On Faith
Mike Young
Church supports
death-with-dignity billLife is bounded by two curves: birth and death. Between those curves my life is determined by the choices I make. I did not, indeed I cannot, choose my birth. Can I choose my death? Does "reverence for life" mean that there are no conditions under which it is acceptable to say, "Here is where I choose to end this life"?
Physicians, the dying and their family members make those decisions daily. Try this therapy, withhold that treatment, extend this heroic measure or pull the plug. Medical technology has enabled us to maintain life functions well past anything a reasonable person would call living. Too often, those decisions are made only after the dying person is no longer able to participate in them.
A friend and parishioner of mine pulled the needles and tubes from her body and left the hospital saying, "I do not want to live like this!" Ironically, she did not die as they told her she would. But she made the decision!
That is what is at issue. Shall the dying be permitted to take as large a hand as they are able in their own life-and-death decisions? Or shall doctors, family members and public policy have the power to trump them?
Opponents of the death-with-dignity bill would have it that the dying themselves may not make that decision. They imagine a slippery slope leading to the pressure to exit, then to euthanasia.
But we are well along a different slippery slope, countered only by such still largely unenforceable instruments as living wills and durable powers of attorney. That is the direction in which public policy must move: maintaining the sanctity of the choice of the dying. The First Unitarian Church advocated that move in a resolution passed Sunday.
This is the church that sponsored the poll on the death-with-dignity bill last year. Seventy-two percent of registered voters statewide supported the measure, with majorities supporting it across every ethnic and religious group in the state. Even a majority of Mormons supported it.
I respect the beliefs of the religiously very conservative for whom no conditions and no safeguards are enough to justify putting that decision in the hands of the dying. But the issue is not our differing views of morality. It is, rather, what shall be public policy.
That is best served by keeping the decision, with reasonable safeguards, in the hands of those who are doing the dying.
The Rev. Mike Young is the pastor of First Unitarian Church of Honolulu.
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