While the rest of us were too busy living to notice, a group of concerned Coloradans was spending years quietly working on the one issue that will affect us all.
When they scored a big victory last month, they kept it to themselves.
No bill-signing ceremonies were held, no press conferences. Nobody likes to talk about death, after all.
But somebody has to, and that’s where Compassion & Choices comes in. C&C is the nation’s leading advocate for patients’ rights at the end of life.
After studying Colorado law and consulting with dozens of doctors and lawyers, C&C enlisted Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, and Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, to carry a bill that would make dying a little easier. Senate Bill 102 protects doctors and caregivers from being prosecuted under the manslaughter statute for giving palliative care to the terminally ill.
It had been endorsed by medical societies, hospice organizations and religious groups. While the Catholic Church and Focus on the Family withheld their support, they did not oppose the bill. The governor signed it into law April 4.
Critical to the bill’s passage was the fact that many legislators, constituents – even the governor – had seen the relief in the eyes of friends and family members who struggled with pain in their final weeks of life.
“It’s important to emphasize that this is not a physician-assisted suicide law,” said Dick VandenBergh, a psychiatrist who worked for the measure’s passage.
On the contrary, some of the most compelling testimony for the bill came from a cancer patient who had come to a Denver hospice to die after months of suffering in a hospital in rural Colorado.
When he began receiving appropriate pain-relief medicine in the hospice, “he felt so much better, he didn’t want to die anymore,” VandenBergh said. “He’s still alive today.”
No Colorado physician delivering palliative-care medications has been charged with manslaughter, VandenBergh said, but many physicians have hesitated to prescribe painkillers to terminally ill patients out of fear of prosecution. As a result, patients suffered needlessly.
Many with cancer, congestive heart failure, neurological disorders and other terminal conditions require morphine and other opiates to relieve severe pain. As their tolerance for the medication builds, doctors must prescribe higher doses.
“If the amounts are too high,” VandenBergh said, “it can actually hasten the patient’s death, so a doctor has to walk a fine line.” Despite tremendous advances in the science of palliative care, “many doctors have not been willing to walk that line,” he said. “They’re scared of what might happen to them.”
Those fears were heightened last year with the uproar over the Terri Schiavo case. Schiavo was kept alive despite overwhelming medical testimony that she was in a persistent vegetative state.
Jon Eisenberg, one of the attorneys arguing for Schiavo’s right to die, said meddling from politicians in the Florida Legislature all the way to the White House mobilized Americans.
A poll by the Pew Research Center found that 84 percent of Americans said they supported right-to-die laws, and while only 12 percent had living wills in 1990, that number jumped to 29 percent after Schiavo’s death.
“Executing an advance written directive has become a political act,” said Eisenberg. “People were outraged by what they saw in the Schiavo case.”
Logan MacMillan, who describes himself as a conservative Republican and a member of C&C, agreed. “All the polls showed that people believe the proponents of intervention in the Schiavo case were dead wrong,” he said.
“This is not a place for public policy to dictate,” MacMillan said. “If we don’t stand up to that, we’ll be fooled later.”
Eisenberg will sign his book, “Using Terri: The Religious Right’s Conspiracy To Take Away Our Rights,” at 7 tonight at the Tattered Cover LoDo, 1628 16th St. He also will speak to a C&C meeting at 2 p.m. Friday at the First Universalist Church, 4101 E. Hampden Ave.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
