A recent New Haven Register editorial supported a bill now before the legislature concerning assisted suicide. It was selective is its support, agreeing only when so-called pain and physical suffering are involved.
Shouldn’t mental suffering or “quality of life” be a consideration in which assisted suicide is a reasonable course of action? My wife was in a nursing home in bed, her pain sometimes uncontrolled, for almost four years. She voiced on several occasions that she wished she could die. Granted, it was followed by some life affirming periods, but the wish was strong and long-lasting. It was a quality of life issue with her, not just her pain.
I have a living will stating that I want no efforts to extend my life in the event of major accident or illness that would make me unable to enjoy the quality of live I am willing to accept. But under current law, and the law under consideration, I must be given life-sustaining care, not just comfort care, unless I am diagnosed as having a death probability within six months (making me eligible for hospice care). Without that diagnosis I could be forced to endure the angst and enormous cost of unwanted hospital or home care, rehabilitation procedures and a probable life of being immobilized, incoherent, incontinent, force fed, and monitored with multiple needles and devices.
I attended a legislative hearing some 25 years ago in Hartford that I believe was the occasion for the drafting of the current law. I recall that there was discussion about life being sacred and that one must await God’s timing for death to take place. Religious support for the bill was a major factor in the wording of the legislation. Do we really believe that God decides when we die? Did God on 9/11 create the circumstance for 3,000 people to die horrible deaths in the World Trade Center?
My individual right to choose should not be based on some arbitrarily imposed legal (or religious) view, but on my own spiritual understanding of when it is appropriate and reasonable to let go. There are many people with religious beliefs who accept the right to die philosophy. We should have every right to determine our own fate.
Geary Corves
New Haven