By Katherine Drabiak

Last month, Hawaii became the seventh state, with the District of Columbia, to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Similar to some of the other state laws, Hawaii’s Our Care, Our Choice Act permits competent adults with a terminal illness and a diagnosis of less than six months to live to obtain a lethal prescription to use to take their own lives. Proponents assert the new law, in addition to giving patients a measure of control, autonomy, and dignity, also contains rigorous safeguards. Despite this rhetoric, Hawaii’s law, like legalized PAS in general, raises troubling implications for the standard of care and for transparency. It also highlights the immense power of a lobby, Compassion & Choices, to strategically politicize language and control the public discourse to make legal change appear to result from organic social shifts rather than orchestrated actions.

Terminology matters: framing a lethal prescription as a viable and even desirable alternative to addressing shortcomings in palliative and hospice care obfuscates that “care” and “choice” mean supplying vulnerable patients with a medication to end their life. Under the prevailing medical standard of care, patients who report feeling depressed, a burden to others, trapped, or hopeless, or are struggling with managing their medical condition would ordinarily trigger intervention to address risk factors for suicide. However, lobbyists’ use of euphemistic language may incrementally change how physicians and public health professionals respond to patients who express suicidal thoughts.

… continue reading ‘Hawaii’s New End-Of’Life Law’

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