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Commentary: Bill would allow terminally ill end-of-life dignity

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According to the California Department of Public Health, 248,118 people died in California in 2013.

About 4,000 of them committed suicide.

With 38 million people living in California, those who commit suicide amount to less than 1% of the population.

How many of those suicides were due to a mental health issue, and how many were individuals who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness? Most people don’t even stop to consider that not all people who are ending their lives are doing so because of some mental illness or other deficiency.

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When my grandmother passed away in 2009, I was with her. I helped my mother change her bedpans and turn her so that she didn’t get bedsores. I was there when, in her hallucinations and delirium, she began to pray to God to end her misery.

My heart broke as I heard this woman, whom I had looked up to my entire life, begging to die.

In that very moment, I would have given her anything that she wanted. As a loving granddaughter, I would support any bill that would have allowed that.

As a student in the Master’s of social work program at USC, I advocate for the rights of vulnerable populations, and the fact that terminally ill individuals don’t have the right or ability to end their suffering is appalling.

On Jan. 21, California Sens. Lois Wolk (D-Vacaville) and Bill Monning (D-Monterey) introduced Senate Bill 128. This bill, better known as the End-of-Life Options Act, would essentially make it legal for individuals to choose to end their lives by ingesting a prescribed lethal dose of medication.

If passed, this bill would apply only to adults who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, with a prognosis of six months or less to live. Anyone who decides to participate in this program would have to be deemed mentally competent and have the diagnosis confirmed by at least two different physicians.

There are several other provisions in this bill, including protections for physicians and staff who decide to aid the ill person and safeguards for the participants and their families.

The most controversial part of this bill has been that even though it would require that participants self-administer the medication, the death would be labeled as resulting from the underlying medical condition and not a suicide.

I can understand where people would have a problem with this phrasing. But are we really going to let a little thing like that hold back 38 million people from their right to a dignified death?

How is it that we are OK with putting down our sick animals, many of which are a loving part of our families, but we will not allow mentally competent adults to choose to end their lives in a humane way when they have no hope for recovery?

Californians want the right to end their misery before they get to the point where they can’t do anything. What quality of life is that? Are we really more kind to our pets than to our loved ones?

I revered and respected my grandmother more than anyone — but, at the end of her life, I saw numerous people treat her in a manner that I found utterly reprehensible. This truly amazing woman who had survived the Great Depression and two world wars, who was the reigning matriarch of a raucous extended Greek-American family (a feat in and of its own) — was treated as if she wasn’t even in the room.

It was as though, because she was sick and elderly, her opinions and desires no longer mattered to the people who were supposed to be caring for her (the hospital staff and the assigned social worker). No one deserves to be ignored like that. Every single one of us deserves respect, dignity and quality of life until the very last moment in this life!

Take action. Call your senators and let them know that you support the End-of-Life Options Act.

ALEXANDRA DILWORTH, a graduate student at USC, lives in Irvine.

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