Dear Editor,
In response to the recent articles on aid-in-dying by first Ms.
Evans, and then Ms. Pampuch, a key point thing that Ms. Evans
overlooks is that there are people who purposely refuse to enroll
in hospice because they fear someone is going to try and convert
them.
Dear Editor,

In response to the recent articles on aid-in-dying by first Ms. Evans, and then Ms. Pampuch, a key point thing that Ms. Evans overlooks is that there are people who purposely refuse to enroll in hospice because they fear someone is going to try and convert them.

Working in the aid-in-dying movement, we know that if we can get people into hospice many decide that they “can live with it” and abandon thoughts of hastening their death. No one should have to refuse the tremendous benefits hospice has to offer because they fear they will be talked into, or talked out of, anything. Hospice and hospice workers, at least professionally, should remain neutral on the issue.

We also know from several studies that while the rate for those who use Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act is about 1 per 1,000, outside of Oregon, where the practice is illegal, the rate is 1 per 250, or four times higher. Absent safeguards, such as a second medical opinion, a requirement that the patient make multiple requests separated by a mandatory waiting period, and mandatory counseling in alternative forms of treatment (to name but three of over a dozen safeguards), patients in other states may be unnecessarily hastening their deaths.

In Oregon we have found that simply having an option of last resort should all else fail encourages patients to at least try other alternatives, and in fact 90 percent do. So, religious or not, every state except Oregon, and opponents of aid-in-dying in every state other than Oregon, are actually responsible for causing more deaths than they claim they are preventing by keeping the practice illegal.

The Book of Sirach tells us: “before man lie life and death, and whichever he prefers is his.” It should not be Ms. Evans’ mission, nor any other religious person’s, to dictate how someone who is suffering intolerably and seeks release should die. Such decisions are personal ones between the patient and his or her family, and even between the patient and whatever higher power he or she answers to.

Roland Halpern, Denver, CO

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