Death is hard to think about, let alone talk about. But one day, it comes to all of us, whether we’re ready for it or not. Some go gently into that good night, as poet Dylan Thomas put it. Others experience the end in agony.
Aaron Loomis described how his father, age 67, died of esophageal cancer. When his father went to his last doctor’s appointment, he was told his only option was to stop eating. His family watched over him 24 hours a day for weeks as they waited for him to starve to death.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done is care for my father,” Loomis said. His father’s one wish was to end his own life. “My father should not have had to ask the government, he should not have had to ask the church, nor should he have had to ask anyone to make that choice.”
Loomis, joined Thursday by doctors, politicians and House members, talked about his family’s experience as part of a Statehouse press conference announcing the introduction of the Death with Dignity bill. H-274 would enable Vermonters diagnosed with a terminal illness to put an end to their own lives if their suffering becomes too much to bear. Physicians could prescribe a drug to hasten death for mentally competent patients with no hope of survival.
Members of Patient Choices Vermont said mentally competent patients who have been given six months or less to live ought to have the option to end their lives.
“H.274 is about choice, not about mandates,” said Dr. David Babbot, a proponent of the bill.
Supporters with Patient Choices Vermont, the nonprofit group advocating for the bill, included Matt Dunne, a candidate in the gubernatorial primary, former Vermont Republican Congressman Dick Mallary and former Democratic Gov. Madeleine Kunin. Mallary said the issue surpasses politics, and he pointed out the latest bill would enable Vermonters to make better personal choices.
“No one (else) is required to exercise that choice,” Dr. David Babbot, a proponent of the bill, said.
The Death with Dignity bill would allow Vermonters to choose “patient-directed death,” according to Amy Shollenberger, a lobbyist for Patient Choices Vermont. Doctors, under the proposed law, would determine whether a patient is mentally competent, follow a protocol of written and oral permissions and then issue a prescription to the patient. Someone must be with the patient when he or she takes the medication.
Groups that oppose such legislation call this series of actions “euthanasia” or “physician-assisted suicide.”
The legislation would be modeled after an Oregon law enacted in 1993. Over the last 12 years, about 460 patients have sought medication to end their lives. About 91.5 percent of the patients who ended their lives were enrolled in hospice care. Doctors granted about one in every six requests for the prescriptions, according to materials from Death with Dignity.
The advocates said they were confident of the bill’s passage, in spite of the fact that the last time the bill was proposed in Vermont, in 2007, it failed in the House of Representatives.
The bill has 43 sponsors in the House, and it is supported by Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Editor’s note: The headline for this story was changed at 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2011.
