ARTICLE IV

LEGALIZATION
“The right to die should be a matter of personal choice.

We are able to choose all kinds of things in life from who we marry to what kind of
work we do and I think when one comes to the end of one’s life, whether you have a
terminal illness or whether you’re elderly, you should have a choice about what
happens to you…

I’m pro life – I want to live as long as I possibly can, but l also believe the law should
be changed to let anyone with some severe medical condition which is causing
unbearable symptoms to have an assisted suicide. I wouldn’t want to be
unnecessarily kept alive against my own will.”

Michael Irwin, MPH, MD

LEGALIZATION: MEDICAL PERSPECTIVES

“I have long favored legalizing physician-assisted dying for terminally ill patients
whose suffering cannot be relieved in any other way, and I was the first of the original
fourteen petitioners to put the Massachusetts Death with Dignity Act on the ballot in
November. In 1997, as executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine,
when the issue was before the US Supreme Court, I wrote an editorial favoring it,
and told the story of my father, who shot himself rather than endure a protracted
death from metastatic cancer of the prostate.

It seems to me that, as with opposition based on whether the physician is ‘active,’

the argument that physicians should be only ‘healers’ focuses too much on the
physician, and not enough on the patient. When healing is no longer possible, when
death is imminent and patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician’s
role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accord with the patient’s
wishes. Still, no physician should have to comply with a request to assist a terminally
ill patient to die, just as no patient should be coerced into making such a request. It
must be a choice for both patient and physician.”

Marcia Angell, MD

LEGALIZATION: LAW MAKER’S VIEW

“The crux of the matter is whether the State of California should continue to make it a
crime for a dying person to end his life, no matter how great his pain and suffering. I
have carefully read the thoughtful opposition materials presented by a number of
doctors, religious leaders and those who champion disability rights. I have
considered the theological and religious perspectives that any deliberate shortening
of one’s life is sinful. I have also read the letters of those who support the bill,
including heartfelt pleas from Brittany Maynard’s family and Archbishop Desmond
Tutu… In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own
death. I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating
pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the
options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”
Jerry Brown, JD

VULNERABLE GROUPS
“Data from places where assisted dying has been legalized, such as Oregon,
suggest that the fears of these opponents of the bill are anyway largely unjustified…
[T]he most significant vulnerability in many of the terminally ill is that to agonizing,
chronic, and unrelievable pain. Because of the MPs who opposed the bill, thousands
of people in the UK will have to continue to bear this pain against their will. For these
MPs to describe their vote as protecting the vulnerable is grotesque.”
Roger Crisp, DPhil

HIPPOCRATIC OATH
“There’s people that tell me why are you doing this [advocating for PAS], you’re
supposed to cure, you’re supposed to help this person, my answer to that is some
people need help dying. To prolong a death in some cases is not helpful, it can be
counter productive. My objective is that given the Hippocratic Oath, I’m not going
against it, I’m helping people, people like my daughter [Emily, who died at 25 after a
17-year battle with leukemia] who need help at the end of their lives. What spurred
me is Emily on two occasions when she was lucid and competent, she asked me to
give her enough sleeping pills so that she could go to sleep permanently. She was
blind, but in the bed and had to be carried, but her mind was still competent. Had I
known it was legal in five other states… and understanding what her wishes were, I
would have left [to go to a legal state] in a heartbeat.”
Robert Olvera, MD
LEGAL RIGHTS
“The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and
embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in
the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of this right is as central to personal
autonomy and bodily integrity as rights safeguarded by this Court’s decisions relating
to marriage, family relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the
refusal or termination of life-saving medical treatment.”
ACLU Amicus Brief in Vacco v. Quill

SLIPPERY SLOPE
“The bottom line is that we have not seen evidence of the slippery slope and there is
no good reason to believe that the experience on that front would be any different in
Australia. [Reports by Australian groups] all conclude that the slippery slope
arguments are not supported by valid and reliable evidence.”
Jocelyn Downie, MA, MLitt, SJD

PALLIATIVE CARE
“Assisting death in no way precludes giving the best palliative care possible but
rather integrates compassionate care and respect for the patient’s autonomy and
ultimately makes death with dignity a real option…

Opposing euthanasia to palliative care…neither reflects the Dutch reality that

palliative medicine is incorporated within end-of-life care nor the place of the option
of assisted death at the request of a patient within the overall spectrum of end-of-life
care.”

Gerrit Kimsma, MD

PHICYSIAN OBLIGATION
“It would be hard for me to construct addressing the suffering of a terminally ill
patient as a harm. It is an obligation. The question is, how we can respond to those
kinds of sufferings? Part of our job, in my opinion, is to help people die better. I say
that in a direct way because it irks me when we say that doctors should not help
people die. We need people who are committed to caring for people all the way
through to their death as if they were family members, committed to relieving their
suffering. Sometimes that requires helping people to die.”
Timothy E. Quill, MD
FINANCIAL MOTIVATION
“There is no financial incentive to pressure patients… This myth is further dispelled
by the fact that 92 percent of people in Oregon who choose medical aid in dying are
enrolled in hospice care and not receiving expensive or intensive treatment.
Therefore, there is no financial incentive to encourage people to accelerate their
deaths.”
Sources : https://euthanasia.procon.org/source-biographies/compassion-choices/