Unitarian Universalists Helped Write and Pass Oregon’s Aid-in-Dying Law

In Oregon, terminally ill adults may seek a physician-prescribed medication to hasten their deaths, a right that Unitarian Universalists helped bring about. Members of First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, were among a small group who wrote the state’s aid-in-dying law and won its approval from voters in the 1990s. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, allows terminally ill adults to hasten their end with medication prescribed by a physician.

The article describes the experience of James “Jim” Powell, a longtime member of First Unitarian who was dying of cancer in 2008. Powell, who had been at the bedside of others who used the law after it took effect in 1997, was in severe pain and had the medication in hand. He delayed using it because he was worried that doing so would hurt family members who did not support the law, according to his daughter, Katy Powell. The Rev. Kate Lore, social justice minister at First Unitarian, said nurses could not depart from medical protocol, even though she had asked them to leave his bandages in place. Powell eventually decided to proceed, and his family chose to be present. Lore recalled that he died within minutes of drinking the medicine.

A longtime congregant, identified as Lee, was diagnosed with fatal lung cancer in 2012 and said she wanted to use the Oregon law when the time came. Her daughter, Julia Lee Griffith, said Lee wanted to avoid putting her children through the prolonged death Lee had watched her own mother endure from Alzheimer’s disease. The law requires two doctors to agree that a patient has less than six months to live. Lee found a physician willing to write the prescription outside her own health care group, which the article notes is connected to the Roman Catholic Church, a strong opponent of aid in dying. Lee died on January 7, 2014, surrounded by her family, according to Griffith’s account.

The article presents the law’s supporters’ account of the situation before 1997. It says many terminally ill people faced what they saw as a choice between a long, painful death and suicide by illegal and often traumatic means. Lore described a woman with fatal brain cancer who died by a self-inflicted gunshot in a hotel room, an act that horrified the hotel staff who found her and affected her husband and children. Lore said that a death with family present, where everyone has said what they need to say, is better.

The piece also describes the national attention given to the issue in 2014 after Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman with malignant brain cancer, moved from California to Oregon to end her life legally. Maynard spoke publicly about her decision, including in a cover article in People magazine. The article states that her account renewed a movement that had stalled for years, including efforts by the national nonprofit Compassion and Choices, which has close ties to First Unitarian. A Harris poll conducted after Maynard’s death on November 1, 2014, found that 74 percent of Americans agreed that terminally ill people in pain should have the right to end their lives. Her husband, Dan Diaz, said he would keep advocating for laws in other states.

The article reports that legislative activity increased after 2014. According to Death with Dignity, a national nonprofit that promotes laws modeled on Oregon’s, 24 states and the District of Columbia considered such laws during the 2015 legislative session. In October 2015, California joined Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana in legalizing aid in dying. The article says the California law was expected to take effect sometime in 2016. Barbara Coombs Lee, a member of First Unitarian and president of Compassion and Choices, predicted that one or two more states would pass such laws within a year. She also cited the organization’s campaign in New York and hopes for progress in Colorado and New Mexico, where the state Supreme Court was deciding the legality of aid in dying under existing law. “The dominoes are starting to fall,” she said.

According to Coombs Lee and others quoted in the article, Maynard’s decision to speak publicly was decisive in drawing attention to an issue that the public had largely ignored and many politicians had avoided. Diaz told UU World that people related to his wife and came to see the issue as affecting anyone’s family.

The article notes that Oregon’s law, one of the first in the world, has served as a model for other U.S. legislation. It says the law was drafted in a dilapidated annex office at First Unitarian in Portland by a small group of church members, including Coombs Lee. The article states that the congregation had become a key site in the development of the modern aid-in-dying movement before the drafting began, and that the wider Unitarian Universalist community has been vocally supportive.

Source: Read the original report