The Willow Glen Resident Dying with dignity, without Kevorkian By Betty Rollin It's called the California Conference on Physician Assisted Dying; it was held last month in San Francisco; it was hosted by the Death With Dignity National Center, the San Francisco Medical Society and Mayor Willie Brown Jr.; and Dr. Kevorkian did not attend. That's because the physician assisted suicide movement is no longer about an eccentric ex- pathologist and patients hooked up to lethal IVs in trailers. It's about a lot of thoughtful professionals--physicians, ethicists, hospice workers, lawyers, health-care administrators, ministers--and ordinary people like me, who were there because, for us, assisting in the death of a terminally-ill person who wants to die is not a concept. We've done it. My mother had ovarian cancer, fought the good fight and was dying, but in her view, not fast enough. She begged me to help her. I did. How could I not? She was my mother and I loved her and this was her last wish. And I knew she meant it. Fifteen years have passed, and now I know that she couldn't be the only terminally ill person who wanted out of life and who couldn't get there without help. "What do people do who don't have children?" she asked me, not idly, once she knew we would help her to die. As alone as we felt with our struggle, we knew we were not alone. But little did we know how many people, how many families were going through the same agony--enough to start a movement. Legally, the issue has gone farther than I ever expected it to go in my lifetime, in 1997 reaching the Supreme Court. Although the court upheld the constitutionality of state laws barring assisted suicide, the court acknowledged that "[T]hroughout the nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality of physician assisted suicide," adding that "Our holding permits this debate to continue." As it has. Poll after poll demonstrates that most Americans want a change. The most recent one in California, conducted by the Death with Dignity Center in San Mateo, found that the vast majority of people in this state who were asked support a terminally-ill individual's right to choose physician assisted death. As a result of the controversy about legal aid-in-dying, the issue of pain has gotten a lot more attention. Under-medication for pain has been an ongoing fact in most hospitals, but suddenly physicians arguing against assisted death on the grounds that "we can keep people pain-free" now found themselves obliged to do so. Suffering is just a word until you feel it. Or see someone you love feeling it. I've often thought that people who are against legal aid-in-dying are less cruel than they are inexperienced. Many people, luckier than they know, have never had their bodies turn into torture chambers. I do believe that most patients, given the opportunity to end their lives, wouldn't. The wish to live is powerful, even under the most terrible and hopeless circumstances. In the year that physician-assisted death has been legal in Oregon, fewer than ten people have availed themselves of this help. But there is no way to count the number of people who have peace-of-mind just because the law is in place. Knowing that the option of death exists is, in itself, merciful. My mother got out. But she knew she was lucky. She wanted other desperate people to have the same opportunity. And in her memory, so do I. [ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Willow Glen Resident, December 9, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.