Rhode Island’s General Assembly is again considering legislation that would give terminally ill people the option to die in their sleep using prescribed medication. The legislation hasn’t garnered much support in the past, but State Sen. Meghan Kallman is hoping this year will be different.
Afternoon host Dave Fallon spoke with Kallman as well as Jenny, a terminally ill resident of Little Compton, about why they support the bill.
Interview highlights
On how physician-assisted death would work in Rhode Island
Meghan Kallman: This bill creates a process that would govern physician-assisted suicide. So it is designed to help people who are terminally ill make the decision and then end their life under very particular circumstances and with very particular sorts of supports and safeguards in place. The bill is modeled after legislation that passed in Oregon and also in Vermont.
The bill is designed so that people cannot make this decision lightly or impulsively. They have to make the request twice, two weeks apart. They need to have received a diagnosis that is terminal and a prognosis of six months or less. So the process is designed to be available to patients who are facing very crucial months, weeks at the end of their life and are trying to not suffer more than they need to. There are also protections in the bill to safeguard physicians; that they cannot be held liable for the prescription of life-ending medication in circumstances like the ones that are laid out in the bill itself.
On the objections to physician-assisted death in Rhode Island
Kallman: The most memorable opposition in hearings has to do with people feeling that enabling anyone to end a life is not the work that the state should be doing. I think that often comes from religious convictions, which, again, are convictions that I respect entirely. But I would argue that the state is separate from church for a reason, and our job is to set up mechanisms and tools for people to live out their life with agency and dignity and to create space for that.
As far as the religious objections go, this is not a mandate, right? It creates a framework for people to make a choice about the end of their lives, which is obviously a value that people on both sides of the aisle hold.
Kallman on why she supports legalizing physician-assisted death
Kallman: My grandfather was a lifelong farmer. He was a very sort of simple, loving, kind of taciturn guy, and he died of cancer. When he got his cancer diagnosis, he clearly had a lot of anxiety about this and about end-of-life stuff, and about a prolonged, protracted and painful death. He got a bunch of flyers from one of the Oregon Death with Dignity centers and he started sprinkling them around the house for my mother to find.
So that was his way of starting the conversation, which to my knowledge never actually really became a substantive conversation between the two of them. He wound up passing away, so that is a piece of it. This was a guy who voted Republican for much of his life, and voted Democrat towards the end of his life, but he was a rural working man whose conviction about his own dignity was very, very strong, and that made a big impression on me.
My dad also has a terminal illness. He had a double lung transplant 16 years ago, which is a pretty long time, but also feels very strongly about this. So there have been a lot of experiences in my own family that tell me that having control over end-of-life issues when we are confronted with very, very bad news, is an important part of ensuring dignified life for Rhode Islanders; not just dignified death, but dignified life.
Jenny on why she supports physician-assisted death, as a terminally ill person
Jenny: I don’t think it’s the decision of others. I think it’s my decision and that of my family. Having seen two people I love dearly with this condition and how long it took and the change in their lives and the lives of people who cared about them and loved them. The thought of putting my family and my friends through that is horrifying.
This decision is not the church’s, it’s not the government’s. It’s ours. It’s a very personal decision.
Personally, I really don’t think that six months or a year, shortening my life by that doesn’t worry me, doesn’t scare me. I think knowing what I’m up against, that will be a blessing to be able to have, and have my family help make that decision. This decision is not the church’s, it’s not the government’s. It’s ours. It’s a very personal decision. I can’t think of anything more personal than this, but I have to have the right to do it. I mean, if they’re not going to go to jail, we have to pass this legislation.
This interview was conducted by The Public’s Radio.
