All people die with dignity

Before her recent death with the assistance of a prescription of barbiturates, Brittany Maynard, who was terminally ill, made public her hopes that this would be a watershed moment for the movement to make choices such as hers legal in all of the U.S.

I can understand some of the reasoning of that campaign, even if I don’t agree with it. And I feel nothing but compassion for Maynard and her family that she suffered as much as she did from an incurable disease before her life was cut short. I don’t plan to stand in the way of advocates who want doctors who choose to do so to be able to write such prescriptions. I need all of the time and energy I have for end-of-life issues in my work as a hospital chaplain. Further, there has been no evidence of a slippery slope from a relatively small number of individuals [PDF] making this choice into more vulnerable populations feeling pressure to do so. 

What troubles me greatly about Oregon’s law—and the movement for more like it—is its name. In the past weeks as the media have covered Maynard’s story, the phrase “death with dignity” has become more common as an alternative to describing it as suicide. I can understand advocates wanting to avoid the word suicide, but it doesn’t follow that we should describe illnesses such as glioblastoma, the form of brain cancer that Maynard had, as resulting in a “death without dignity.”