Cathy Grossman of USA Today writes about a new Washington state law gives doctors the option of providing life-ending medicines to terminally ill patients.
One doctor who said he probably wouldn’t participate nonetheless added, “There’s possibly a story out there, in the future, that’s so compelling that maybe I would write a prescription.”
I appreciate the reluctance to force doctors to assist in suicide but what you’re likely to have is a pretty wide variety of defintions of “compelling.”
Some may believe that a compelling “story” is one in which the patient is in great pain and certain to die.
But to me the most difficult case is one recently presented to me by a friend: the patient was not in great pain and in fact could probably have been kept alive for another year or two or three with various medicines and treatments. But he had become convinced that he could not longer live a life of dignity. He required orderlies to change his diaper and guide him to the bathroom at night. He could no longer drive and reading was becoming difficult. And he was in his 90s. He wanted to die — and he was both happy and certain.
He was not depressed; he was resolute.
Is that a compelling case?