PHYSICIAN-assisted death, which many of us hope will be on the agenda of the 1999 Hawaii legislative session, is progressing, apparently well, in Oregon more than a year after it was legalized but was shot down in flames by Michigan voters Nov. 3. Mich. defeat for
physician-assisted deathFirst of two articles (Dec. 8)
The Michigan defeat, by nearly 3 to 1, came just a few months after a poll showed widespread positive sentiment among Michigan voters.
On Thursday I will report on Oregon's progress. Michigan is today's topic.
After the Michigan defeat, a New York Times commentary by a University of Michigan law professor made this observation on the defeat:
"Money, though, is not the whole story. The Michigan experience shows that it is much easier to sell the basic notion of assisted suicide than to sell a complex statute making the idea law."
Michigan supporters drafted a 12,000-word proposal, then spent most of their available funds to hire a Nevada firm to get 400,000 signatures to qualify the question to go before voters Nov. 3.
Signature-getting for initiative petitions has become a business. Sometimes a hired gun may be standing outside a supermarket soliciting signatures for four or five different causes. We don't see this in Hawaii. We have no initiative process for proposing laws -- and I'm not sure we want one.
Despite the length of the Michigan proposal, foes were able to pick at it for failing to require notification of family members of a person's request to die. America's most famous proponent of assisted death, Jack Kevorkian, opposed the bill. Too bureaucratic, he said.
Opponents, banded together as Citizens for Compassionate Care, included more than 30 groups led by the Catholic Church, Right to Life of Michigan and the Michigan State Medical Society.
Former Michigan Gov. William Milliken supported the bill, but its proponents said they had only $75,000 left for TV advertising versus more than $5 million in spending by the coalition against them.
A retired physician, Ed Pierce, led the vastly outgunned support group, Merian's Friends, named after a woman who had been helped to die by Kevorkian. A Detroit News exit poll found that four of every 10 "no" voters did so believing "life is sacred." Ninety percent of those voting "yes" felt terminally ill people should be able to end their suffering.
Hospice organizations almost universally oppose physician-assisted death. Dr. Cicely Saunders. founder of St. Christopher's, the "mother hospice" in London, said it would be a personal defeat for her if any patient wanted suicide. Hospice of Michigan joined in the opposition to Michigan's Proposition B.
But its executive medical director, Dr. John Finn, said the issue had a "silver lining" because it brought attention to end-of-life issues. Finn said the fact that the question was on the ballot at all indicted the medical community for not giving better comfort care.
In its 1997 decisions leaving assisted suicide to "the laboratory of the states," the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a right to comfort care. It took a position, long taken by the St. Francis Medical Center in Hawaii among many others, that administering medication to relieve pain is legal, even if it might hasten death, so long as it is not given for the purpose of causing death.
IN September, a new Michigan law made it a felony with a maximum five-year prison term for a person to assist a suicide. An irony here is that suicide itself is legal in all 50 states. In Hawaii, suicide invalidates only life insurance policies in effect less than two years.
Kevorkian is challenging the Michigan law via a videotaped act of euthanasia in which he administered a fatal injection upon a patient's request. It was shown nationally by CBS on "60 Minutes." Kevorkian then was indicted for murder. He threatens to starve himself to death if convicted and jailed.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.