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Gathering Place
 Roland L. Halpern |
Death with Dignity bill
deserves a hearing
in LegislatureIt is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself. Probably, this is the last day I will be able to do it to myself." Those were the final words of Percy Bridgman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, in 1961, after his doctor refused to help him die, turned a gun on himself. Bridgman had been suffering intolerably from terminal cancer.
In a letter to Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Rosa-lyn Baker, Physicians for Human Rights, itself a co-winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, wrote, "Compelling a competent terminally ill adult to endure unremitting pain and suffering against his or her own wishes is analogous to torture, (we) urge you to support and pass this (Death with Dignity) bill."
Other well-respected organizations also have encouraged Baker to hold a hearing. These include AUTONOMY, a disability rights group headed by well-known writer Hugh Gallagher, also noted for being the author of the first disabilities civil rights law, and the American Medical Student Association, whose members say they represent "the next generation of physicians, who truly want the best for our patients."
The bill would allow a competent adult who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness the legal right to ask a physician for a prescription medication that could be used to hasten the patient's death. Modeled after Oregon's law that has been in effect for more than six years, the bill contains more than a dozen safeguards designed to prevent abuse.
In addition to a second medical opinion, the patient must make three separate requests and is subject to a mandatory waiting period. Physicians must counsel patients on alternative forms of treatment and the patient must be physically able to self-administer the medication. Physicians morally opposed do not have to participate, and the patient can rescind his or her request at any time.
Robert Nathanson, a physician and co-founder and past president of Hospice Hawaii, reflecting upon his years of caring for the terminally ill, has said, "I know from experience that only a small percentage of patients want assistance with dying. For those few, however, it is a major blessing. They deserve the right to have it ... legally."
Growing concern compelled Nathanson to form Hawaii Physicians for Assisted Dying, a group of local doctors who support the patient's right to choice. An islandwide survey showed that 73 percent of physicians responding to his questionnaire supported assisted dying provided proper safeguards were in place.
And contrary to claims that there is no support within the religious community, the Rev. John Heidel, former chaplain of Punahou School, now heads a group called Religious Leaders for Assisted Dying, whose member include well-respected leaders from the Christian, Buddhist and Jewish faiths.
The Rev. Heidel has stated, "I do not believe it is up to me, or any other religious leader, to dictate how this final and perhaps most intimate decision between a dying person and his or her God should be made. Instead, we must support and accept such decisions, even if they do not represent the course we ourselves might have chosen. This is what choice is all about."
With so much support, including the recent survey by QMark Research & Polling in which 75 percent of registered voters said they support a patient's right to a hastened death, why isn't the Death with Dignity bill getting a hearing? That's a question many terminally ill people and their families want to know.
That figure again is 75 percent, a decided majority. According to my dictionary, "democracy" means "government by the people; especially: rule of the majority." I apparently don't have the official Hawaii edition.
Roland L. Halpern is executive director of Compassion In Dying of Hawaii.
