Dear supporters of the right to aid in dying,
Here are some treats, not to be missed. First, the five-minute, year-end video, Unprecedented Progress -- Unprecedented Threats, from our movement's leading national organization, Compassion & Choices (C&C.) With inspirational scenes from the fight to protect Washington DC's new aid in dying law featuring DC congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and DC mayor Muriel Bowser, footage of the famed activist Dolores Huerta supporting aid in dying, video of Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary fame) singing at the 20th anniversary celebration of the Oregon law going live, and a list of the five state medical societies that have dropped their opposition to aid in dying and the one that has come out in support! Highly recommended!
And, here are some fascinating articles. From thehill.com, one of the indispensable news sites for Congress, Allow modern medicine to relieve agonizing end-of-life experiences, by C&C's chief program officer Kim Callinan, on December 25. It's a comprehensive piece covering the "palliative care option known as medical aid in dying," she writes. "Sure, we allow people access to other forms of palliative care. Yet those cannot alleviate every patient's agony. Sadly, our approach to death has not kept up with our progress in medicine, and as a result people suffer needlessly." One really interesting item: the organization Disability Rights Oregon, whose mission is "to promote and defend the rights of individuals with disabilities," testified last year that it has never received a single complaint about the Oregon Death With Dignity Act. Not one, in more than twenty years!
Ms. Callinan also had a beautiful piece, People should have choices as their life is ending, in Mass Live, on December 26. Describing how "an enlightened generation of women" transformed the process of pregnancy and childbirth over the past few decades, she writes, "The pressure from women and their partners was so intense that the system yielded ... Imagine if we could have the same type of transformation for the end of life? If a person could write their own plan, decide when and where they die, decide who they want with them when they die -- and determine how much pain they're willing to endure, even if that means accelerating the time of their death. Imagine if the default mode at the end of life was for doctors to assume the patient's values were paramount. That future is possible. In fact, I would suggest that we are in the midst of this transformation." Profound words.
Also well worth checking out, and emblematic of the shift that is happening, is the article in the critically important journal Health Affairs last March, by Ms. Callinan and Compassion & Choices' president Barbara Coombs Lee, A Call To The Palliative Care Community For A Patient-Centered Response to Medical Aid In Dying. "We routinely hear from people who praise their palliative care team for the support either they or a loved one received during a serious illness. However, we also quite regularly hear from consumers who do not understand why their palliative care team does not disclose or discuss medical aid in dying as a palliative care option for mentally sound, terminally ill adults in the states where it is authorized. After all, many palliative care teams pride themselves in helping patients and families understand the nature of their illness, making timely, informed decisions about their care and feel in control of their lives. Medical aid in dying -- one option on the palliative care spectrum -- represents these values to patients and their families, so they do not understand why some palliative care specialists refuse to acknowledge or recognize it." See also, A Call for a Patient-Centered Response to Legalized Assisted Dying, by John Frye and Stuart J. Youngner, MD, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Nov. 15, 2016.
Please help us make it happen, right here in Illinois, by joining Final Options Illinois. Click here to contribute online -- it only takes a second -- or send checks or credit card info to us at the address below. Your initial contribution, of any amount, makes you a member. And members are what we need, all over the state, to make aid in dying something that's available to suffering people here ... a category that can include any and all of us. Please contribute generously ... or contribute a token amount, whatever you can afford ...And if you itemize, there's still time to get that tax deduction!
On behalf of the board of Final Options Illinois, my most sincere thank you for your support and all that you do to help advance this most important movement, the final frontier of human liberation.
Yours for the cause of aid in dying,
Ed Gogol, President, Final Options Illinois -- Donate
1055 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. #F212, Chicago IL 60660 -- 815-366-7942 or 224-565-1500
www.finaloptionsillinois.org -- [email protected]