Terminally ill seek wider assistance
They want more states to OK physician-assisted death
DENVER — On a brisk day at a restaurant outside Chicago, Deb Robertson sat with her teenage grandson to talk about her death.
She’ll probably miss his high school graduation.
Death doesn’t frighten her much. The 65-year-old didn’t cry when she learned two months ago that the cancerous tumors in her liver were spreading, portending a tormented death.
But later, she received a call. A bill moving through the Illinois Legislature to allow certain terminally ill patients to end their lives with a doctor’s help had made progress.
Then she cried. “Medical aid in dying is not me choosing to die,” she says she told her 17-year-old grandson. “I am going to die. But it is my way of having a little bit more control over what it looks like in the end.”
That same conversation is happening beside hospital beds and around dinner tables across the country, as Americans who are nearing life’s end negotiate the terms with themselves, their families and, now, state lawmakers.
At least 12 states currently have bills that would legalize physician-assisted death. Eight states and Washington, DC, already allow it, but only for their own residents.
Vermont and Oregon permit any qualifying American to travel to their state for the practice. Patients must be at least 18 years old, within six months of death and be assessed to ensure they are capable of making an informed decision.
Two states have gone in the opposite direction. Kansas has a bill to further criminalize those who help someone with their physician-assisted death. West Virginia is asking voters to enshrine its current ban into the state constitution.
That patchwork of laws has left Americans in most states without recourse.
Some patients choose to apply for residency in a state where it’s legal. Others take arduous trips in the latestage of disease to die in unfamiliar places and beds, far from family, friends and pets.
It was late at night when Rod Azama awoke to his wife crawling on the floor, screaming. Pain from her cancer had punched through the heavy morphine dose.
“Let me die,” screamed his wife, Susan.
The issue is contentious. Opponents have moral objections with the very concept of someone ending their life. Even with safeguards in place, they argue, the decision could be made for the wrong reasons, including depression or pressure from family burdened by their caretaking.