By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
August 30, 2011 2:24 p.m. EDT
Editor's note: Coming this fall on CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes an in-depth look at assisted suicide and families ripped apart by the issue.
Portland, Oregon (CNN) -- James Powell could barely speak on the day he died; cancer had confined him to bed and heavy painkillers left him only semi-lucid. Yet the mood was almost celebratory as 25 people -- family, friends and volunteers -- gathered in a large living room to tell stories and say goodbye on the day Powell chose to end his suffering.
"After he took the medication, he fell asleep really quickly. His body just relaxed. He went into deep snoring. There were tears, but also it felt like a real family gathering of support," his daughter Katy, 61, remembers. "After he died you could pretty much feel the spirit kind of lift in the room. Thank goodness he's free of that horrible suffering and pain."
Powell, who died at age 82 in 2008, had worked to pass Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, a law enacted in 1997 that allows terminally ill patients to choose to end their own lives with lethal medications. A similar law was passed in 2009 in Washington. In Montana, the state supreme court ruled in 2009 that doctors in that state cannot be prosecuted for assisting with the death of terminally ill patients, but did not guarantee it as a constitutional right. (!)
This month, in Massachusetts, the Dignity 2012 campaign, which includes members of a local chapter of the national nonprofit group Compassion & Choices, is spearheading a movement to get a Death With Dignity Act on the 2012 ballot. Supporters filed paperwork with the state's attorney general.
The idea of allowing someone to end his or her own life is undoubtedly controversial. Gallup's 2011 Values and Beliefs poll found in March that 45% of Americans consider doctor-assisted suicide morally acceptable, and 48% believe it's morally wrong; the split was closer than on other hot-button issues such as abortion, having a child out of wedlock and cloning animals.
The law is significant for more than just the few people who actually go through the entire process of obtaining lethal medications and taking them, said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices.
"End of life care and empowered patients are better for everyone in the state," she said.
But this creates a double standard for the prevention of suicide, argues Stephen Drake, research analyst for the organization Not Dead Yet, a disability advocacy group that opposes physician-assisted suicide.
In his view, the Death with Dignity Act establishes a two-tiered system in which some people's suicides are more encouraged than others. It's the idea that young, healthy and nondisabled people should be prevented from dying, while the deaths of the old, ill and disabled should be facilitated, he said.
"When you look at it that way, it doesn't look so much like empowerment's at work," Drake said.
There's a difference between helping a patient feel comfortable at the end of life and "making killing an acceptable part of medical practice," he said. He said he fears advocates will attempt to expand the established law's requirements to include more and more people, although Coombs Lee said her organization has no interest in broadening the eligibility rules for the Death with Dignity Act. FULL STORY
Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Don't worry about THIS ever getting OUT OF CONTROL, because that could just NEVER HAPPEN. Could it?
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