A long road to legalization of aid-in-dying law

For more than a decade, I’ve advocated for Connecticut lawmakers to pass a medical aid-indying law to allow a mentally capable, terminally ill adult the option to decide to take prescription medication to peacefully end unbearable suffering at the end of their life. Despite the fact that more than three-quarters of Connecticut voters support this policy (75 percent vs. 21 percent), which is already approved in 10 states and Washington, D.C., our state lawmakers have not approved medical aid-indying legislation in more than a dozen attempts.

After another failure to pass a medical aid-indying bill last spring, I wanted to better understand the reasons and rethink what we could do to convince lawmakers to say yes. Our supporters, who give freely of their time to advocate for passage, were devastated when the legislation did not even get a vote in the Judiciary Committee after the Public Health Committee approved it for the third straight year.

For several of our supporters who are terminally ill and want to have the option of medical aid in dying when their time comes, the failure to pass legislation could force difficult decisions. Do they leave their homes and relocate to a nearby state where medical aid in dying is allowed, such as Maine, New Jersey or Vermont to experience a peaceful death without needless suffering?

In my effort to find a new approach, I decided to walk across Connecticut from my home in South Windsor and travel to all four corners of the state. My plan: to visit districts of key lawmakers who support and oppose the legislation and talk with constituents along the way.

Over 30 days and 300 miles, I talked to hundreds of people and re-learned something I had almost begun to take for granted after living here for 25 years. Connecticut is a remarkably beautiful state, with a fascinating history, spectacular countryside, and warm and welcoming people. It’s a place where people want to live and raise families, and to live their final days.

I walked with dozens of supporters, most with stories that brought them to advocate for medical aid in dying. They included wives, husbands and friends who sat at the bedsides of dying loved ones, who in their final days, asked for help in gently ending needless suffering that Connecticut law does not allow.

Our conversations were often not about medical aid in dying or those difficult deaths, but about our lives, our children; funny, happy stories about the people we know or the towns we were visiting. I came to have a much richer understanding of supporters who have come to the state Capitol year after year to share wrenching stories of their loved ones’ deaths. Connecticut is their home, where they work and live and play, where family, friends, and colleagues are their support.

The thought of uprooting someone who is terminally ill, in their final days, and taking them away from everything and everyone they know and love, to ease their passing is especially cruel. And yet without the passage of medical aid-in-dying legislation in Connecticut, it is the only option available to end intolerable suffering when no other option provides relief.

Medical aid in dying has a long and proven history of successful implementation across the country. While critics warn of malfeasance and misuse, there is no evidence of that, including more than 25 years of use in Oregon alone.

Critics worry that its availability would prompt overuse. But the opposite has proven true.

Since implementation more than 25 years ago in Oregon in 1997, and following implementation in 10 other jurisdictions, fewer than 6,400 people across the country have utilized this end-of-life care option.

There is a cost to not passing medical aid-indying legislation. Without legislation, terminally ill people who want to utilize this end-of-life option are forced to choose between a needlessly painful and difficult death, and leaving their home and everything they know and love to find a peaceful end, as my friend Lynda Bluestein was forced to do this month.

I urge lawmakers to raise a bill, hold a public hearing in the Judiciary Committee, pay attention to the facts. Disregard the misinformation from opponents for whom there will never be enough “safeguards” because they oppose this option under any circumstances. Please consider the needs and the will of an overwhelming majority of Connecticut residents and pass medical aid-in-dying legislation in 2024.

Every one of us is one diagnosis away from having to ponder our end-oflife care options. Every one of us deserves access to all of the options today. Tomorrow or next year may be too late.