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In recent months, issues surrounding terminal illness and choice at the end of life have risen to great prominence both in the media and among lawmakers. When discussing and writing about these issues, many erroneously use the term “assisted suicide” to describe the medical practice of aid in dying, currently authorized in Oregon, Montana, Washington, New Mexico, and Vermont. Being sure to use the right terminology is vital to this important debate.
When terminally ill people ask their doctors for an aid-in-dying prescription, they can quiet their fears about the dying process and focus on what’s left of life. It is an open, empowering and hopeful decision.
Aid in dying is taking control of death, not giving up on life. It’s not suicide.
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“Aid in dying” is the most neutral term to describe the medical practice advocates call “death with dignity” and opponents call “assisted suicide.”
Numerous professional organizations, including the American Public Health Association, support the use of the term aid in dying and consider the use of the word suicide inappropriate.
Terminally ill adults who choose death with dignity to end their dying process find it deeply offensive that their choice is called “suicide.” These are people who want to live; but their disease is killing them.
It is not only misleading to equate relief and control for the terminally ill with suicide, which is often the tragic result of mental illness, it’s technically incorrect: Assisted suicide remains a felony in Oregon, the first state to pass a death-with-dignity law.
“All I am asking for is to have some choice over how I die. Portraying me as suicidal is disrespectful and hurtful to me and my loved ones. It adds insult to injury by dismissing all that I have already endured: the failed attempts for a cure, the progressive decline of my physical state, and the anguish which has involved exhaustive reflection and contemplation leading me to this very personal and intimate decision about my own life and how I would like it to end.”
– Dying patient Louise Schaefer, in a letter to The Sacramento Bee.
For many terminally ill adults, access to life-ending medication merely provides comfort in the knowledge that if their suffering ever becomes unbearable, they have the ability to die peacefully, on their own terms.
In states with laws authorizing aid in dying, many who obtain prescriptions for life-ending medication don’t ever use it. Between 1998 and 2014, 35 percent of people who received prescriptions under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act never took the medication, according to theOregon Public Health Division.
Medical aid-in-dying laws require confirmation from two physicians that a patient is in fact terminally ill, with six months or less to live. Patients must be of sound mind and able to take the medicine voluntarily. At all times, the patient is in control. Under these laws, doctors are not authorized to take any patient’s life.
Death-with-dignity laws are extremely well-regulated and work as intended. In the 17-year history of Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, there has not been a single documented case of abuse or coercion. Instead it has served as an exemplary model for states that have followed Oregon in their authorization of this medical practice – currently Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico.
Since Compassion & Choices joint call to action with Brittany Maynard and her family on what would have been her 30th birthday on Nov. 19, 2014, legislators in the District of Columbia and at least 23 states have introduced death-with-dignity bills to authorize the option of medical aid in dying.
Three out of four Americans (74%) polled after Brittany Maynard utilized Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act agreed that: “Individuals who are terminally ill, in great pain and who have no chance for recovery, have the right to choose to end their own life.”