Assisted suicide needs alternatives

Factors in the aid to dying are many and often do not justify the extreme measure

I am responding to a (Sept. 3) letter in regards to patients having the right to determine whether their lives should be unnecessarily prolonged or seek assisted suicide.

No one is asking for a life to be unnecessarily prolonged. What is being discussed is ending a life before its natural demise.

The key argument given is the usual one of “fear of pain.” This isn’t the reason most people choose assisted suicide. It’s losing autonomy and the feeling that they are a burden. Pain is controllable. It is a medical specialty in itself, and all kinds of diseases, conditions, etc., can be addressed in many different ways and in such a way that one can remain pain free, lucid and able to communicate.

The bill introduced in the 2017 state Legislature had no safeguards. Many people who are not doctors could provide the prescription to kill with no knowledge about the patient, no training to detect depression — which is a major reason that one seeks assisted suicide — and no oversight in the dealings with the patient. These people are simply qualified to write the prescription.

Only one request is required. There is no second opinion. There is no psychiatric referral, no waiting period and no witnesses. The only paper trail is a death certificate saying that the person died of a terminal illness, which is a lie, which falsifies a death certificate as the death is caused by assisted suicide.

Terminally ill is defined as a disease or condition that is incurable and irreversible and will result in death in a “foreseeable” period of time. Diseases such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Parkinson’s and muscular dystrophy, to mention a few, fall into that description.

You can be from anywhere and be 18 years or older to qualify for assisted suicide.

There are so many factors that have to be looked at in the aid of dying. People alone, fear of death and being a burden to others. Families can be a support or the opposite. Pressure can be put on vulnerable people. Often there is money involved when one dies, which can make things more complicated. Insurance companies are involved, which may not pay in cases of assisted suicide because the death certificate is falsified.

Alternatives must be provided to those who are facing making end-of-life decisions. Good hospice care can give a peaceful end in the final months, days and hours. This service can be in-home or elsewhere. It can also reduce the burden and the cost on families.

We must not be pressured to eliminate the elderly, the handicapped or the chronically ill, because all human beings have value from conception to natural death.