Death is a taboo subject most have no interest in talking about, especially when planning their own.
Physician-assisted suicide is a choice many terminally ill patients prefer to have access to, but do not. Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, along with Washington D.C., are the only locations in the country that provide opportunity for assisted suicide via legislation. California, which used to be another of those states, recently had its ruling overturned by a Riverside County Judge, according to the Los Angeles Times. Montana, meanwhile, is the one state that has legal physician-assisted suicide by court ruling.
As expected, there are prerequisites and legal protocols in place in all states besides Montana. According to ProCon.org, a patient must be 18 years or older, they must be a resident in that state, they must have a diagnosis of six months to live or less, two oral requests from their physician 15 to 20 days apart, and one written request.
Physician-assisted suicide, not to be confused with euthanasia, is when a physician provides the means for death to their patients usually through a prescription. This makes it so a patient can decide at any time when to end their life, while being allowed to do so in the comfort of their own home. The patients hold the responsibility of when to take their own lives giving them power in a time when they feel powerless over their diagnosis; a kind of last beacon of hope, if you will.
According to the Oregon Health Authority’s Death with Dignity Act, as of January, prescriptions were written for 1,967 people in Oregon, and of those people, 1,275 died from taking the drugs legally prescribed to them, demonstrating that not every patient prescribed the drug goes through with using it.
The people that choose to die with dignity are those who have been told they have six months or less to live and that those months will not be simple if hope is to be upheld. They may consist of painful treatments, countless visits to the doctor to hear the same bad news, and in the end, the burden of knowing is just to prolong the inevitable. Going through all of that is agonizing enough but having to watch loved ones crumble against their own will is always unjustifiable.
There is worry that this could be the gateway into normalizing suicide and making it readily available to anyone.
The laws in place ensure only people who really need the drugs have access to them. People who are depressed or mentally ill do not have access to this sort of medical assistance, but instead more helpful alternatives. In such cases, treatments and recovery options are offered whereas terminally ill patients no longer have a choice.
No one should feel that the only way out of their misery is through taking their own life, but when that fate was already chosen for them, they deserve a say.
It is not anyone’s job to play God and decide who lives and who dies. Letting people choose is letting people die with dignity.
