Death with Dignity?

As I mentioned in my last post, Clara and I are now back home in Colorado Springs.  Our daughter goes to school in Boulder, about a two-hour drive north.  On the recent Independence Day holiday, we drove up to spend the day with her where she lives.

          Boulder is a wonderful city for walking around and people-watching.  It is compact, with a pedestrian mall area, Pearl Street, in the center of town and a beautiful park, Central Park, very close.  We enjoyed strolling around, listening to the various buskers playing music in the public spaces, watching the crowds, striking up conversations. 

Among those abroad, looking to chat others up, were paid canvassers looking for registers voters willing to sign various petitions.  One petition very much in evidence was one calling for a November ballot referendum titled Medical Aid in Dying.  This referendum, if enough signatures are gathered, will follow bills proposing similar new laws failed in both houses of Colorado’s state legislature.

The issue is expected to make it to the ballot in November, and it is expected to pass with sixty-some percent of electorate reportedly favoring it.  This follows the national trend, that while only four states have such laws on the books, a majority of citizens would support such a law.

The essence of the law is that if someone is judged by doctors to be terminally ill and within six months of death, they can petition two physicians to be allowed assistance in committing suicide.  If the two doctors find the patient to be capable of making such a decision, then they can decide to provide the patient with a drug which will kill him.  The patient must self-administer the drug.

These laws, while not yet widespread, are popular for a good reason.  Almost everybody has seen someone close to them, suffer terribly in dying.  Perhaps the patient had a terminal disease, such as cancer, which caused a prolonged and painful death.  Perhaps the patient lost their ability to live independently, either because of encroaching physical limitations or because of the onset of dementia, and they felt that the patient suffered the indignity of continuing to live in their condition.  (This latter condition is not addressed by the proposed law in Colorado.)  The support for Death with Dignity laws, as they’re often called in general, is usually couched in terms of compassion for the dying.  Sometimes, it is asserted, medical science is applied to unreasonably prolong a dying patient’s life where the more merciful course would be to hasten their death in as comfortable, pain-free a manner as possible.

Most traditional forms of monotheistic religion oppose such assisted suicide as they consider life to be sacred, and death to be in the realm of God, not man.  Most liberal sects of those same religions support it, because of the compassion issue and the sense that tradition could not have taken into account the measures that artificially prolong life, and that ‘Quality of Life’ is more important than Life Itself.

I personally come out on the traditionalist’s side of this issue.  It isn’t that compassion for the terminally ill is beyond me, but that my experience in ministering to the dying and their families has taught me that decisions concerning time-of-death often become complicated and weighted down with ancillary issues that a person should not have to face at the end of his life.

It seems so compassionate to offer the terminally ill a relatively easy, painless way out.  But in my experience, and that of so many others who deal with the dying, it is literally within our power to depart from life whenever we choose.  I have seen many elderly who, tired of life, have literally starved themselves to death by simply refusing nourishment.  I’ve also seen elderly refusing treatments, such as medication, that would have prolonged their lives.  I’ve watched the terminally ill fight death with all their strength and then suddenly, having come to peace with the eventuality, let go of life and slip into death.  I am convinced that each one of us has a great deal of control, without being given fatal doses of life-suppressing medications, to determine when we go.  Other members of the clergy, as well as medical professionals, agree with this assessment having witnessed many deaths.  Certainly for many patients, laws allowing them to be given life-ending medications will hasten death but not by much.  The advocacy of these ‘Death with Dignity’ laws often ignores this reality.  While one can certainly point to cases of those whom such laws would allow to die more quickly and less painfully, my sense is that such cases are in the minority.

My other objection to these laws is that they seem to create a mindset – among the terminally ill and their families – that the patient is doing his heirs a favor in opting for an earlier death.  As counselor to the dying and their families, I have seen this mindset come into play time and again.  There seems to be a growing cultural assumption that life itself is a utilitarian reality.  That one must justify their continued life by their continued independence and productivity.  Few are willing to frame the issue in such terms, but I have seen it, over and over, as a subtext in the relationships between the dying or elderly and their families.  And I cannot express in strong enough terms, my revulsion at the notion that people would view their own life, or someone else’s, in such terms.  But I hear such sentiments expressed, directly or indirectly, again and again.

I think this is at the heart of the opposition to such laws among traditional believers in various faith traditions.  Our lives have intrinsic value, completely separate from the question of whether we are, or ever will be, productive.  Because life if a gift from the Creator, it cannot be forfeited by man when it becomes un-useful or inconvenient.

I fear these ‘Death with Dignity’ laws, believing that they in effect create an imperative for the impaired to sacrifice their lives in order to decrease inconveniences, or expenses, to their families.  I would rather see us learn to celebrate our lives as an end in themselves, not as a vehicle to accomplishment.  There is no question that accomplishment affords us an incredible opportunity for accumulating self-worth and meaning, but it is not the purpose of our lives, thereby making our lives expendable when accomplishment ceases.

In the ‘Death with Dignity’ movement there is far too much emphasis on the autonomy to choose the time of one’s death, as the vehicle to dignity.  Far more emphasis should be applied to the issue of supporting, and being present for, the dying…even though it may be uncomfortable.