths. The Washington initiative is equally secretive.
The media in Oregon has uncovered cases of people dying by assisted suicide who were depressed, had dementia, had been coerced, and had swallowing problems. A March 2008 report by Oregon Department of Human Services reported that no patients dying by assisted suicide were referred first for psychological evaluation - mental-health evaluation isn’t required in Oregon or Washington.
Recent articles in the Oregon press state that cancer sufferers are being taken off drug therapies that are helping them and told they will only be covered for assisted suicide.
I think the editorial board owes its readership a thorough investigation of the Oregon assisted suicide law and its negative effect on good health care in that state.
-Elenor K. Schoen