By Jane E. Brody in the NYT
At a time when so many are dying against their will, it may seem out of sync to discuss the option of having a doctor help people end their lives when they face intolerable suffering that no treatment can relieve.
It’s less a question of uncontrollable physical pain, which prompts only a minority of requests for medical aid in dying, than it is a loss of autonomy, a loss of dignity, a loss of quality of life and an inability to engage in what makes people’s lives meaningful.
Intractable suffering is defined by patients, not doctors. Patients who choose medical aid in dying want to control when they die and die peacefully, remaining conscious almost to the very end, surrounded by loved ones and able to say goodbye.
Currently, nine states and the District of Columbia allow doctors to help patients who meet well-defined criteria and are on the threshold of dying choose when and how to end their lives. The laws are modeled after the first Death with Dignity Act, passed in Oregon in 1997.
A similar law has been introduced repeatedly, and again this January, in New York. Last year, Maryland came within one vote of joining states that permit medical aid in dying. Diane Rehm, the retired National Public Radio talk show host, says in a new film on the subject, “Each of us is just one bad death away from supporting these laws.”
Most people who seek medical aid in dying would prefer to live but have an illness that has in effect stripped their lives of meaning. Though often — and, proponents say, unfortunately — described as “assisted suicide,” the laws hardly give carte blanche for doctors to give people medication that would end their lives quickly and painlessly. The patient has to be terminally ill (usually with a life expectancy of less than six months), professionally certified as of sound mind, and able to self-administer the lethal medication without assistance. That can leave out people with advanced dementia or, in some cases, people with severe physical disabilities like those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S., or Lou Gehrig’s disease).
A desire to broaden access to medical aid in dying prompted Joe Fab, a director and writer, to create the film “When My Time Comes,” to air on public television starting April 8. (A free livestream of the film preview and discussion will be available on April 8, at 12:45 p.m. Eastern, at weta.org/WhenMyTimeComesFilm.) The film follows the 2020 publication of Ms. Rehm’s companion book of the same title, subtitled “Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End.” Both the book and film were inspired by the protracted death in 2014 from Parkinson’s disease of John Rehm, her first husband, to whom she was married for 54 years.