DEATH WITH DIGNITY

 Brittany_Maynard had everything to live for. Newly married, the beautiful and intelligent young woman should have looked forward to a long, happy life with a husband and children. Instead, she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and told that she would die within a year. She began her painful journey toward death, having seizures, severe head and neck pain, and stroke-like symptoms. At some point she decided not to continue in agony, but to die on a date of her choosing, shortly after her husband’s birthday.

Brittany lived in California, where she could not commit suicide legally. Instead of dying peacefully in her home as she wished, she and her husband had to move to Oregon, which allows physician-assisted suicide. (A physician supplied the aid-in-dying medication she would need, but she would have to administer it herself.)  Though she was fortunate in having that choice available, moving away from her parents and friends must have severely upset her already tumultuous life. She spent some of those last few months working with the Compassion & Choices group, which helps the dying and publicizes the difficulties they face in carrying out their decisions. Her video is familiar to most of us now.

The publicity about her death led to a California legislator’s introducing SB 128, a bill that would have made Brittany’s kind of death legal in California. Many of us (a large majority of the Californians polled) are in favor of death with dignity, and thought the bill would pass easily, but it was quickly defeated by religious and other groups who represent themselves as being in favor of life. They trotted out the usual arguments about possible miraculous recoveries, not letting temporary depression cloud a sick person’s judgment, and so on. It was sickening to read their smug remarks.

I do not want to hear any pious comments about waiting until “God called her home,” implying that it was sinful or stupid for her to end her life on her own terms. What kind of people are these who deny a dying woman the right to end her painful life a little early? Has any person who has watched a loved one die slowly and in agony want to condemn anyone else to that kind of death? We need to pass some version of SB 128 to ensure the right of Californians to escape unnecessary suffering from terminal illnesses without having to move to a more compassionate state.