Earlier this year, a beautiful 29-year-old woman was diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma mutiforme, an exceedingly fast-growing brain cancer whose victims usually die within a matter of months. Brittany Maynard chose to move from San Francisco to Portland, Ore. to take control of her final choice – to swallow her terminal medication in early November, after husband Dan Diaz’s 43rd birthday on Oct. 26. And Maynard, who reserves the right to change her mind, is partnering with Denver-based Compassion & Choices to authorize death with dignity in her home state of California and other states nationwide.
In 1994, Oregon legalized death-with-dignity statutes that allow patients to have options: comfort care, hospice, pain control and prescriptions for a lethal cocktail if the patient so chooses. This law was tied up in court for several years even after its implementation in 1997.
An energized conversation about Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit group endorsing death-with-dignity laws, took place Oct. 22 at the University City home of Debbie Olstad. Only women (who in many cases are the major caretakers of seriously ill family members) showed up; however, many men are involved as staff and volunteers in Compassion & Choices.
Several invitees discussed the memory of someone close to them who had suffered greatly before dying. The image motivated them to seek out a group like Compassion & Choices to help move legislation to legalize death with dignity in California. One guest pointed out the fact that aging Baby Boomers will change this conversation and that the time is ripe for California to reintroduce a death with dignity law.
Death with dignity, Olstad said at the meeting, “is the last act of love you could give a family member… We put our pets down. Would God want us to suffer?” In May of 2013, a Gallup survey showed 70 percent of Americans supported the physician-assisted ending of a terminally ill patient’s life by painless means. The patient was required to be mentally competent and to have been given six months to live.
Under the Oregon law, physicians and patients discuss end-of-life options in great detail. Patients may then choose to take end-of- life medicines themselves, thereby allowing patients to control the process from beginning to end.
In 2013, 122 Oregonians had prescriptions written for medication to end their dying process. Seventy-one (59 percent) took the medication, representing less than 0.2 percent of all deaths statewide. 97.2 percent of death-with-dignity patients died at home, and 85.7 percent were enrolled in hospice. According to Compassion & Choices, without this law, many patients turn to self-induced, premature and violent deaths rather than face an agonizing end of life.
Washington, Montana, New Mexico and Vermont have passed the death-with-dignity laws. Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey are considering similar bills to authorize and regulate aid in dying. So far, the idea has not gained momentum in California, but Compassion & Choices is campaigning to get this issue on the ballot within five years. In 1988, a ballot signature effort failed. After Oregon passed its law, California modeled its bills after the Oregon statute, intending to declare that competent adults expected to die in six months could request medication to hasten the ending of their lives. The California law was never passed. If you are interested in learning more on this topic, contact Compassion & Choices at compassionandchoices.org or toll free at (800) 247-7421. If you would like to get involved on the local front, contact Olstad at [email protected].
