When a nonbinding question appeared on the 2012 Massachusetts ballot that would have favored allowing physician-assisted suicide to terminally ill residents, it was rejected by 48 percent of the state’s voters, with 6 percent abstaining.
But the initiative, for adult Massachusetts residents with a prognosis of six months or less to obtain drugs that would end their lives was backed by more than 62 percent of Franklin County voters.
Now, with the Legislature considering adoption of an “End of Life Options” bill, a Pioneer Valley Death with Dignity Action Group, together with Compassion and Choices Massachusetts and other local organizations are planning a pair of talks by a retired Falmouth physician, a terminal prostate cancer patient who is an advocate for the bill, House 1194 and Senate 1225.
Randee Laikind of Buckland, who like speaker Dr. Roger Kligler is a volunteer for Compassion and Choices Massachusetts, plans to testify on the measure Tuesday before the Joint Committee on Public Heath. “People should be able to have a choice. It’s not forcing one religion’s doctrine down another religion’s throat. Everyone should have a choice,” she said.
The bill, filed for the fifth time by Rep. Louis Kafka, D-Stoughton, is written in the same language that has been adopted in six other states, including Washington, D.C., and Vermont, she said.
“There’s a lot of safeguards. Two doctors have to sign off,” said Laikind, a founder of Hampshire County Hospice in the 1970s and led the Western Massachusetts Hemlock Society. She explains that her advocacy dates to her experience as an 8-year-old whose grandfather was dying and asked for her help in planning his funeral a week before a family doctor and neighbor provided a prescription that she’s certain aided his choice to end his life.
The Oct. 16 talks by Kligler, one of two physicians who have filed a lawsuit against the state to prevent authorities from prosecuting doctors who prescribe medication to assist patients who seek help in ending their life, will be at 1:30 p.m. at the Northampton Friends Meetinghouse, 43 Center St., and at 7 p.m. at the Northampton Senior Center, 67 Conz St.
Other sponsors for the free talks are Northampton Senior Services, Amherst Senior Center and Living Fully, Aging Gracefully support groups. In both communities, advocates of the legislation are seeking a nonbinding resolution by the Northampton City Council and the Amherst Town Meeting calling on their legislators to support the measure.
Among 45 House and 11 Senate co-sponsors of the legislation, filed in the Senate by Sen. Barbara L’Italien, D-Andover, are Reps. Paul Mark, D-Peru, and Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington, as well as Anne Gobi, D-Spencer.
A February 2014 Purple Strategies survey cited by Compassion & Choices, the group advocating for the physician-assisted suicide legislation, found that 71 percent of Massachusetts voters support a proposal to allow “mentally competent, terminally ill patients with less than six months to live be able to end their life in a humane and dignified manner, using prescription medications they can self-administer.”
Still, the proposal — which has changed each time it has been presented in Massachusetts — has faced opposition, primarily from some religious organizations, as well as from the leadership of the Massachusetts Medical Society, according to an aide to Kafka.
On its website, Massachusetts Citizens for Life says it opposes the legislation because it would address concerns about “coercion of patients (and) the imprecision of terminal diagnoses and time to live. … If passed, this bill would place the elderly, infirm, sick, disabled, and vulnerable at grave risk and radically change the nature of our healthcare system.”
“The opposition says that hospice can take care of everything, and palliative care can take care of everything. But it can’t,” Laikind said. “There has to be room for all choices. It doesn’t take care of everybody. And it should be the person’s choice.”