“You are invited to attend the actual ending of my
life.” So read the invitation to Karen Janoch’s
physician-assisted suicide, sent to about two dozen of her closest
family and friends. In April of 2004, Janoch ““ diagnosed with
terminal liver cancer ““ decided that she wanted to die, and
was able to do it painlessly and legally thanks to Oregon’s
unique Death With Dignity Act.
“I believe that I should be allowed to go with the least
amount of pain as possible,” she said in a New York Times
interview published after she took her own life. “It’s
bad enough I gotta go. Why should I have to beat myself up because
of it?”
Being of sound mind, and diagnosed with an unequivocally
terminal disease with six months to live, she could have either
lived out what was left of her life ““ most likely in terrible
pain or drugged out of consciousness ““ or choose to
painlessly kill herself on a date of her choosing and with the help
of her doctor.
Oregon is the only state with physician-assisted suicide, made
legal with the 1994 Death With Dignity Act. The act’s recent
re-emergence into the national news cycle has prompted its
supporters and detractors to resume the debate that has been going
on since before the name “Kevorkian” was a household
word. The question: Is it right for physicians to help terminally
ill people commit suicide?
“I don’t like the word “˜suicide,'”
said Don James, a retired school teacher with advanced prostate
cancer. “You know, if I get to the point where I can’t
process information, I can’t understand what you’re
saying, and I can’t communicate to you, I’m just
sitting here, … I don’t want to just hang on; I just
don’t want to sit there as a sedated vegetable.”
Like over 200 others, James decided that he wanted power over
his life. The Death With Dignity Act offered him such power. He
concludes, “If it’s really inevitable, it’s just
ugly for a while, for me and for my loved ones, why not? Why not
say, “˜Well, this is the time?'”
The right to die is without question a tumultuous debate. But
the sheer mass of support the act has received from the people whom
it actually affects is overwhelming. These people are not suicidal,
nor are they crazy. They do not kill themselves because they have
lost the will to live; they kill themselves because the impending
prospect of withering away into having no recognizable life is too
much to bear. No one, from the Supreme Court to their children and
loved ones, can tell them they shouldn’t be able to, because
it is impossible for us to put ourselves in their place.
Despite this, the moral debate continues, carried on by both the
religious and the secular. Elizabeth Goodwin, a UCLA student and
member of the student group Bruins For Life, insists that our lives
are not our own to take. “The supposed “˜right to
die’ is a fabricated right,” she says. “In the
same way that we cannot claim that we had a right to be conceived,
we cannot claim that we have a right to end our lives.”
“I can’t understand how anybody else would think
it’s any of their business or concern,” said Lovelle
Svart in an interview. Lovelle was diagnosed with terminal lung
cancer, and has since become an active supporter of the Death With
Dignity Act.
“I really don’t want to die,” she says,
“but for me, it is still true that the thought of living and
going through the really horrible ugly stuff is truly much
scarier.”
The concept of assisted suicide is not an easy topic to reason
through, but the issue becomes much clearer when healthy people
stop extrapolating and start listening to the voices of the
patients themselves. This is not a religious or spiritual issue.
It’s not about the Controlled Substances Act or our fear and
avoidance of death. This is about the patients, and the empowering,
rejuvenating and wholly hope-inspiring gift of choice.
Charlene Andrews, who likes to go by “Char,” was
diagnosed with terminal stage IV breast cancer in December of 2000.
She says that because she lives in Oregon, “I’m more
comfortable now with dying. I’m a firm believer in our law,
our Death With Dignity Act. … It gives me comfort, knowing that
there’s an option, knowing that there’s a
choice.”
Svart puts it more generally, saying that “having the
choice is giving all of the people, whether they use it or not, so
much more comfort in having whatever the disease is.”
All we have to do is listen to the people whom this act actually
affects. Lovelle Svart doesn’t want to die any more than I
do. But when faced with the inevitability of not just death, but a
painful, degenerative death, she should at the very least be able
to choose how.
Send e-mail to jobryan@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments
to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.