By Carol Bogart
As Dr. “Death” Jack Kervorkian prepares to resume life as a non-incarcerated citizen, only Oregon has enacted legislation that allows terminally ill people to legally end their own lives.
Some years back, when I was city editor at a newspaper in California, the Terry Shiavo case cast the issue into stark relief.
Schiavo, you may recall, was the Florida woman who lingered in what her doctors called a “persistent vegetative state” (more commonly thought of as a coma) for 13 years. Her husband said, “Let her die.” Her parents argued, unsuccessfully, to let her live. After a prolonged court battle, her feeding tube was removed.
The entire issue might have been decided right when Schiavo’s heart attack catastrophically deprived her brain of oxygen had she had a living will that made clear her wishes. In coming years, her parents insisted she was responsive and would follow them with her eyes. Her husband, who had acquired a common law wife with whom he had two children, was equally insistent that Terri would rather be allowed to die. She would not, he said, want to continue life, wholly dependent upon others for her every need.
Her mother, her sister and others were equally insistent the once-vibrant young woman would, instead, have fought to live – hoping for a miracle. Missing in the equation were irrefutable instructions from Terri.
In Oregon, when mentally sound people in agonizing pain ask their doctor for life-ending drugs, they get them. They have to ask twice verbally, once in writing, and then have to administer the drugs themselves.
Dr. Kervorkian used to hook up such people to a machine he devised that allowed the patient to administer the lethal cocktail. Now he says he won’t do that anymore, but will lobby to have laws changed in the majority of states that don’t allow assisted suicide.
My feelings are mixed.
For one, in a certain sense, assisted suicide is already legal. When a terminally ill person who, say, has cancer decides, “Enough,” and hospice is called in, all cancer drugs are discarded, and “palliative” care (medical intervention to provide comfort only) begins. Morphine, for example, is administered by family members to ease the loved one’s pain. However, it can also speed up their passing.
Morphine interferes with respiration, my mother’s doctor told me. Mom was on a ventilator, dying of pneumonia, when I’d asked if she could have a little more to ease the discomfort of the intubation.
Terri Shiavo was in no condition to give herself lethal drugs, even had they been legal. In Oregon, only a small percentage of people have availed themselves of doctor-assisted suicide since the law was enacted in 1997. To date, fewer than 300 people have taken advantage of the process to end their lives. Last year, 46 did. Of those, many were in their 70s and had cancer.
The will to live is strong. If faced with chronic, relentless, unremitting pain, I’m not certain what I would want to do. My faith says, “Let God decide.” Still, my living will is clear: No hope of recovery? No heroic measures.
Carol Bogart blogs at http://carolbogart.blogspot.com/. Contact her at 3bogart@sbcglobal.net.
To read arguments on both sides of the assisted suicide debate, visit the Death With Dignity National Center: www.deathwithdignity.org and the National Right to Life Committee: www.nrlc.org.
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4 users commented in " Deciding to Die "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackSchiavo was truely an “assisted euthanasia” for the convenience of her husband, who was living with another woman, and helped with the “right to die” movement. The press coverage was terrible. I have worked with profoundly retarded adults and see them as human, but we had to watch where we sent them for treatment, because a lot of people thought they were “better off dead” and at least one of my patients died in a suspicious manner in a university hospital for elective treatment.
However, she was not “in a coma” and may not have been in persistant vegetative state, since she was able to recognize her parents. According to the British Medical Journal, PVS is overdiagnosed in 40 percent of patients, and I’ve had several patients who did not meet the criteria called “PVS” by neurologists who ignored they were sick or they were on high doses of pain or anti convulsent medicines at the time when they were seen.
As for severe pain, that should not happen. If you are in severe pain, you need a pain specialists.
This has to be one of the most irresponsible and uninformed pieces of trash I have read in a long time. Terri Schiavo wasn’t in a coma. She had a feeding tube, like thousands and thousands of people across America. Terri Schiavo was “assisted” in dying. The real question is how Terri sustained the brain injury to being with and all fingers point to the husband who then got himself another woman, filed false insurance claims and engaged in insurance fraud to net himself $300,000 and net out $750,000 for rehab and care of Terri. He then set on a crusade to kill her, trying to withhold medical treatment. He should have been arrested then for attempted murder as withholding treatment is illegal. When that didn’t work, he hired an attorney to help him get court approval to kill his wife. That attorney, George Felos, had to coach him in how to do it—Felos should be charged as an accessory, they had to convince the judge that Terri wanted to die so they made up some stories with the help of his brother and sister-in-law and there was no way to colloborate them or substantiate them. Terri Schiavo was killed, no doubt about it. It was illegal for Kevorkian, it’s illegal for Michael Schiavo, the only difference being is that presumably Kevorkians’ victims wanted to die. Terri didn’t and there’s no proof that she did. The autoposy said she could have lived another 10 years or more, that she was in reasonably good health otherwise. Shame on you for printing uninformed poppycock. You should have posting privileges removed.
A highly-charged issue for sure.
– Carol
an understatement. You need to do a retraction of your wrong “facts”
For me, this post is about having the opportunity to “decide to die”. The law in Oregon that allows a person to choose death has prerequisites, 1) the person must be terminally ill, 2) he/she must be mentally competent 3) he/she must be able to self-administer the drugs and 4) he/she must request the drugs twice verbally and also in writing. I personally would like to have this as an option.
The Schiavo case is an entirely different matter. Schiavo’s mental competency may be debatable but she was clearly not able to communicate her wishes. That is where the Living Will comes in. Like Ms Bogart, I have one and hope if I ever need it, it will be honored.
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